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Everybody has a story: The Women’s!

By Ravia Gupta. Dated: 2/23/2013 11:36:34 PM

Many voices, one world; many debates with no result----“We are the hollow men, We are the stuffed men, Leaning together, Headpiece filled with straw. Our dried voices, when We whisper together Are quiet and meaningless As wind in dry grass, Or rats' feet over broken glass, In our dry cellar, Shape without form, shade without colour, Paralysed force, gesture without motion…” (T.S. Eliot)
WHERE’S THE PARTY TONIGHT? Party, certainly not for me, as I prefer to stay home before its dark. Don’t be such a bore, after all you don’t stay in Kashmir? Yes, you are right, but I genuinely don’t feel safe, be it Kashmir or Delhi. But what is the reason? Simply, because I am a woman. Time and again I have been told that I have a ‘Lakshman rekha’ and I must not cross it to avoid unwanted consequences! Society reminds us that we are females and that we need to put efforts to ensure that we don’t present ourselves as targets to be raped.
Though, my parents, over the years, have trained me to protect myself and have made me capable of handling myself in most situations (four years of kickboxing training + several self-defence classes), still that doesn’t change the fact that I’m wary of going out alone, even if it is for some grocery shopping. If I was a ‘dude’, I probably wouldn’t think twice, and that’s really depressing!
Yet another discussion on rape and women empowerment among media students and I came across some interesting thoughts-- “I have a dog and a bitch at my place. I let my dog go out in open in the evening, but don’t leave my bitch alone for obvious reasons,” “Males, too get raped, only thing is we need to check the statistics,” “let all the women be out after 9:30 and men be at home”, “We belong to an educated family and have grown up in urban India seeing India shining. We, in our family, have equal rights for women; we allow them to make choices, wrong or right; if women want to prove themselves, what/ who stops them, let them go out and do what they wish to, but be aware, because all men in the society are not as educated and as sophisticated as I am.”
It is painful to see that nothing has changed over the years for women. They raised their voices to be heard, they tried to step out, took up many more roles to prove that they were not an object or a commodity; they fought till their last breath, some even scum to death, but perhaps this is the way the world ends, not with a bang but with a whimper.
(The author is Academic Associate, IIMC, Jammu)