On a Women's Day.

It is yet another Women’s Day. The centennial actually. How wonderful! A day signifying all the glory and ‘empowerment’ of women. It is today that my attention turned to some incidents in no way connected, yet somehow entwined. First off, in 82 years of the ‘prestigious’ Academy Awards’ history, a woman won in the Best Director category. I was musing over the hurdles she might’ve faced as a woman and whether a Kathryn Bigelow would’ve emerged from the Indian soil, who stays in India and takes films of political importance. Right at that moment, I got a text message from my best friend wishing me a happy woman’s day. Suddenly I’m lost. Not because I’m not happy that somebody remembers that 3 billion people in this world exist, but because they need a day to be reminded so. My housekeeper cum cook asks me what she should make for breakfast and again, my randomly coherent brain leaps in her direction. She woke up as usual. She works for around 18 hours a day. Does she know that gender signifies anything special in this society and that’s why her sons can berate her for not getting the lunch ready in time? Even though she is the main bread winner of her family, she is treated as a second class member. Is she aware she deserves more? Unfortunately, like most of the three billion, she is not. If there is no water in the tap, she has to wake up earlier and go to the road side tap. Easier, I think. Considering the fact that women and girls have to walk miles for two pots of water everyday. So what if her uterus tilted due to some accident and every time she has sex, it pains and her husband still uses her irrespective of her medical condition, causing her more pain? Women in Congo are raped with sticks and guns so that their insides are torn apart and their bladders burst. She has it relatively easy. Alright, so let’s leave my housekeeper there. Let’s go to another extremely poignant peace of news. At the national consultation on access to justice, relief and rehabilitation of rape victims organized by the Women and Child Development Ministry, CJI said that due respect must be given to the rape victim’s autonomy whether she could marry the rapist if so offered. I’m at a loss here to understand what this ‘autonomy’ is. It reinforces the idea that patriarchal protection of women is more important than justice as established by the law of the land. It conveys to the potential rapist that his moral obligation is diluted. He can now rape a woman on the possibility that if he becomes her husband, he gets the legal right to rape her. What kind of autonomy is that? There is no freedom in choosing to live a life in hell with someone who violated you or being support less in society. What are we telling the ordinary woman here? I’m with the UP CM here. Financial compensation for rape victims is the most plausible justice. Well, it seems crude. But let us analyze the system a bit. The major social objectives of justice in a rape case should be to empower the victim and punish the rapist. Empowerment in a society like ours doesn’t come with slogans and moral courage. It comes with equipping an ordinary woman to face the morrow with confidence. Telling the woman that there is such an option undermines the scope of law and empowerment. Take the case of Sushama Tiwari, a 25 year old UP Brahmin girl who married an Ezhava man from Kerala only to have death snatch him away after seven months of marriage in the form of the ever-so-brutal honor killing. He was killed along with his parents and two other minor family members. The perpertrators? Sushama’s brother and his four friends. Although the Bombay HC awarded death sentences to them, the SC in Dec ’09 changed it into 25 years life imprisonment. Well, I know it feels like I’m on a roll here judging justice. But, like all my other rants, just bear with it. So, we would think that Sushama who escaped by a hair while pregnant and who is tired after all this struggling, would stop. No. She is at loggerheads with the SC, condemning its verdict. The society would think- ‘Say; the girl wants her brother to die too? What kind of a woman is she?’ And I would say- the right kind. The kind that awoke to this mad world and decided that she wants to change her bit of it through her convictions. Now, what gives her this courage? Is it love? Is it education? I’m not sure. I feel the latter is the firm base beneath her. Education gives the woman better odds of finding herself and standing up to what she believes. As I’m writing this, I cannot but wonder what the use of my intellectual enema is. The poor Mr Hamid Ansari was practically dragged away from his podium because the democracy in India cannot see eye to eye in one of the most historic Bills till date. The Women’s Bill is causing such a furore and for all the wrong reasons. Yes, I do agree that reservation should be there within the reservation. I do agree that UPA is trying to make this their NREGA in the next elections. But, Acts can always be amended. That’s why Parliament exists. Instead of waiting for some more years for such a bill to be tabled again (after the usual numerous commissions and reports), logic is in passing it now with precise debates and considerations and amending it later. But, it is not the objective of the fuss, is it? It is not an amendment that matters, it is the bill itself. So, yes, hundred years pass and another hundred will pass. May every Women’s Day be this eventful, because it seems man sees not the bosom but the heart and woman sees not the womb but the head only one day of the year. The question remains though…. When the planet is all sucked dry by us and we return to the cave, will the only reason woman gets the fair share of the meal be because she carries the child or because she gathers firewood? Madness, madness.