WELCOME TO MY WORLD

Welcome to a woman’s world. A world that is funny and sad; happy and heartbreaking all at once. It is a world where crazy meets sane; error meets redemption and clarity meets confusion. A woman’s world will give you the safest haven you will ever find and the most comforting embrace that you will ever get. It stems from years of compassion, kindness, laughter and joy. It is a canopy of warmth and courage. 

Why this preamble you may wonder?! A woman is not all of the things I have just written about. Indeed the definition of a woman today is morphed and tangled. An object in a man’s world, we are reduced to being described by our body size, our looks, our clothes and when all else fails our reduced and lowly character that screams for attention! After all it’s we who invite rapes and we who provoke men to have a go at us and seduce them to climb the ladder of power and success. We make up a segment of society that has been marginalized from decades by our superior counterpart and despite our years of struggle our position isn’t much better today. In fact it could be worse because now we not only suffer from humiliation, scandal, molestation, incest and all things perverse but somehow find a way to blame ourselves for the ghastly acts committed to us. 

Yes we are all modern women, who are educated, well employed, and independent. We can fend perfectly well for ourselves. But these women are never accepted well by society because our independence makes the patriarchal society uncomfortable who has conditioned us all to believe that women should be “simple” creatures fulfilling their domesticated role as a dutiful mother, wife, daughter and sister and have no personal wants and desires. 

We are funny, well informed and super smart. But every time we do something great, we are pulled back for being a woman. That our merits are not deserved because we are good, but because as women we must have charmed or manipulated our way up. And what’s probably egging the situation on is that we women never stand united against our predator male. We indulge in jealousy, anger and defame each other in public! So essentially we end up validating men treating us so low because not all of us treat each other well enough.

Every time we walk on the streets, there will be atleast one man who is whistling, staring, cat-calling or commenting on us. It does not matter what we wear, it could be a salwaar kameez, jeans, a dress or even a burka. We are x-rayed and objectified each time. How ridiculous is the notion that women call for such attention? How can anyone want this? The recent growth of rapes in the country surely heightens one fundamental fact, that these men are not merely getting sexual release off these acts. They mutilate the body of the victim. So how sick is the society then? You distort a human being’s life, body and soul and then siphon off the blame onto her only! That you not only maim someone once but torture and assault them repeatedly. Why does no one talk about these untamed desires of our men, yes men who gape at girls their daughter’s age and men who are supposedly minors but that doesn’t stop them from leering a woman like she’s public property. Society points at prostitution as a sin. But what does the industry thrive on? MEN!! Had there been no men, why would women be forced into it. The expectations from a woman thrive so high that it is a miracle we continue to live out each day and still smile through it. How can we celebrate International Women’s Day when we are not respected in our daily lives? How can we continue to live being judged and held accountable for everything we say, talk and wear! 

This is not a rant on the subjugated status of women, but a narrative on how impossible a situation we are in. There is no freedom really. We lead half free lives where we like to believe that there is equality and there is mercy but that is not so. There is a subconscious voice that keeps us on our toes at all times and every time we hear another story of a fellow woman’s plight we turn paranoid. What has happened to us? We are all so bright, so brave, so intelligent and so full of shine. But every step out of the house leaves us as nothing but a prospective object of hunger, lust and perverted desire. One stole to cover our body, another to cover our face and pepper spray to protect us for that one fleeting second. People tell us “do it for your own self, why tempt the man?!” But no, the reason we really do it is because we are scared and hope that maybe the preventive measure lessens my chance of being the next victim. The only hope we have is to stand by each other, through all the good and bad times and to discover the tiny little silver lining at the end of this dark road.