#IndiaShining for #IndiasDaughter

I had written these thoughts quite some time back. After reading Beloo’s articles on the topic and could just not find the right moment to publish it. So much has been said and discussed yet it skirts around the main issue of  ‘safety & freedom’.
My fervent wish is for me to live to see the day when my children step out of the house anytime of the day or night assured in the fact that it is safe for all of them.


Living in an obscure part of the country, in an army cantonment – “hallmark” of safe places to live in India, I almost forget that another India lives close by. One that threatens to intrude many times but if I turn off the telly and switch off my ‘notifications’ from all the apps on my smart phone; I can believe that I truly live in a paradise. 

Actually a place near our cantt is called ‘Lal Kutri’ and it is “Out of Bounds” for all army personnel but I think it is not so much for the name and more for the kind of image it has.  The teeming masses of India live in many such areas and many of them in the heart of the cities all over the country and since I have seen at least 70% of India, and found them in every city, town or state.
Though they are not so safe now with the influx and over lapping of civilian and ‘out of bound’ areas close by but still the thought is always at the back of our minds that we are in a place so removed from #NirbhayasIndia

The comfort of going out for a late night walk, the ease of hopping over a friend’s house at odd hours, going for a walk during the misty twilight zone or sitting out in my lawn in my garden till 2 am oblivious to the threats and struggles so many of my kind face. I remember my mom always telling me that ‘good girls’ come home before the street lights are switched on. Now I realize it had less to do with me being good and more with the world being ‘big & bad’. That we lived in a civil colony during those days never occurred to my mind till we shifted to another cantt and were out till the owls ate their dinner!

I can always live in oblivion if I tune out of all the tweets and headlines, I did not even read about the German professor’s action till I read Beloo’s article and found out. I just wanted to bury it all. The bad press, the rotten comments, the ostrich’s head in the sand attitude and the patronizing tones and discourses. All of them just beating their own trumpet and forgetting the biggest chunk of the pie – India. Not just any India but the heart of India, the teeming millions that live and die silently, softly and ignorantly. Those scores of human beings that have been generalized in the sentences of so many ‘intellectuals, politicians, educated and learned men & women’.

Did ask to be all dyed by the same ink as that of the rapists and his friends and family?

Do they even have a say in this debate and discourse that has been labeling and stereotyping all of India?

Are they even aware that this is being done and now they are all potential rapists or victims?

Why I mentioned Beloo Mehra’s Article is because unlike most of the press that I have been reading and refraining from commenting have been either lambasting the BBC Documentary or have been heralding it as the next big ‘wakeup call for India!

Beloo on the other hand has been the talking about the insanity of jumping the gun even before hearing the whole story and trying to take sides. 
Read her post here Perpetually Outraged http://www.newsinsight.net/Perpetuallyoutraged.aspx#page=page-1

Both thoughts are a bit illogical and trivial I feel and her voice of reason has been calming me down. It helped me not tweet or write something that I would have regretted as is the case most often when we do something in the heat of the moment.

Instead today after reading her post on the documentary and its impact I chose to write this and I ask you to think about the scores of Indians who do not read or write. Those who have not heard of #twitter #facebook and that the developed nations are still telling us what to think and how to act..

Those who do not even know that their image has been tarnished because either they don’t feel anything wrong in their actions of abusing, hurting, raping or killing a woman or those who are not even aware that such issues plague the nation.

I ask you try and first spread awareness, education and basic needs for our India before jumping the gun and spending scores of man-hours and time and money on any one individual’s idea of #India

Let’s keep our #IndiaShining and join hands to make the whole of India like our cantonments so no mother has to tell her child – boy or girl, women, men, ladies, mothers, sons, brothers, sisters, grandfathers and grandmothers to come home before the street lights come on.

I leave you with words from Beloo’s post, truly something to think about…….

If some of my fellow Indians still believe that we should not be concerned about our ‘image’ but only the ‘real problem,’ I would say that the solution to the problem, any problem, can never be found in media discourse. Instead, the propagandic nature of today’s media discourse actually discourages serious problem-solving by simply provoking more momentary sensationalism rather than facilitating a sincere and sustainable awakening and introspection. 

Read more at :  letbeautybeyourconstantideal.blogspot.in



Thank you for reading.


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