Girl child

-
I wake up in the morning and I cant bear to look at the newspapers. If I see stuff in the morning, it plays on my mind the whole day.
Photographer Shadab Khan got a prize in some competition because he clicked a foetus lying on the road of Mahim. What's the big deal ? As a child, we had a nursing home which had come up near our house for a short while and we used to see this kind of stuff all the time. Sometimes even a dog chewing at one, as the garbage was dumped outside the nursing home. If clicking gross pictures of death gives one awards then this is the time to go to Japan.
Scary to hear how we kill the girl child in the womb. I had always read Haryana n some northern states of India having a skewed boy girl ratio. Now Mumbai is in the same category. I would have thought that Mumbai has educated people and a huge population of working women. Atleast one of the couple must be tenth pass and would think differently. They'd pray for a healthy baby and sex of the baby would not be important. Feel sad that it is not so. Even mothers of my generation or young Moms all want a baby boy. I have yet to hear someone say I want a baby girl as my first child.
There are gynaecologists who advise you on how to have a male offspring. They dont just get their fees but baksheesh worth lakhs of rupees for providing a waaris/heir to the family. The poor living in the slums also want a baby boy for their own reasons. Crimes against women keep increasing inspite of women being bread winners, educated etc.
Just where are we heading towards? Do we as a nation have a vision ? Sovereign, Socialist,Secular Republic are just words in the Preamble of the Constitution. It does talk of equality of caste, creed n sex. Then why are women so keen to abort their girl child and have a son ? The father who sleeps with a women , whose mother is a women, eeven he doesn't want a women. The grandmothers n grand aunts all women themselves are so vehement about having a son.
What is the bra burning feminist doing ? So called bohemian artists who attend charity events what charity do they do ? For that matter , what am I doing ?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nange Paon in Navratri

-
When I was working and staying in the hostel, I kind of stopped believing in most festivals and rituals. I thought all this was some weird things which people did, it had no scientific base and why should I follow anyone. In the college hostel, vacations were time to go home and not connected with any festival except Diwali. Sophia College hostel was a cocoon in the heart of South Mumbai. The campus with an old palace building was a quiet oasis with trees and birds, in the mayhem of Mumbai. No festival touched it unless the college celebrated it. The Polytechnic had rock shows and one Dandiya night every year, which it soon stopped having by 1988. Only celebration was the Vegetable Biryani in lunch on Sundays. The Polytechnic hostel did not even believe in pampering the children with food. Memories of bread being there round the clock for breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner. For them, while the non vegetarians ate eggs for breakfast, the vegetarian had bread. And then when non vegetaria
Read more

Antakshari

-
Today we were playing antakshari at the Holi get together. We did not know any new songs so naturally only the golden melodies were being sung. The whole generation playing antakshari was singing the similar era songs on the alphabets they got. I realised a couple of things. In English language there is no game like Antakshari. How many sentences end with I or The? How can you sing when most songs start with I, The, Once, When and How?I cannot resist explaining the game, we all grow up with, in India. Antakshari means Ant : end , Akshar: alphabet ie last letter of the word. Akshar also means God. It also means God has the last word. Its a game with two teams and we call the teams as  'party'.  We say "Baithey baithey kya karein, karna hai kuchh kaam, shuru karo antakshari , le ka Hari ka naam." Translated from Hindi, We are sitting idle, lets do some work, lets start antakshari, starting with God's name. In Indian games, there is a lot of religion or belief in Go
Read more

Shraddh period in Hinduism

-
According to the Hindu calendar, this is the shraddh period going on.  For fifteen days in a year, the ancestors are remembered and prayed to. No auspicious events / ceremonies take place in this time. People use the tithi/date of death to invite a Pandit and feed the departed soul. It means you remember the person passed away, give food to the Pandit and the crows. People keep a cooked meal on the terrace. They try to make the favourite food of the departed person. My memories are of my Grandma mixing and crushing all the savouries with her hands and when it was in form of  a paste, my Uncle would go to the terrace and throw the food for the crows. Crows in Hinduism are considered messengers of the departed souls. A lot of people feed Gathiyas to the crows for the full year. If your ancestors are happy, then your life goes well ,is the general belief amongst Hindus. The shraddh period falls exactly between Ganpati and Navratri. One does not buy a house or have a wedding in this time.
Read more