Women and Safety

In this present era, we live in a world where natural catastrophes aren't alone the cause to bring an end to someone’s existence. Neither does one have to have a dreadful enemy to have one torn into pieces. Indeed, the society is transforming into a mystery implacable one.

It is being woven into a subtle and complex web by the tool called violence with women as an object to be used and abused. When the cries and agonies of women were turned a deaf ear to, how are they ever going to feel secure? It was said by Gandhi, “India will get real freedom when a women can walk alone on a street.”

The Delhi gang rape of a 23 years old girl after having brutally beaten with iron rods along with her male companion in a passenger bus leaves many a women awestruck. The merciless act of plunging the iron rod inside her was nothing but an absolute act of thoughtless animals.

Yet there’s another heart throbbing incident of a 21 year old girl, who lost her mother at the age of 2, said to have and grown up with her relatives until she was forced into marriage at the age of 16. In an attempt to run away from her melancholic life, she was brutally stripped off her nose and ears by her husband and the in-laws.

No more blood please...

Not so long ago, a man had himself introduced to my villagers as Dzongkhag administrative officer. He married a girl and settled there. A few months did he stay only to be vanished out of sight. Away was he with the money the girl’s family entrusted him for their agricultural loan to be cleared. The villagers respected him for the post he had none.

 The tragic tale of a friend of mine, who was once my classmate, a roommate, still triggers my tear glands. I vividly recollect those lips that quivered in letting her agony drip out slowly.  I had a hard time in absorbing the brutal pervert facts.

She was sexually abused, to be appropriate, raped by her so called father at the age of 11. His attempts were incessant thereafter. God knows whether he is the real father or a beast that consumed her alive. His act could not be blamed for his ignorance or any mental disorder for he was a well educated, working man.

Neither her mother’s senses could detect the flesh being burnt nor was she in a position to extinguish it herself until the blazing flame engulfed her.

Once in a night journey in bus from Hyderabad to my college, a shrill chill ran through my spine when a man in front of me lowered his seat and brought his dirty, rugged fingers over my knees. I folded myself into so small a size and lowered my legs to avoid him. Within a lapse of few minutes, the terrific fingers crawled from in between the seats and made several attempts until dawn.

The society always talks about women being taught the right manners, the proper intellectual and moral values. In the same way, men should be taught as to how to treat women.

 They should be made to inculcate a slight sense of empathy. They aren't empowered with the right to toy with the innocence and fragility of women’s heart.

The rapists or the wrong doers or the criminals confess to the heinous crime and demand they be hanged or some are condemned to life imprisonment. With that, is everything going to be over?

If that’s the case, I don’t have even a tinge of skeptic feeling that our society will continue to dwell on its ineffective path.  It’s time for us to come out of our pupating cocoons, the time to stop the blame game.  It’s a wake up call for profound social and legislative reforms, the need for appropriate parental and school education.