Happy Diwali, folks! Okay I know I'm late, but it's not a big deal, right?
This year, I didn't feel like it really was a 'happy' Diwali. Six martyrs at the Indo-Pak border already, and the very day of Diwali was on 30th, which witnessed brutal bomb blasts in different parts of Assam. Didn't feel 'let's-burst-crackers' happy, at least I didn't.
So I decided to celebrate my Diwali in a totally different way. I planned to visit an orphanage with my neighbouring kids and distribute food and toiletries.
We went as planned, and when we reached, what I saw broke my heart. 23 children, out of which only two were boys. The youngest was a baby girl, who was banished from the house with her mother, because she was born a girl. Her father had driven them out JUST BECAUSE SHE WAS A GIRL!!! This made my blood boil in rage, because I felt helpless. I talk about gender equality, and here I am, doing nothing for the victims of gender bias. Here I am, writing a blog post instead of going and doing something for them.
But then, what can you expect to do in a country where fighting for female rights is nothing but ‘show-off business’? What can you tell them who consider daughters a burden? Those dogmatic 'kuch din ke mehmaan' stereotypes, have we any remedy for them? No matter how much we accomplish, we still remain women, and fail to be human beings. True, things are changing, but is it a good pace? It seems like a quasistatic reaction, and we're definitely not headed for a better future if we don't accelerate the process.
To begin with, let's stop differentiating between girls and boys on the basis of biological differences. How can biology be such a big deal that it moulds our entire social framework? Can we please stop this 'son chauvinism' nonsense? It's upto you, India. If you want daughters in law, you'll have to have daughters first. Men can't make babies on their own, can they? How can you expect to not become extinct if you don't want the other half of the species? This daughter = burden bullshit needs to stop.
With that, I put an end to my outrage. Have a great week ahead.
