IT’S MOTHER’S DAY. PERIOD!

Its mother’s day today, well I do stop to think every time, why assign a day for your mother?

Yes, I hear a lot of explanations and I reason with myself that maybe it’s the need of the hour, especially in the age and rage of lesser attention spans where we forget our own to do list for the day.

So yes, I thank all the mothers’ and their mothers’ in raising us in the best way possible. From keeping a check to letting us be and from being the villains in our teen age to being our best friends.

We all have spent some most precious moments and learnt some very basic yet important life skills from our mothers, for all the girls out there an important landmark must’ve been ‘The Period Talk’.

We all were introduced one fine morning during our early teens with a sanitary napkin and the instructions to put it on our underwear. The steps which we had only seen on TV with a fascinating blue liquid turning into gel and the best possible technology behind it. We were braced and prepared for the unexpected from an early age on and we embraced the ‘Flo’ with a little embarrassment, a little uneasiness but yes with every “motherly” comfort possible.

I was in fact alone at home during my first time, since mamma had gone out of station for some work and I had to break it to her on the phone. I was in utter dismay that day for it certainly was a big change of my life.

I look back at that time and I feel lucky that I come from a home where I could explain a short note on ‘menstruation cycle’ to my father without a hiccup during a preparation of one of my unit tests in school.

It’s obvious to feel uncomfortable at all the change and pain a small child of 12-13 has to go through, but what about the ones who were never educated or told about it?

Have we ever stopped to think about the small orphaned girls living on the streets or slums? Or about how must have their moment been? Some are even told that they are sick and made to leave their schools, adding to pain and horror that they are inflicted with a disease every month. Shocking, but true.

Yes, a change will take some time, and people are making this a topic of discussion through various activities where men are taking up the initiative through real/reel life difficulties. Getting rid of the taboo by talking more about it while some are also working really hard in finding an alternate to the plastic waste via biodegradable materials.

But while this goes on, I thank both my parents and their mothers to help me be the individual that I am today, still faltering, still learning and understanding all the pros and cons of daily life.

We all have a motherly instinct in ourselves whether or not we have given birth to a child. I pledge this mother’s day that I will try to help a little girl in need with sanitary napkins every month and be the guide she missed out on.

I wish you all a very Happy Mother’s day.

Thank you for taking out the time to read this.

Chhavi 🙂

I AM A WOMAN

I am a 24 year old woman and I live, love and laugh my life in a 21st century India where we all spend our lives pretending we are modern, growing and our women are flourishing in the different strata of society.
Most of the people I know are from similar family backgrounds and we all received more or less the same style and kind of upbringing. We are the so-called confident girls of so and so families and we are winning our own bread. We’re surrounded with applause and compliments so as to how well we’re doing and we all go home feeling happy.

But is it worth it?

I’ve been struggling with this question in one or the other way throughout the time I’ve lived alone. But yesterday I just couldn’t loathe myself enough, thinking so as to how are we living in such a delusion of a perfect world where we demand equality, we choose fantastic careers, be the confident individuals we want to be and lead our lives.

While on my walk back home from work, I saw a man probably my age walking ahead of me, he had both his hands busy in smothering a pinch of tobacco from a packet of masala, which he very conveniently dropped while walking. I thought of picking it up and telling him , “Bhaisahab, ye piche reh gaya hai, aapko ye fenkna nahi chahiye.” but as soon as I stopped to pick up the plastic wrapper, a wave of thoughts came rushing to me such as the follows –

• He is a local and he might get offended and gang up against me.
• He might abuse me which is very convenient now days since all the Hindi abuses are pointed towards mothers and sisters.
• He might trouble me later, follow me, harass me or I don’t know, it may lead to something serious.
and by the time I could do anything about it, the man had vanished into some small lane of this big city and I realized that I had lost a very important battle of my life.

A battle with my fear.

The fear of getting harassed not because it was my fault, but because I was afraid of pointing out to someone for as little a thing as throwing a wrapper on the road.

Some of you may say it’s just a wrapper, but it’s not. It’s about the self esteem of every woman which has been conditioned into thinking, that you should be afraid, you should smile, sit, talk, walk in a certain manner so that people don’t judge you and ultimately are not led into putting you down or harassing you in some cases. I felt a great loss because I couldn’t stand up for myself and I couldn’t do anything about it even after such a great, forward and open minded upbringing and education. I was helpless.

We were always given examples of strong women while growing up so that we could be the strong women of the future. But we are strong career women who are still afraid of travelling alone or voicing our complaints even at our workplace, in case of an harassment.

Asifa was still a kid and unheard of till a few men took her childhood and her life away, forever bruising humanity. She will just become one of the cases like ‘Nirbhaya’, ‘Jessica Lal’, ‘Bhanwari Devi’ who are just known for their court cases and the endless timelines of news/events that follow their name.
We may talk about the class, regional and even religion differences among the various cases that have gained attention, but the irony is, irrespective of their age and the backgrounds these three came from they were all women. The sad truth is that we will still be complacent about it all, show our anger for a few days and then we will have something else to talk about.

I will not talk about Asifa, we lost her in the most unimaginable way and we are losing thousands of women to sexual harassment reported every 20 minutes, the unreported ones and the marital ones, as if its way of life.

My father always said this to me while growing up, “The real catharsis is yet to happen” and I very ignorantly used to think that maybe I’ve had my moment of awakening and I’m sorted.
It’s foolish, hilarious and upsetting at the same time. I was wrong, had I been awakened, I wouldn’t have been scared of an ordinary man and his act of throwing a wrapper.

Maybe, it will come someday when I know that I can change the world. But the change will have to come through little things and I hope to see myself and other girls as not a timid but strong individuals who are not afraid of taking a call on the basics or pointing out the wrong.