It's time to change

Its time to change, well I think the time to change has come and long gone. We are over due by a century for the change. Start to think what you want to change around you and one doesn’t need more than a second to start listing the endless issues that need our immediate attention and that have to be changed no matter what. Crimes against women, against people of different sexual orientation, against children, transsexuals the list is so long. I want the real world to become a mirror image of the blogging world. People are free to express their views; no politician can ever imagine interfering with this freedom and get away unscathed, women, men, children, transsexuals, homosexuals all alike are welcome to speak their mind with no fear of any kind of violence. Even if there is any disagreement or a grudge to settle it is all limited to repartee. There is no doubt that it is an utopian idea which can never be achieved but trying to get there may take us to place better than this present violent, chaotic and suffocating situation.

The change we require calls for a revolution. A revolution in every sphere of our society: in religion, education, societal perception, everything. Without a major revolution, minor bickerings and rantings will be of no use. The process of revolution calls for martyrs. Martyrs of every form. Women who revolt against the dowry system may have to cancel any plans of a married life, there might even be instances of lives being lost, people revolting for a more open minded society may have to become social outcasts, but in the end the supposed moral police of the society will give up and just accept the change at face of it.

I do not believe in sensitization of public towards an issue. Like the concept of reservation for minorities, sensitization calls for a primary classification and thereby segregation of the people & issues towards whom the public is being sensitized. When such classification and segregation happens then discrimination is bound to follow. There can never be ‘good’ classification and segregation. While being sensitized, people are fed with varieties of information detailing the weakness and the necessity for extra care and protection towards the persons which puts others in a special superior place as the givers of protection or the needs.

I think what is required is to desensitize people about issues. People need to stop observing others for weaknesses and start treating everyone as equals. Desensitization is the process by which the public are fed so much information regarding an issue and other co-related matter that they become numb towards it. Imagine a scene a man and a woman are walking in opposite directions and eventually pass each other. Sensitized man thinks “oh! There goes a girl. She has breasts which I must not touch. She has a vagina too which also I must not touch.” I do not see this as what we would want our society to become. This is definitely not our answer.

There is physical rape and a visual rape and any woman will tell you that both are equally demeaning and hurtful. If the above scenario happens all women would maybe be physically untouched but the mental trauma is still very much present. We will still constantly feel violated. What we need is desensitization of it. Now imagine the same scenario again only this time the desensitized man thinks “………………………………” Well, what is there to think? A woman passed by, so what? There is nothing to think about it. The way women are desensitized about men it is the best example there ever could be. When a man passes by a woman, she doesn’t think “Oh! A man. He has a penis”!!! At the most the woman might look at him but not exactly see him and nothing registers in her mind. That is what should be achieved.

Another good example of desensitization is of girls wearing jeans. Any girl wearing jeans pants would have raised eyebrows and would have become an outcast in our society some decades back. But due to the overt in your face bombardment of woman who wore jeans has led the society to become numb towards this attire. Today the jeans pant doesn’t register in anybody’s mind. Ask anybody if they remember what any particular girl was wearing and they will answer “don’t know, must be wearing some jeans and t-shirt.”.

We need to teach our children to learn to be scientific in their approach to life, accept women, people, sex etc as part of natural life and respect everyone as an individual. There is only so much the government can do but the real education has to come from the society itself. As long as mothers do not fight for their rights their children will not know the definition of respect. Of all this one can only conclude that we cannot pin point any one issue that requires change, all aspects of the society are interlinked and at the present situation only a cataclysmic revolution can rectify this society.

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This post has been submitted for the Time to Change contest on Indiblogger.
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What Generation Gap?

I know very little about my great grandmom, here is a little story I know about her life. I don't know why I am writing this, I felt like writing about her. Analysing the story that I do know about my great grandmom, I realised that there isn't much difference between us. Except of course that she was born almost a century before me. It is funny how each generation is perceived by the preceding generation to be more rebellious, adventurous and daring in comparison to them. Also the metaphors used to reprimand the kids also change  and greatly signify the biases and mindset of the current generation. But the procedure of reprimanding doesn’t change. Each family, each community has it’s own very unique way of reprimanding and scolding its children.

My great grand mother (maternal grandma’s mom) was born in 1902. Actually her mother is the real hero. She got tutors for my great grandmother to teach her to read and write. It was her wish that her daughter should know at least to sign her name. My great grandmother studied till class 3 which was unacceptable in the society then. It was impossible to educate her more because it was time to get married. But her mother fought off relatives for quite some time. She was finally married at the age of 12years. My great great grandma had to face a lot of criticism from all relatives for having such an ‘old daughter’ at home.

My great grandmom insisted that, since she was ‘so highly educated’ she should marry a man who is also highly educated and should work in the city. She did not want to marry a purohit which is the profession of our caste. She was reprimanded for having become ‘like those city people’ and for getting so corrupted by her city bred neighbor friends. She was also scolded for wanting to wear her sari with a short pallu as was the fashion in the cities during those times. Aping anything the city folks did was totally unacceptable and amounted to having lost your brahmin ways. She had to face a lot of ridicule from the villagers and relatives because she, influenced by the city ways and educated till 3rd standard had become the black sheep of the community. They vowed that she would never get married as she had become so old and made an example of her to explain the ill effects of the city to others.

She ended up marrying a man who had studied till 11^th class and was working in southern railways as a manager. She moved to city had 14kids, sent all girls and boys to school, read Indian express everyday, loved Indira Gandhi and finally died at the age of 96years.

She was the voice who told my mom to get a job. She campaigned for my mom to my grandparents to send her to another city for her job. She was also the voice that told my mom to reject proposals of men who did not want their wives to work.