Women! The most talked about, debated, interpreted
and empathized lot in the country. As if she was a newly arrived
accessible-to-all product in the market! Almost everyone around seems to be
having an opinion on her. Why just opinions? Many actually have an unverified
judgment to pass about her being. If she stands for other women, she could be a
fame-hogging damn feminist and if she condemns them, she may pretty well be an
enemy of her own clan. If she’s well-read and voices boisterously, she is a maligning
image to traditional sophistication of Indian woman persona and if she is
illiterate, she is a self-proclaimed victim who deserves to suffer in wrath. If
she looks hot and sexy, she quite possibly is an over-ambitious vacuous girl who
uses her body for malicious favours from successful men and if she is laid back
in bed, darn her for not satisfying her man’s desires.
Nevertheless, this article is not a rant about what
laments have been put by society on women since ages but about why such laments
have been put on her without her consent or approval? Did anyone care to ask
her when and how far a victim she considers herself to be? Or did we rather
believe the media circulated stories, word-of-mouth or the exceptional wisdom by
self-established advocates of womanhood who claim to have read her mind and have
spoken on her behalf?
High time! Let’s bust the myth. Most of the women I
have known, from school to employment, from middle-class homemakers to
liberated young lasses, from empowered ladies leading NGOs or start-ups to the
ones who are marginally labeled off as hailing from ‘underprivileged society’,
have mostly been mettlesome women of steel and valor fighting a hard day’s
battle but without any dash of self-pity. Even the ones who tire day-in and
day-out to get daily meals for the family by doing dishes in others’ households
when their drunken husbands lay off under sun, refuse to think of themselves as
a ‘poor wretched thing’. They work hard and inspire harder their children to
redefine their forthcoming future.
So even when women do not feel as victimized, as
weak or as slanderous as she is made a subject to talk about, the stories of
her pain and discomfort do more rounds in our society than the tales of her
courage, strength and endurance. The worrisome question is why at all do we
want to see women as utterly victimized and marginally unsecure section of the
society who can hardly fight a battle solely on her merit? Is she really that
frail or does thinking of her as ‘weak’, when she is not, act like a soothing
balm on a patriarchal mentality of a nation?
In a way, the proposition that women desire to be “treated
equally” is actually downright ridiculous. It assumes that men are born or
become superior to women who need to be pushed upwards to match their level. Which
is also to assume that men and women are like rats and cats in a race who eventually
have to battle each other out to reach the finishing line first? Seriously
hilarious an assumption to start any emancipation from!
A woman is like a special piece in a big jumble puzzle.
Special not because she is an alternative gender but because every other piece
in the puzzle of society, including a man, is as special and important to
arrive at the best fit. The very question of an equal, similar looking, ditto
piece just doesn’t exist!
Most men know this. Those who do are the ones who
have helped women complete their struggling journey in a most dignified manner
in past many years otherwise there is no other thinkable way in which the race
has progressed so far helping and nurturing one another.
And of course, there are men who don’t know. And also
some who don’t want to know. Such number may be miniscule. Like men, who want
to live in a self-spun myth of masculinity in which women will be the ones who
would always perform Karvachauth for their long life, tie them a Rakhi pleading
their protection or be the carrier of their surname’s legitimate child in their
womb. There would always be few macho men who would not squirt an inch to
ill-treat, harass, exploit or banter women to establish their supremacy and
some who would not mind taking avatar of a Messiah on constant alert to save the
poor, hapless fairer creatures. Honestly, it is best to let them be and move
ahead with the progressing ones.
So what if a certain group distorts the puzzle of
gender balance, has it not always been a few good men who have changed the rule
of the game?
Women are as much a smart player. I
refuse to think of my gender clan as self-pitied, victimized or sufferers of
someone else’s malice waiting for positive discrimination to change their lives
forever. To voice or assert for rights of one’s dignity, safety or opportunity
is not the prerogative of any gender in particular but rather a movement of
humanism. No matter how much level playing field one may fetch for women, she never
aspires to be known for her gender but be valued for her ability, competence
and courage.
And like it is said, “Life shrinks or expands in
proportion to one’s courage.” Both men and women know that just right.
[I’m blogging for the India Today Woman Summit 2015 #WomenPower activity at BlogAdda.”]
