Dhoom Forever?
Boyssss and Wolves. (Where does the remedy lie?)
Treat a woman; a human!
How do you feel when you read a Rape Report?
Do you check for religion?
There! There!
Looks we are not cut from the same cloth that Seth HiraMani sells at the nukkad wali galli to our Moms.
But problem is how can we decide if this or that rape is Hindu or Muslim?
Which gender does this depend on?
Man the rapist or the woman the victim?
But just as hunger is hunger and thirst is thirst, similarly a person’s lust is lust and a woman’s honour is honour incarnate.
If you are feeding a hungry child based on his her religion then there cannot be a worse devil than you.
In fact, a person doing such discrimination should be lavished with all kinds of choicest abuses in all languages, to bring him her back to his /her human senses.
[ if only that was easy, my dears]
So it is the same with the rapes.
It is not Muslim or Hindu vagina that you are invading…..
It belongs to a woman.
A human.
And here is why now, I am sort of against the term feminism
Aren’t all women’s rights ; human rights?
Why make a separate category for us ?
Treat a woman; a human.
Accept her faults as human faults and then things can be okay.
I guess. I hope.
What about men’s rights?
Yes, men’s rights.
But I am talking here about sort of men who do not respect women and take them for granted.
Rest of the men….
Their ..
Right to stare indecently. Right to talk the loudest. Right to reject a woman’s voice just because she is a woman.
Right to molest? And Arrr…Right to rape?
We dismiss all the abnormalities of male human behaviour under the category of , after all they are boys…
Boyyyysssssssssszzz
(Sounds like wolves to me.)
Not my mistake.
How do these little bundles of joy turn into Wolverines?
Aah…don’t ask.
Some may become wolves superior or say rapists, some may be in the life long process of being a covert one [ ask any woman wanting to pursue her goals] , and some good folks may pretend to be ‘normal’ wolves; all this leaves little room for happy and healthy tigers.
These few remaining, smaller number of tigers fail to be role models for the wolverine types.
Little observations inform us this process of ‘unbecoming’ starts early.
When mothers ask their daughters to be quiet at every beating every misbehaviour their little sons /brothers, subject them to.
Let it go, he is your younger brother.
Let it go, after all he is your elder brother.
It is the mothers who expect their girls to clean up after dinner , before it is expected of them to help prepare and serve it as well.
The same mothers gaze lovingly at their male progeny when they sit in front of TVs with remotes in their hands munching dinners or playing fingers on their cell phones.
When he comes home late, the father asks the mother to be patient. Afterall he is a boy, he announces.
In fact, to tell you the truth, in our places most boys have already turned adults when they are in or cross standard ; eighth.
8th
The father figure who is rarely present at home as he is busy in his office or business and also in the business at the chai /wine stops all over his city or busy in the scanning of the screens of his phone or TV with IPL playing exactly when the kids are appearing for their exams
Appear.
Yes, that is the word
The fathers generally appear to be the guardians but actually are parents in absentia.
The burden of bringing up the cub cum wolf falls almost entirely, in most cases , on the mothers.
And these same women full time mothers and 24/7 care takers , are blamed for the failure in jobs at home or mocked incessantly.
After all, don’t we grow up hearing, It is a woman who makes or breaks a home?
And what does the man then make or break?
If he is not making money, then he is busy in his male shenanigans mentioned above and more; it is thought to be perfectly normal for a man in our society.
Coming back, these mostly absent fathers are full of pride to see their sons riding bikes and all that follows after it.
#Dhoom forever
Point I am trying to make is , such gross discrimination with the girls at their own homes is the root cause of the problem along with the indulgent treatment of the boys thinking them to be superior beings.
Let us start treating both our girls and boys on a similar level.
[Well; almost a similar level. ]
The term almost ; is the saving grace here as we understand how shocking it is to expect boys to cook dinners or come back home early.
When girls observe that it is only they who are being subjected to various restrictions every day of their lives while boys live freely as they want; the things start getting murky. The girl feels she is a lesser being and who, must be led along the curves of life by the men in her life, brothers fathers husbands and then sons.
A girl wanting to go out alone in the evening?
How dare she?
Doesn’t she have any Sanskar left in her?
Alas! This word never comes in question when we talk about boys.
They can get drunk, hit a few people , destroy properties and still be happy about it.
Like all of you, this question leaves me in a ‘forever perplexed’ state.
Where and how does the process of turning into a wolverine start?
Unbecoming this is .
Unbecoming of what you were created for
Unbecoming of your purpose of creation
This came to the point where You [ the man] were thought to be only a bundle of huge lust?
Why don’t men try to be spiritual or a bit moralistically emotional?
Because we never allow them to be
We make them grow up with the constant ; you are a man, you can’t cry , you can’t feel hurt.
You simply exist to exist.
And this comes close to being an innate being.
Only his physicality is allowed to grow and develop and the result is before, all of us.
Let the men grow like women do.
Let them pass through the same rigours.
Boys too can be told;
Wash the dishes. Have you watered the backyard? No, not the front-yard. Why do you go there in the evenings? Stop it. Don’t stand or sit in the windows. No, don’t even poke out of it. Don’t sit listening to what your aunts are talking. Grind that coconut smooth. Again.
Yet, let the natural discerning factors between men and women remain. Let men remain men, and let women be women, nay, human.
Let ‘s not tell men to not cry. Not tell them , you are a man, hence, you can’t do this or do that.
Let a man also roll a chapati, cook rice for his children and clean up his home.
This should make him understand what a hell a woman goes through every day of her life.
We have so divided the men and the women that men have started believing they are some Godsent creatures born to dominate women.
Get down off your ‘created’ thrones and you try to be human.
Asma Anjum Khan is a teacher, speaker, attempting and tempted to write.
