On Saturday the young woman every one calls the daughter of India was celebrated as Indian of the Year in a problem dedicated to the daughters and women of India. It was a feel good moment though at the back of our minds we could not help remember all the women, girls, little girls and babies who have been abused in every way possible even after the gruesome rape and murder that took place in Delhi in December. For a nano moment our consciences were jolted out of their customary torpor and we found our lost voices albeit for a short time. Even our rulers were compelled into action. For a tiny instant we were lured into feeling that maybe things will change. But that was not to be. A leopard cannot change its spots!

The leopard here is our a mix of our minsets, our feudal ways and are so called traditions and mores under whose cover we run to explain all aberrations. Post december rapes continued with alacrity and impunity, molestations doubled, honour killings did not stop.

Yesterday, a 20 year old woman was kicked, punched in her stomach and stomped upon by her husband and his family when they thought she was carrying a girl child. The foetus died and another girl joined the alarming number of India’s 70 million missing women. It was nothing short of murder. The story does not end here. This young woman had suffered much abuse. Harassed for dowry she was dragged to a so called Godman when she was 8 weeks pregnant and he declared she was carrying a girl. When she refused to drink the abortion potion prepared by the charlatan, she was kicked and thus lost her baby.

Just imagine someone you loved carrying her first child. Thinks of her hopes, aspirations and dreams for the unborn baby. One day she is taken to some religious charlatan who decrees that the foetus is a girl. What ensues is nothing short of the worst kind of murder. How would you feel?

How can a man who is an equal partner to the creation of this human being can mutate into a barbaric being ready to kill what he created. And what is worse is that he and only he is responsible for the gender of the child.

An eminent though somewhat maverick retired judge, who is busy sending mercy petitions for people on the gallows, stated in a recent TV talk that he stands for the death penalty in cases of crime against women that reek of feudalism.

 “The hallmark of a healthy society is the respect it shows to women. Indian society has become a sick society” are his words. And he goes on to say: I had said that death penalty should be given in cases of dowry deaths. In our country, young married women are often killed – because they did not bring enough dowry – by pouring kerosene on them and setting them on fire or hanging/strangulating them. Our courts have many such cases. This is a barbaric practice, and no mercy should be shown to such people….. I said that death penalty should be given for “honour” killing of young couples who are killed by their relatives or caste panchayats because their marriage was inter-caste or inter-religious, or was disapproved of for some other reason….In my opinion, crimes against women are not ordinary crimes, they are social crimes. They disrupt the entire social fabric, and hence call for harsh punishment.

For him all these aberrations are the remnants of feudalism many of us still believe in. Many of those who have been entrusted to bring about change, pay only lip service to change as they are still deeply feudal in their hearts.

The case of this young woman deserves no mercy. It is nothing short of murder and should be treated as such. Be it the charlatan, the husband and his relatives, they all deserve the harshest of punishment. But that will not happen. We all know it.

My thoughts went back to a letter I had written to a little girl who was still born almost 7 years ago. I reproduce it here in memory of the little girl whose life was snuffed away in the most horrific manner.

dear child…

they said you would see the light on September 3rd..

September 3rd passed and so did the 4th, and the 5th.. On September 6th your mother was in pain and everyone thought the day had come for you to land in this world..
your family had waited for you, your mama had carried you with love and great dignity, your papa never showed his feelings but believe me he wanted you so much, your little sister waited for her baby.. and your aunt did everything she could to make your entry into this world the best posible.. and there were many of us who already loved you…

I must confess that many wanted you to be a boy… some said it loud and clear, others in muted ways.. to many, little girls are a burden… in a society where there is less and less respect for women people have forgotten that we women are the life bearers… some of us wanted you to be a girl, your mama for one, maybe she knew you were just that…

You grew up inside your mama’s womb and met all the appointments with the doctor who pronounced you fit and healthy.. then child what made you decide not to keep your tryst with our world, what is it that led you to give up life itself… without even ‘tasting’ it..

Maybe we forget that from the comfort and safety of ones’ mother’s womb, a child sees and hears and understands.. perhaps it is what you saw that made you refuse life itself.. the lack of respect for each other, the fights, the anger, the unfairness, the tears, … and quite frankly child, somewhere I understand you… maybe you heard even those who wanted you to be a girl say that they wished you were a boy finding all kind of reasons to explain that…they forgot that it is nature who decides, nature that has to make up for all the little girls that were done away with… and you too were a little girl, nothing could change that..

Perhaps you also knew that the moment you would enter our world, you would lose your independance and freedom to decide, and that you would have to abide by laws made by a society ruled by men and that your life would never be your own…

Who are you: a statistic in the records of the hospital, a pain in the heart of many that will slowly fade away, a regret, a topic of discussions with its share of ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’… I do not know..

To me you are the little girl who refused to be born in a world that she felt was not worthy of her… a child who took her one and only independant decision..

And we abide by it…

Bless you, wherever you are…

On Sunday a family of 4, the parents and 2 young children, aged 5 and 8 months, were hit by a speeding truck. They were on motorcycle. The truck sped away. The mother and baby riding on the pillion were badly hurt. The father and is 5 young son, though hurt, begged and pleaded for help from the passing cars. Needless to say no one stopped. Their voyeuristic instinct did make them slowdown but no one heard the heart wrenching entreaties of the father and his son. It is much later, at a time when minutes and even seconds can make all the difference between life and death, that a motorcyclist stopped and informed the police. It was too late for the mother and the young child. Eighteen cars passed by. And if that is not enough, no ambulance came. The mother and daughter where thrown into a pick up van and taken to the hospital by the police.

This happened after all the hue and cry that followed what is the known as the Delhi gang rape, where the raped girl and her companion begged for help but only encountered voyeurs who watched. This happened after recommendations were made by commissions and translated into laws. Yet nothing has changed and nothing will change. The majority of our ilk will remain mute spectators to aberrations after aberration hiding under the cloak of cynicism and indifference or at best honing our voyeuristic instinct. We will girls being molested, people being abused. We will even grab our cell phones and film the incident, but never will we reach out and help. Compassion is an emotion we have conveniently erased from our lives. Oh we have many explanation for our cowardice: we are scared of repercussions, we do not want to get involved in police cases of lengthy trials etc. We prefer to be murderers.

Now imagine if that person asking for help was someone you cared for, the mother and daughter were someone you loved and nobody had reached out to them. But I am being silly. We are the ones in the cars, the ones who live behind closed gates, the ones who can never been on the other side of the invisible wall. Yesterday, a TV anchor asked whether any one viewing the programme would have stopped. No is the unfortunate answer.

I do not know how many of us managed to sleep after hearing of this news. Most of us I guess. But I did not. My mind once again traveled many years to the day when I first saw Babloo Mandal, a mentally challenged young man who had been cast away by some vehicle driver who had injured him. Click on the link if you want to know the whole story. Babloo Mandal screamed for help but no one heard him. I guess everyone was scared of the repercussions. Yet it took just a few steps to save him and send him home. It was not the end of the world. It is was the only thing any self respecting person could do.

So then why have we become a callous and indifferent nation. I do not know the answers. I only know that I will stop again and again till my dying day!

Read a startling article about hospitals in affluent India. Gone are the days of grim corridors and harried and unpleasant nurses. Today’s hospitals for the rich boast of valets and butlers, housekeeping and flat screen TVs, gourmet food, WIFI connection and even a microwave in the room. The chefs can prepare the best creme brulee and buttered asparagus. The common areas look more like malls than hospital waiting rooms with coffee shops, book shops and even cinema halls for those who need to wait. All you need is a bottomless pocket! A suite in one of the state-of-the-art medical hotel can cost you 75000Rs a night. But this is for the chosen few! Read the article! It is quite an eye opener. Such hospitals have a plethora of doctors that you can avail of!

At the other end of the spectrum are the State run hospitals in smaller cities where getting  a doctor is nothing short of a miracle. Recently a one year child all set to go home had to have his intravenous line removed. A doctor or at best a nurse should have done this, but in the case of this little boy the task was performed by a sweeper who while cutting the bandage chopped off the boy’s little finger. In the ensuing panic he threw the finger in the bin. Strangely the finger was never found.

In April 2008, the Government launched with great fanfare the  Rashtriya Swasthya Beema Yojna (RSBY) scheme an insurance scheme for the poor. The scheme was lauded as path breaking. According to this scheme private hospitals could claim up to 30,000 rupees for treating patients who cannot afford expensive procedures. How wonderful if it worked. But darling this in India where schemes for the poor are created to benefit anyone but the true beneficiaries. Suddenly across India there was a exponential rise in hysterectomies. Any woman complaining of a stomach ache was ‘advised’ to have her uterus removed. The uterus scam ran into million of dollars. You see this intervention is the costliest under the scheme and thus the more hysterectomies the more moolah for nursing homes and everyone else. Never mind the young women who lose their uterus, you see they are poor and that seems to explain each and every aberration.

And talking of aberrations what do you say of the Minister whose reaction to a farmer fasting to seek water to be released was to say in a meeting: what does he expect us to do. Should we urinate in the dam to fill them? I have no words to express my contempt. But it is once again the proof of what the rulers think of the poor, the very poor whose votes they seek every 5 year with false promises.

What kind of a country are we? We cannot provide drinking water, basic food let alone health care and education to the poor. We watch in catatonic torpor as motivated legislation to supposedly alleviate poverty, education, provide health, employment are passed by our legislators knowing very well that they are only yet another way to scams and corruption. We know that it is our money but do not bother to raise our voice perhaps because of our cynicism or because our loved ones are fed, educated and can access the best with a view!

Seems though that some are finally waking up from their slumber as at last the media seems to echo what has been written in many posts of this blog. In the recent issue of Tehelka magazine, there is a disturbing and almost frightening article on the actual state of the young population we sow like to showcase as an asset. It is said that by the end of the decade, just 7 short years down the line the average age of our population will be 29! A young work force could be a huge asset. But that is where the story ends. Of the 430 million that form our work force now only 30 work in the organised sector. The question of where the additional 480 million that will join this work force in 2 decades will go remains unanswered.

But the reality is alarming. The story of this so called youth force is handicapped from they day of conception. One out of every five child in India is of low birth weight and over 40 percent of children in India are underweight and stunted. Scarily, while 70 percent of children below five years are anaemic, only 43 percent of children below the age of two receive all their immunisation, compared to 90 percent in Bangladesh. 5000 of such children will die every day if we do not act. For those who make it pass the 5 year milestone the story does not change. If they do make it to the portals of education we have ensured that they will fail. Recent statistics show that 60 percent of the children in Class V cannot read at a Class II level and 75 percent cannot complete simple division sums. While the government pats itself on the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan for having achieved near universal enrolment in primary education (96 percent), there is in fact an 80 percent dropout by Class XII. So, of the 27 million children who annually enrol in primary schools across the country, only 5.4 million make it to Class XII. (Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) report).

The schools are abysmal and the teachers worse. We need to recruit @ 250 000 teachers per annum. We do not have enough candidates as school teaching is very low on the job preference list. And should you make it pass school then the third rate higher teaching shops that have proliferated ensure that you are not job worthy and where are the jobs anyway!

We need to go back to the drawing board and make our education skill based. Not everyone is academically oriented so where he/she to learn some useful skill whilst still in school, he/she could get employment. And perhaps then drop out rates could be contained.

But this is all a pipe dream as we know that our rulers are not truly interested in changing things. The young of poor India have been let down by those who rest in their bed with a view while little children still run the risk of having their fingers chopped!

I miss reading your blogs! I hope you find whatever it is that you are missing very soon.  Writing is who you are 🙂 are the words that greeted me this morning in an email sent by someone very dear to me! It is true that I have been suffering from a bad bout of writer’s block for the past more than few weeks. I have been conscious of this fact and imputed it to my deep concern about a dear one’s health. Sure it has taken a lot of my time but in no way all of it. The remaining time is spent procrastinating and worrying. Every morning I promise to myself that I will pick up my virtual pen, but then the day goes by and the promise fades in a flurry of delaying tactics. It has been going on for far too long as blogs lie unfinished and even work remains incomplete.

My lovely child’s words were a true Epiphany! Writing is who you are she says and she has hit the nail on its head. For the past weeks I had been dealing with my worries by exercising regularly, eating healthy, resting, meditating and so on. And in spite of all this I was not getting active or inspired. Far from that looks now in hindsight that I was wallowing in some kind of self pity. Or simply sinking into a depressive state. What I did not realise is that the panacea to all my ills was, is and will be writing. How could I have forgotten that.

Dear Popples did get written at a time when I was at a very low ebb. Writing lifted the clouds in a jiffy. Since regular writing has kept the blues away till I again encountered a rough patch and simply forgot my wonder drug.

Writing is truly who I am, because writing allows me to share my inner most thoughts, my joy and my pain, my anger and exasperation as well my moments of success and failures. Once they are out there for all to see my happiness increases many fold and my pain gets greatly reduced. It cannot be true that nothing of value has occurred in the past weeks. It is just that I misplaced my ability to look with my heart. It is time that I do just that and hope it has the required effect.

Last week was my 61st and though nothing great was planned at home, how could I forget the wonderful birthday my project family had organised for me. It must admit sheepishly that as I have been doing for some time now, I was ready to head home after my morning tea at Rani’s. I was a tad irritated when Shamika bullied me into climbing the two flight of stairs to the office. As I stepped into the small open space I was greeted by flowers, and the smiles of my team and a lovely cake. It was a lovely moment and most unexpected. But that was not all. The daughter had to do some more bullying to convince to come to her class at noon. I acceded to the request as the special children hold a very special place in my heart. I climbed the three flight of stairs panting and was told that I needed to climb one more and reach the terrace. To my utmost delight the special kids had prepared a succulent meal for me and there were more flowers and streamers. Made me
feel on top of the world but the very special moment that brought  tears to my eyes was when Radha walked towards me in her own inimitable way and handed be the birthday card the special children had made just for me. What truly made my day was the smile she gave me as Radha’s smiles have been rare these days. This was the most perfect gift. The lunch was delectable as it has been made with so much love and care. I could not have wished for a better birthday. But there was more in store as Shamika had prepared a special dinner at home just for us with all my favourite things. And there yet another cake and candles to be blown.

I continued looking again at the past days with my heart. There was so much I had missed. How could I not have jumped in joy at the fortnight Popples spend at home as they was so much to celebrate. His belated birthday and his rite of passage from primary to secondary school. And more than anything else the fact that he had suddenly become a little man. Gone were the tantrums and mood swings. He was a pleasure to have around. All the years of worry and angst vanished in a jiffy. God and I had not had the sagacity to savour all this. This is what happens when you forget to look with your heart. And what was most heartwarming was the fact that Kiran and Popples bonded as best friends once again, just as they were when they were tiny tots.

And there is more. Our children proved again that they were to the manor born as they danced their way into the hearts of hundreds of guests in a 5* Hotel without batting and eyelid. They acted as true professionals and made us very proud. And that was not all, all the children passed their examinations and got promoted to the next class. How could I have let all this pass by!

Today I fee alive once again after a long time. I feel blessed for having so much love and affection and such a big family. I do not have the right to feel gloomy. Problems happen. Personal ones too. They just need to be addressed with hope. What if I were to tell you that I have just come back from a visit to the eye doctor and been told that I would need an operation as I have cataracts in both eyes. I am glad this happened after I received the mail that reminded me that writing was the sovereign remedy to all my a ills and that the essential was to always remember to look with one’s heart. And my way of doing so is by writing.