Monday, August 17, 2009

Fight if you must.

People and their stories amaze me. Every time my maid gets beaten blue by her husband, I feel lack of education makes him the beast. She sits chatting with my mother. Home is where the hell is. Poverty, hunger, trampled ego at the construction site where the man works must be the trigger.

People like me only write about such tragedies on their blog. When things take a disturbing turn.. we write. What else do you do when you see abuse in a house of literates? Why does the Indian Male like to control? The manner is sophisticated in the house of a doctor or engineer. Words draw the lines and cut the wings. The women from cultured, socially accomplished families listen. The moment these educated women raise their voice they are disgraceful.

The woman has to be like that. Willing to sacrifice for her family’s good. Walk barefoot up the hill to please the lord. Sit submissively as the father-in-law roars senselessly. The woman as a girl was adored by her parents and thought as a thinking person whose heart broke too. For the love she feels for her husband and her parents she shuts her mouth. In the family of literates her career, hopes and self-respect are nonexistent.

What makes some of us so insensitive? Every person is born to achieve to her fullest potential. Why are we so fond of cages? I know someone who is in her fifties and loves her life a lot. She wears shorts and loves gardening. The minute that phone rings and the man is about to come home she covers herself in sari from head to toe.

Fight if you must. People who care will love you still. You bore a child. People say nothing is as painful as that. You cared for that life with all your might, as it grew inside you. You promised yourself you will never let it happen to your daughter.

1 comments:

Saibal Barman said...

An excellent portrayal of mischievous curves and lines upon the hidden face of the society….it has never been fair…and, perhaps, will never be until we have won the war within! Yes, the war is for to break the mirror—of compromise, of losing self-respect, of sacrificing wishes and wills of individual and of dying whispers of creativity—to liberate the soul so sacredly embodied. It reminds me of those lines of Virginal Woolf—

“Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of a man at twice its natural size”

It all starts and ends in me only…..and, I stand still with all my failings intact….

Regards,