The Dark Truth

I am really excited after watching the first episode of Satyamev Jayate. It not only has great substance but covers an issue in a wholesome manner. I am so glad that it started with an issue that is immensely close to my heart. I wanted to write on the issue of female infanticide and foeticide but all I could scribble was a story titled Dear daughter. I would like to congratulate Aamir Khan and the team of Satayamev Jayate to have lived upto it's promotion and airing a talk show on national television that touches the soul of India and brings out the real face of our society.

The first time I got the whole picture of the issue (despite being a doctor and more so an obstetrician in making I  wasn’t aware of what heinous crimes my fellow doctors were capable of) when randomly I bought a book named “Dissappearing daughters “ at the airport while waiting for my  flight. The book has a Prologue by Dr. Abdul Kalam  and written by Gita Arvamudan , a journalist.

 It starts from the authors journey to a village in Tamil Nadu where female infanticide was so rampant that there was news of  tiny skeletons being found. That was back in 90s . Today of course with technology at hand and portable ultrasound machines  foeticide is more common. There is a whole list of facts in this bookthat took me aback... some of which surfaced in the show Satyamev Jayate

1.      I always thought South Indian population was better educated and it was the North Indian poor states with rampant practice of  dowry  where this crime happened.

Correction: Some South Indian states  have a very deeply embedded dowry system and infanticides were pretty common. Though the dark truth was fiercely guarded.The law if enforced usually caught the  mother who at the end of the day had no claim on her own body and was already a victim.

          2.The doctors involved work in a nexus as a business and were untouched despite the relevant punishable laws. I knew this one but I had no clue about how deeply set this trend was and how easily someone trained to save lives could indulge in  murdering humans in utero. May be I am naive

but it was the hardest fact to digest. Makes me really sad.

3.       I thought that such things would happen in case of uneducated people with lesser means to support a living as they can’t afford dowries in the future.

Correction: These incidences were more among educated people with good standard of living. It is more problem of a patriarchal mindset rather than education level. Besided the technology is more easily available to the ‘educated ‘class.                                                                                                                                

4.       I thought women of lower socio-economic status suffered from this injustice.

        

Correction- Women of higher social strata are no exception. I was shocked to know that NRI women were brought to India for sex determined abortions as it was not easily available in other parts of the world.

Satyamev Jayate interviewed Dr. Mitu who was forced and then tricked to determine the sex of her babies . Then she was forced to abort the twin girls she was pregnant with. She is a doctor . Her husband is an orthopaedic surgeon and there is a long list of well educated people with Phd’s and what not in her in-laws. This is unbelievable.

5.       The fact that sex ratio per thousand when converted into absolute numbers could be such scary monster figure. Aamir gave the latest stats that with the present rate of foeticide there would be over 2 crore men without women to marry.  This is horrifying even to imagine. No wonder we are witnessing a rise in crime against women. Are you still surprised at the frequency of gang rapes these days ?

6.       Human trafficking , polygamy and pattern of migration. This was new to me 4 years back but that very year The Hindu did publish the story of this startling aspect of the declining sex ratio.

When DIMARU states ( daughter maru states : Punjab, Haryana , Rajasthan, UP, MP) had a scarcity of women a new trend started emerging. The worst aspect of female foeticide. Women from poorer states like Bihar, Jharkhand , Orissa and southern states were purchased and migrated to these states to function as ‘wives’ without status. In a family of 4-5 men a woman would be bought and first act as a wife to the eldest and after a son was born she would be shared by other men of the family. Polyandry began to become a trend. As specified by a Protection Officer on Satyamev Jayate show these women have no status , their children are neglected... they are always at the risk of being abandoned , tortured and sold again. A lot of then face language problems and have no way out of the situation.

Some states practice exchange marriages where a brother and a sister are married into a family only when there is a match for both the brother and sister. These end up in bad marriages. A woman’s story narrated in the book showed the ill effects of such marriages. She was married to a younger guy just because her brother’s marriage was fixed to the guy’s sister. She bore the burden of a dysfunctional marriage so that her brother’s marriage is not affected.

Satyamev Jayate's first episode is commendable. Awareness is the first step towards change. If a society remains in denial we cannot expect a social changed. Pessimistic views would be heard over and over again but saying 'Yes this problem exists'... saying 'Yes we acknowledge it ' .... saying' Yes this monster exists'\ and it is our own making' would be the first step towards a better future and a way of life...

The most important message I guess is that it is a social problem and the absence of the daughters that were killed in- utero would inevitably effect the lives of the daughters who were fortunate enough to be born. 

Eve...

Hey Girl with your thinking cap on

hair flowing down beaming straight

 gazing ahead to an infinite ocean

of possibilities, dreaming beyond fate....

Can’t see your face but there sure is grace

I know you don’t care what the mirrors say..

Cos you shine bright with your sparkling thoughts...

So celebrate yourself for who you are this day

And for being yourself every other day!!!...

A very very amateur sketching effort. Women's day seemed  appropriate to post it.

 I tried hard to find that conversation from the movie 'Erin Brockovich'.I could not so I write this from what I remember.

... when a victim of water pollution by carcinogenic affluents from California Power supply who developed breast and uterine cancer  asks Erin

 " Will I still be a woman after a hysterectomy and mastectomy ?" ... 

Erin says

 "You would be a more free woman who doesn't have to worry about tampons and underwires..."

We are women by the sheer grit of our minds and the power of our loving hearts. Even if we lack the perfect face ... the skin... color....attire...

Happy Women's day ! I am proud to be one :)

LAJJA......

                    

There is a movie by this name though not an adaptation from Taslima Nasreen’s namesake controversial novel. It’s a  movie weaving stories of four women in a common thread of societal oppression . All four characters aptly named after ‘sita’ (Maithali,Vaidhehi,Janaki,Ramdulari) the ‘ego ideal’ of Indian women as renowned psychologist Sudhir Kakkar puts it. I have seen the movie once and love  the wedding scene where actor Mahima Chaoudhary finally breaks her silence and rescues ‘bechara’ ‘father of the bride’ with lingual whip lashes on the greedy ‘groom clan’ making them run for their ‘dignity’.Can   rerun and watch that part  umpteen number of times! Madhuri’s portrayal of a progressive theatre actress impressed me and the refusal to do the ‘agni pareeksha’ made me go Bravo!!!... But what I had extreme trouble in watching was the third part of the story played by Rekha. A brave single mother and a mid-wife ,who fights for the progress of the village and is open to new ideas .She is raped and killed just cos her son eloped with a upper caste influential man’s daughter. It was heart breaking and filled me with anger and disgust even though it was fiction .

But is that really fiction? The Hindu newspaper brought to light a shameful incident that made me recapitulate the heinous part of this movie I was never able watch.  A dalit woman was beaten up stripped and paraded naked in a village in Maharashtra . What was her crime? Her son eloped with an upper caste girl and since the girl’s  family could not trace the ‘lovers’ the boy’s  mother  had to pay the price . The shocking thing was that it was the women who assaulted her with sticks and chappals for two hours before they  stripped her and subjected her to naked humiliation.

 The police dismissed her refusing to lodge her FIR saying such things keep happening..!!!!  ...pause... a moment of painful silence.... and I thought it was hard  for me to watch that part of the movie and a poor woman lived the horror and all she gets instead of protection , reassurance and justice is a smirk and a disgusting phrase “ ye sab to hota rehata hai !!!’

Hota rehata hai !! I ask why????? ‘Cos she a lower caste? ... cos she a powerless woman??... oh no! she is the lowest of all... she is a dalit woman ... so perhaps it’s acceptable to the ‘society’ that she be subjected to the upper caste ‘justice’.....being beaten up and losing  her dignity for no fault of hers should be acceptable ...... I do not know what good it is to blog about it... or even feel bad about it . But all I can say when I read such news which perhaps is just the tip of an iceberg it strips my faith and it stands stark naked bleeding and weeping .... where went humanity ... where went shame ..... I feel the ‘Lajja’...I feel the pain.....

The attire allegation

The DGP Andhra Pradesh made a controversial statement recently which created waves  of disapproval all over the country   and even made Mr P. Chindambram  react saying " Ours is a free country and everyone is free to wear what they wish to."

The controversial statement is nothing new... “Women are raped ‘cos they dress in an inappropriate manner”. We had ‘Slut walks’ all over the world and the Indian version called “Besharmi Morcha “ to refute this argument the past year in India. Perhaps DGP Andhra was oblivious of these developments . It’s not new that colleges and schools have dress code for women .But has it really decreased the rape cases. Prescribing a dress code is like hoping a miraculous development of a backward state of the country by simply changing it’s name.

 Dressing as no correlation with being a rape victim... heck it has no correlation  even with age !! If a women’s way of dressing was the culprit no Burkha clad women would have ever been raped ... and can anyone explain how an old woman or a girl child provokes a rapist. The worst case I had ever heard in my vicinity was a gang rape of a 4 year old when I was a post grad student at medical college. The crime was so brutal that the poor child had to undergo several  life saving and genital reconstructive surgeries.

How conveniently the blame is put on women for provoking a crime against them that not only takes away their dignity but also condemns them to be subjected to allegations like these for the rest of their lives. This argument isn’t new but what was most disheartening was the fact that the topmost officer of the police force, which is supposed to protect women, has such regressive outlook and what more he isn’t gender sensitive. This dismisses completely the hope of finding gender sensitization in the lower rungs of the police force. No wonder rape victims are raped again in police custody. I am sorry to say Mr DGP sir you simply lost the point and have revealed your ignorance . A cancer patient was raped by a hospital employee in a premier cancer institute in Mumbai ... I saw that poor girl deliver a dead baby in our hospital... can DGP Andhra give me a plausible explanation how a terminally ill teenage girl provoke such a ghastly crime against her..chemotherapy definitely didn’t make her attractive ... I am at loss and I am sorry to say that it’s disheartening to see that our senior officers make such outrageously stupid statements instead of rooting out the real cause of the problem.

No woman wants to be raped and it’s not the clothing but the a patriarchal mind set that always works towards suppressing women’s sexuality and bailing out male pervert urges. Until men are sensitized towards women and till they view  them as fellow human beings who deserve respect it will just be a blind blame on attire with no changein the rate of crime against women.

Indecent diplomates

Diplomacy is the art and practice of conducting negotiations between representatives of groups or states. Thats roughly how wikipedia defines diplomacy and further labels diplomates as essential peace makers. The Union Publc Service Commision after a year long gruelling examination selects administrators and diplomates. The ones who reach to such a dignified position are the best educated, talented and intelligent lot of the country. But alas education , talent or intellect never guaranteed morality . Thats what reflected in the bit of news I read today . Two diplomates have been recalled from services due to their sexual misconduct. Thankfully the foreign secretary being a woman took  stringent action and called for zero tolerance on the issue. One officer serving in an Indian Mission in London was recalled because of assaulting his wife . The other was posted at a permanent mission of India in UN was recalled for allegedly misbehaving with a female copassenger on a New York bound Air India flight.
   The peace makers are beating up their wives and the negotiators are crossing the limit of decency. What is wrong with these men? Is it that these were isolated cases of perversion and violence ? or is it the tip of the iceberg? So much so for the grand selection procedure by the government . These men  who were supposed to be the epitome of etiquette  are shaming the country internationally. These incidences again bring out the fact that we live in times where morality has come to nadir. School boys are raping and murdering their classmates  and the people who one would expect to have  exemplary behaviour are in news for sexual misconduct. I recall a few lines of W.H. Auden's poem...
The shield of Achilles..

She looked over his shoulder
For athletes at their games,
Men and women in a dance
Moving their sweet limbs
Quick, quick, to music,
But there on the shining shield
His hands had set no dancing-floor
But a weed-choked field.



A ragged urchin, aimless and alone,
Loitered about that vacancy; a bird
Flew up to safety from his well-aimed stone:
That girls are raped, that two boys knife a third,
Were axioms to him, who'd never heard
Of any world where promises were kept,
Or one could weep because another wept.

       Women are being harassed in schools , work places , while commuting and  are battered at homes. The two women victimized in the above incidences were definitely educated and empowered yet they had to go through the physical and mental trauma before any action was taken. Is the recall enough in the above cases? Why is that we have failed so bad in inculcating morality and good behaviour in the male population? Is it not time that the morality be included in true sense in our society and educational system and not as a mere tactic to restrict women?

hand that rocks the cradle...

I had this story picked up a year back and had planned to write on it however it's only today i allowed my mental space to release in text on this blog of mine. It was the sunday supplement of Hindu with this cover story of Justice Leela Seth. She seemed unfamiliar till I found she was writer Vikram seth's mother. He is famous . Though I havent read any of his work yet , I am familiar with the name. But now when I write this it's different . Her son is no more her identification for me. She is of course well known for being first women judge of a state high court in India. Applying the primacy effect the first ones to do something ofcourse find place in history. But what inspired me was neither her intelligence not her achievement but her brave heart and courage. To have the heart to leave her first newborn back home shortly after childbirth and to have the mental strength to not only give a bar exam in England but also top it , filled me with awe and admiration.
This newspaper article reminded me of a similar story of courage and ambition nearer home.One of my aunt's continued studies even after marriage. She left her newborn back home alone sleeping in the cradle  because she had to write a law exam.  Those who heard of it criticised her . But I keep wondering where were they when it was time to babysit? As for me I was a kid then and was little shocked ' how can a mother do that?' . Bottomline  she passed the exam and nothing happened .Now  of course I  have a new perspective to the incident. I think she is a real daredevil braveheart.She really is.

bravely ahead of her time

Nearly a 100 years after she conceived and wrote it, I got introduced to her work. She wrote her theory of public administration in 1909. Her work was dismissed and then acknowledged as prophetic . What I wonder about her most was what is it for a women to be ahead of her time?... to have thought and theorized what no MAN could! When Taylor was mechanizing and measuring work and finding ways to cut metal efficiently, she wrote about conflict ... and wisely proclaimed it to be a normal process and envisioned a constructive conflict. Meaning how to put conflict to use instead of criticizing it... since it's unavoidable.
She sure was wise, imaginative and observant. But above all she was brave. To have made a mark in a male dominant discipline and perhaps in a man's world (which still is a man's world when I sit and type this in the 21st century) is remarkably courageous.

" All polishing is done by friction. We get the music from the violin by friction and we left the savage state when we discovered fire through friction" ... Mary Parker Follet.

Matrimonial Corruption...the invisible Dracula..

This is an insane one I can't stop myself from writing. A few days back I was telling a certain friend of mine that my cousin had a love marriage. He quipped ' Love marriage is an oxymoron you moron!' Well he represents a typical case of a 'non-believer' in the institution of marriage. I have serious doubts that had he got a chance he would have talked his parents out of getting married and would have never been born ( thats too much of contemplation I know!) . We harbour a lot of such 'non-believers' in our nation which is represented as a haven of ' never ending marriage ceremonies' by our very own 'home grown miracle worker' Ekta Kapoor. I wonder why IPCC(Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change) is not apologising on the blunderous omission of the eye floods of our soap opera queens from sea level estimation. At the rate they flow per episode I think they definitely can add to the effect of global warming.

 Anyways despite the trendy and humorous 'non-believers', who sometimes have great logic to support their case,I would not brood over the validity of the institution of marriage. It doesn't bother me that much what really bothers me is the additional charges of getting married ,which usually and essentially falls on the bride's shelter. By the time the last ritual is followed and swallowed ,the marriage hurricane leaves the bride's shelter all helter -skelter. Mind you though some 'bride shelter's' turn into Bangladesh coast , hit by cyclones every now and then. A very witty senior of mine in college once said ' a girl never cuts her umbilical cord' and I would add that after marriage it gets connected to intermittent sucking machine that works on 'pressure' principle. The well being of a daughter is is directly proportional to the 'ransom' the 'ladakiwale' can pay to their' revered extortionists'. Besides that her life is secure only when she produces a son. Of course the 'extortionist' would never want to be in their 'victim's' shoes.

When the Mittals throw a lavish wedding they know they have the right to it ( and of cos the pocket). But when it makes news and spreads to the lower rungs of the society forcing those who can't afford to 'show off ' then it gets grave. The marriage market is a booming one and all the glitter and gloss is just increasing relentlessly. So much that the dowry demands are unbelievably high even in the hand to mouth section of the society. Accidentally burned brides isn't a thing of the past yet. What aches more than anything is that the level of education hasn't improved anything. The men ,who talk of broadmindedness when it comes to flings ,would never say no to a dowry. Let's be euphemistic those are just 'gifts '. what does it matter if the gift list was the groomed by the groom clan and that it sucked the last ounce of blood from the 'father of the bride'.

 What kind of society we live in where such a large scale plunder goes on uninterrupted ? Lets not talk about the society . Whats wrong with our generation? We belong to a generation of professionals who marry in there late twenties amd early thirties ( both guys and girls) with well settled careers and good earnings. Then why still follow these exploitative customs. Why is it that the guys who clear the most prestigious civil services examination become the 'costliest items' in the  ' marriage market'. Ironically they are the brightest and the most progressive minds in the country . Why do they become so regressive that instead of looking for a compatible companion they put themselves up for auction? I fail to understand . It just seems tragic to me.

I see no point in wasting money and resources in flashy weddings . A court marriage seems quite neat to me. I am not against matrimonial rituals. They are essential in a societal sense . Individual perception may vary. The bothersome fact is the meaning of those rituals is lost and just the rat race of being the flashiest is on. I believe a simple ,affordable warm ritualistic marriage is always welcome. What I want to add on this is when we grow old enough to earn and where both the partners are financially stable then there should be no need to burden parents. Just their consent and blessings should steer the couple into a new life. The expenses of the ceremony should be jointly shared by the couple. That is what I call broad-mindedness and true companionship.
( Wondering why ain't there any self help guides on ducking the dowry dracula ... or am I the first one to think of it .....:-/)