interalia

The circumstances that lead to shame!

Decrease Font Size Increase Font Size Text Size Print This Page

The tragic circumstances leading to a situation that killed a young lady recently should be an eye opener for all of us individually as well as for the entire society as a whole. In fact, it is not only the death of a young woman but also the demise of millions of her dreams in addition to the innumerable hopes and aspirations associated with her life by her parents, relatives, friends and neighbors. Whatever may be the reason behind this shocking incident, time unravels everything. The point that strikes one’s mind the most here is what gives birth to such heinous crimes as murders and forced suicides so much so that a precious human life is lost that too in the blink of an eye.

A human life doesn’t exist out of blue. For every birth to take place, a fierce battle to fertilize the ovum takes place between 200 to 300 million deposited sperms inside a mother’s womb from which only 300 to 500 sperms manage to swim upwards and reach the site out of which only one sperm successfully fertilizes the ovum while rest others die down. The life that struggles and survives to start its journey proves to be the fittest of all its competitors way before it comes out.

Once the time arrives to welcome this life outside, different thoughts and preoccupied notions begin to make rounds and occupy both inside and outside of our minds and hearts. To a shear disappointment, when the news of birth of a baby girl comes out, the hitherto smiling faces become gloomy all of a sudden as if dark clouds have shrouded the whole atmosphere and the lightning and thundering has just stricken down the whole family where this life opens its eyes.

What leads to this topsy-turvy state is nothing but a poor and pathetic mental setup backed by the patriarchal society towards our females who are none other than our daughters, sisters, mothers, wives and daughter-in-laws. There is not an iota of doubt in the fact that in our male dominant society females are always treated as a second order citizen at almost every stage of their life. Once a girl attains puberty, her menstruation cycle becomes a question mark. She can’t openly ask for a sanitary pad in our markets. When it comes to her education, she is again victimized to a subordinate approach wherein boys are considered to be bread winners and girls to be home makers. A time comes when this girl attains adulthood and become mature enough to take part in decision making in her family. Here, again she is treated as a passive being and not treated at par. Her choices become limited and her area of exposure shrinks which in long run shrinks not only her mental horizon but also makes her approach meaningless towards life.

Once she migrates from her paternal home to a new and hitherto unknown home. This is the home of her in-laws who most often prove to be masters of this newly owned slave. Alas! What a beautiful legacy we carry forward from generations to generations.

On one hand, this young girl leaves her parents, her family, her childhood memories attached with every bit of her mother’s home. While on the other, we as in-laws leave no stone unturned in making her life miserable by letting her down and feel subordinate and inferior to our own sons and daughters. Has anybody ever thought sincerely about how many hours these daughters and daughter-in-laws work for just to make our homes as well as our lives beautiful and worth living that too unpaid for their entire life?

What do these unpaid workers get in return from us except extra work, malnourishment, suffocation and diseases? In order to preserve the sanctity and beauty of their conjugal relation, they hardly disclose anything untoward to their paternal side. However, taking advantage of this subordination, we keep on increasing their mental pressure through various weapons of torture and timely demands for gifts like cars and gold etc.

All this saturates a common human being. Once that point reaches, we get a shocking outcome in the form of our daughter-in-laws’ suicide or mental collapse leading to cardiac arrest and ultimate death as in the above mentioned tragedy. In this way, we lose a precious life- a life with millions of unfulfilled or half-fulfilled dreams with a dying wish to live long.

It is time to wake-up and introspect morally and ethically at our individual as well as collective levels and ask ourselves this question- Who is responsible and who is to be blamed for such a type of well planned and properly architected murder? Let us pledge firmly and whole heartedly for not being the part of such acts anymore. Let us not wait further and act now. Tomorrow it will be too late.

Author is a freelancer and teaches Geography at GDC Kulgam. He can be reached at [email protected]

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *