Oops! Whatzzit that just hit me!? - Yet Another Rant
The
intoxication, indignation and emotion after draining Kalki Koechlin’ s rampant
rant to the last drop down my soul still seems to be going strong. I found
hundreds of likes on each of the shares that the ‘rant’ received on social
networking sites , but somehow found myself unable to just hit the button and
finish off my affair with that outpouring of Kalki’s heart, with just a ‘like’.
The name ‘Just Another Rant’ might assume the appearance of an olive branch
to the naive eye, but let me assure you that it’s not just an olive branch that
Kalki holds out to the world, but an olive orchard itself with the countless fruits of wit, brilliance, love,
Our
country has always been in the forefront of the world race in embracing
secularity and equality. We proudly declare that we revere all
religions practiced throughout the length and breadth of our nation. We are
also proud about the respect and awe we hold for the Sacred Feminine
represented all across our religions. We worship Mother Mary with the same
veneration that we hold in our hearts for Maa MahaKali. We call ourselves
children of Mother Earth, Gaia’s brood we are. We go to the extent of
sacrificing innumerable lives to guard the honor of our Mother Land. We claim
to have transcended all religious and geographical borders and borders of creed
and gender too, in the race to become one of the most progressive nations in
the world today.
Ironically,
in current times we Indians have transcended all borders of sanity too in
consistently meting out cold-hearted crimes towards the real women of flesh and
blood amongst us; the ‘lesser mortals’ who have to grope in the dark to find a
way out, to stop from being groped in the dark by mean hands. We stand as one
among the world leaders in practicing and propagating crimes against the female
population of the world; be it women, children or babies.
 |
| Kalki Koechlin performs her epic poem |
Aren’t
these transgressions burgeoning all around the world?
…some
of the innocent-indignant among us might ask. Yes, the story is no different
when it comes to the international scene. Women in the Africas or the Americas
are as vulnerable to this pandemic as women elsewhere. But after all ‘Charity
begins at home’…and if and only if…charity had begun at home, we’d never have
had to live with this moral indignation ever. Kalki Koechlin would never have
had to rant her heart out to the deaf ears of the world… The music is
nothing if the audience is deaf. But we women ‘rant’. Day in, day out we do.
As the rant rightly says, ‘women have their ways’.
Last
week a colleague of mine went on to playfully express his mind that it’s an
unfair world where there is an international women’s day that is celebrated by
all, but no such thing as a men’s day. He went on to grieve how cruel the
society was towards ‘man’ in general. With all due respect to his grief which I sensed could be dispelled with some handy information, I went on to educate him that while we women cherished and celebrated the 8th of March as
our own special day, men had the luxury of conveniently forgetting and ignoring
the 19th of November, World Men’s Day (supposedly). Perhaps one day
was never enough for ‘man’ to celebrate. I couldn’t help but 'enlighten' him with
facts that he obviously already knew, facts that everyone everywhere knows,
that the very women who are placed on a pedestal and praised for a day are then
scorned and abused for the rest of the year by a society which comprises of
both men and women.
In fact by the end of my tirade (yapping) I felt outrageously
tired with myself for undertaking the futile exercise of trying to impart these
‘items of education’ to yet another mute spectator, items which have been conveniently clichéd
and archived by the mutely watching society itself, of which you, me, him and
all of us are a part of.
My
colleague, apparently after doing some instant pranayama, admitted that
he was slightly ‘taken aback’ by my retort which had flared up in the form of
an outburst and also went on to ‘playfully’ remind me that he never failed to
celebrate ‘mother’s day’, ‘wife’s day’, ‘daughter’s day’ and even
‘grand-mother’s day’. Perhaps, a grudging reminder to the ranting woman that
she in fact has got more than a day ‘allotted’ to her party basket to celebrate
and feel important. Ah terrible…the way I rant sometimes. My colleague’s
idea of celebrating ‘grand-mother’s day’ is an appealing idea in fact. His
question might have been a ‘playful’ one too. Just that he was unfortunate
enough to have raised his sincere query when I was in the middle of my yearly
women’s-day-special reflective rant... Bless him.
There’s
no sight more beautiful than a strong, happy and successful woman &
no sight more heart-rending than a wronged, broken and shattered woman.
Questions without answers haunt even the happiest of women everywhere
on this globe. Will there ever be an end to the compulsion for a woman to hide
herself beneath layers and layers of armor in the battle against lustful eyes?
Will she reach home safely today? Every day? Will there be a day, days, other
than International Women’s Day for the world to celebrate her achievements and
dreams? What is to be done to break free from being a mere object to be stared at… be it in a transport bus or at the movies or in a marketplace?
They say it’s the way women are clad or ill
clad. But think of the ill-fate that hundreds and hundreds of infants, toddlers
and little girls met with, little souls who hardly knew what the world was all
about, and probably will never know, spurned to eternal silence or a life of
insecurity and hatred by the misdeeds of their friends, fathers, neighbors,
uncles, brothers, drivers, doctors, teachers, guardians, strangers, even female facilitators of crimes and a
hundred other tyrants who still walk-free on this earth.
The
freedom and democracy we attained as a country, as a result of the blood and
sweat of the thousands of men and women who toiled, have
been put down in words in the scrolls of history for the world to read and
interpret. But aren’t we all still waiting for that stroke of the midnight hour
when the Indian woman can rush into the pitch darkness of the streets with her
counterparts and celebrate independence with the true spirit of an Indian, and
still live to tell the tale the next morning…
Besides
imparting education on safety, alertness and self-protection to children for
safe passage through the corridors of this world, every little girl and boy born everywhere need to be taught to value and respect…
To value and
respect one another, to value and respect the love between people,
To respect the
right to privacy, to respect distance, respect the silence of others,
To respect
strength, respect weakness, respect dreams, respect the right to live,
To respect the
right to enjoy, respect the right to trust people,
To respect the
human body, respect the soul of things, respect presence and absence,
To respect
speech, respect opinions, respect the right to remain alone,
To respect
individual decisions, respect innocence, respect differences,
To respect yes’s
and no’s
And above all… To
value and respect themselves.
Rabbi
Abraham Joshua Heschel couldn’t have been more right when he spoke the words,
Live
and let live…
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Those
of you who managed to remain spared from Kalki’s rant, please feel free to
bring the wrath upon yourselves by following the link below:
http://ibnlive.in.com/news/five-husbands-that-cant-be-fun-god-know-i-have-enough-trouble-with-one-kalki-koechlin-writes-a-monologue-on-womens-day/456725-8-66.html
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