Today is woman’s day. I do not know why we celebrate one day in 365 as woman’s day! Does that mean that all others are man’s day? However I have my own take on this. In India is ranked as the 4th most dangerous country for women. The ranking was done based on six risks:  health threats, sexual violence, non-sexual violence, cultural or religious factors, lack of access to resources and trafficking. Among the G 20 countries, it is the worst. As worshipers of Goddesses this should make our heads hang in shame, but we do not. So at least today, which is woman’s day, let us do just that: hang our heads in shame for every woman in our country who suffers in silence and dignity the horrors she is subjected to.

From the time she is conceived, she is unwanted. Often her life ends in the womb and she is thrown away in some gutter or becomes part of hospital waste. Maybe the ones who go that way are spared the abuses they would be subjected to had they seen the light of day.

Every day we are faced with some terrible statistics regarding women. We seem to have become so inured to them that we barely flinch. You see these statistics do not concern our daughter, sister or friend. They seem to belong to some nether world we are unconcerned with. Maybe today is the day we should at least show concern about these horrifying figures and dare to peep into that nether world.

There was a TV programme yesterday evening on a film yet to be released: Lakshmi. One of the reasons for its delayed release is the concerns by the Indian Censor Board on the film’s subject and the content. You see it deals with human trafficking and child prostitution! Subjects you do not talk about as they disturb everything we want held as true. But trafficking exists. 44 000 children are abducted every year and 11 000 remain untraced. Some fight and survive like the heroine of this film. Today we should salute such women.

During the programme an activist, herself a survivor, made a valid  point however disturbing. It is time we looked at the demand and not the supply of this heinous and abhorrent trade. As she said, it is not enough to save a few, as is done now, but to cut the demand. She revealed that she the youngest girl she had ‘saved’ was three and a half years old. Yes there are men, some maybe even closer than we think, who want three and a half years old. And as long as there is a demand, there must be a supply. As the activist rightly said it is time to name and shame those who indulge in such horrors. But it makes good business sense does it not. I ask you today on this women’s day to make a pledge to go and see this film. Maybe it will open the eyes of your heart.

None of the abuses a woman has to suffer can happen without the help and connivance of other women. I am not just talking about the Madames of the prostitution dens. In every home women are abused by other women in some way or the other: the mother who prefers her son to her daughter, the mother-in-law who makes the life of her daughter-in-law hell, the women who gang up in the name of some misplaced sense of honour and shield a perpetrator with impunity while a child suffers in total bewilderment. To these women I simply ask: what if the victim was born out of your womb? Today I ask all women to stand up for women against the men who abuse them and to give up the code of silence they abide by.

And is it not time to scream out loud and clear that a woman is not responsible for the gender of the child, that the seed – be it male or female – comes from the man, and thus put a stop to the pain suffered by all women who cannot bear sons. How can they. God did not give them that role.

We need to stop thinking of women as a commodity and accept them being so treated.

Please make it a point to go and see Lakshmi to honour all the invisible women that suffer because of our deafening silence.

So elections have been announced. Come to think of it we have been in election mode for quite some time. In the past weeks every time you switch on the idiot box, particularly in the day, you are likely to stumble upon some leader or the other addressing a rally in some part of the other of our country. The speeches, often delivered in screeching and strident voices courtesy I guess poor quality sound equipment are a cocktail of the same ingredients: bashing the adversary, enumerating one’s so called achievements, and wooing some section of society, normally the poor or some target group, though never quite spelling what they would do barring grandiose promises that one has heard ad nauseum.

I do not know what choices one really has. It seems that politics in India follow a similar cacophony no matter what your supposed ideologies are. Sleeping with the erstwhile enemy is common place. Pre election there is a torrid pre election alliance time which may or may not result in the sought marriage or engagement. The probability of a post election alliance does however remain on the back burner. And the alliances are of all shades and hues and follow now ideology whatsoever. The only common denominator is power!

Mudslinging, name calling and hitting below the belt is run-of-the-mill. It is all a game of oneupmanship. Blowing one’ s own bugle and badgering your opponent is the rule of the game. Then comes wooing the voter that includes a variety of gestures such as touching the feet of a poor elder, hugging or patting a child. Walking streets with a retinue of people hired at a daily wage, and a fanfare or drums playing forcefully while the candidate smiles with folded hands that unfold to wave at no one in particular is also an age long ‘tradition’. What is amusing is the sending of an advance party who hands out garlands to all and sundry so that they can ‘garland’ the candidate. It reminds you of yore days of kings and court jesters. Wonder if it cuts any ice with an electorate that is getting tired of these jaded ways.

Last time we voted for change, what we though was real change. But then the power bug I guess reared its ugly head and we as a city felt abandoned as our new heroes left us for greener pastures. Today we see them looking too much like the ones we were fed up with.

Yet we have to make a choice and to do sift the chaff from the wheat, if wheat there is. It is not easy to find one’s way under the din and clamour and work out what is best for us. It seems that creating the loudest vociferation is every one’s way of shielding their shortcomings and forcing us to lose our way. The recent happenings in Gujarat and the subsequent street fights are a good example of what I am trying to say. One party states it is trying to expose the claims of uber-development brandished by another. A member of the said party tries to explain the situation that ensued as best he can.

I do not know how many of us read an article by Mallika Sarabhai who in a quiet way gives us telling statistics about the development in this state that tell the real story.  She ends her article with these words:  But his model of development is Darwinian; the government will only support the fittest. Let the others perish. So, will the readers of this column see through this model of lies only if they belong to the 950 million poor, weak, unjustly treated? Is this the model for India?

What is happening is that we are all losing track of real issues and getting swayed by who shouts the loudest, who mesmerises the best, who dazzles the most, who promises the best sops. The real issues are forgotten and brushed under the carpet. The questions that need to be asked are lost in translation.  In a recent interview Delhi’s 49 days Chief Minister did make some very crucial points which again seemed to have been lost under his two coloured socks. He stressed that only quality education for all can usher the change we so want, and that it can only happen when all state run schools across the land impart equal and quality education. Unless that happens, nothing will change.

This is what the likes of me have been shouting forever.

Many thought I was mad when I was not jubilant at the passage of the Right to Education Bill and particularly at its absurd provision for compensating private schools for admission of children under the 25% quota which has been compared to school vouchers, whereby parents may “send” their children in any school, private or public. An Act that makes quality education a fundamental right of every child between the ages of 6 and 14 cannot truly come into effect if every school in the country state run or private is of equal quality! That is sadly not the case and we have schools that cover a large spectrum from abysmal to outrageously flamboyant. And though in theory every child can access the lavishest of schools, reality is quite the opposite.

First and foremost the poorest of the poor can never aspire to the 25% reservation as they are unaware of this option, often do not have the papers required and are not savvy to the tricks needed to get the required points to get their child admitted. The procedure is complex and keeping in mind the paucity of seats it is quite a nightmare to get your child in a good school. And that goes not only for the 25% poor kids but for any child in our city.

Nursery admissions are a theatre of the absurd. The logical option of the neighborhood school that would worked like a dream if state run schools were centres of excellence, has become a joke. The solution conjured was a point system and a lottery. Now the maximum points you can get is 100 and divided as follows: 70 points if you live within 8km (though I know of a child who was rejected though he lives within 3km), 20 points if you have a sibling, 5 points if you are an alumni, 5 for girls, 5 for employee children. There was a transfer point that has been quashed following an appeal in Court. hence the admissions process which was to be completed by February 28th is now to be redone and the new date is March 15th.

Now hold your breath: in some schools there are 2000 applicants for 20 seats! So parents have to admit children in many schools to hope for a seat. So in a land where quality education is a constitutional right, getting your child in school is an absolute nightmare.

Parents have to take days off from work to complete procedures, stand in unending queues, keep fingers and toes crossed when lots are drawn, bite their nails waiting for second lists and wonder what to do with their child if he has been rejected by all schools. And we are talking of toddlers. They may not be able to say what they feel but they hear everything, see their parent’s angst and process it in their own way. I am sure it disturbs and hurts them.

All this makes my blood boil. Admission to a school should be easy and joyful. It would be so if our state ran their schools in a proper way and gave up their reservation and quota addiction and their love for privatisation. All this means that a child born in the wrong family loses all his chances to accede to a bright future.

In a recent interview Arundhati Roy gives some startling figures that should make us think and I quote: To be eligible for the reservation policy, a Scheduled Caste person needs to have completed high school. Govern­ment figures say more than 70 per cent of Sche­duled Caste students drop out before they matriculate. Which means for even low-end government jobs only one in every four Dalits is eligible. I quote this not to defend reservation but to illustrate the fact that those in need do not get and cannot aspire to quality education at all.

It is time that someone did what is needed: make every state run school an enabling space for quality education! 

A court ruled recently yesterday that “Even if you keep your hand on the shoulder of a woman, it is for the lady to comment on the nature of the touch, whether it was friendly, brotherly or fatherly, in other words only a girl can decide the nature of the touch. This judgement comes as a huge relief as finally the protectors of law have understood the ‘good touch, bad touch’ we women often speak of and which is far too often rebuffed by men as a figment of our imagination. We women experience this time and again when the touch of a man who maybe part of our social circle or work environment or even part of our family sends a chill down our spine and makes us recoil in disgust. And it is wrong to believe that that this ability comes with experience. Far from that. Even a little child can feel the difference between good and bad touch. 

In India and I guess the world over children are abused relentlessly by people they know, people who are respected within their families, neighbours and others. These children know when the pat or the hug is good and when it is bad. But when they muster the courage to tell this to someone they trust, they are again brushed aside with an outraged reference to some absurd notion like family honour! 

Please remember that when a child summons up the courage to tell you about such an incident, it is because she trusts you implicitly and playing her down is condemning her to consequences that can destroy her whole life. Yes even a pat can be abuse if it is perceives as such. The reaction is intuitive and instinctive. Predators lurk at every corner and do not have horns! They look just like us and sometimes are people you trust. 

The statistics are terrifying. It is time we all took up the cudgels against this terrible crime.

The dot you do not see on the picture, is our planet Earth viewed from the Martian sky. It is a beautiful reminder of who we truly are and takes care of any hubris we may be tempted to fall into. This is all 7 billion of us viewed from the heavens above. Makes one feel tiny doesn’t it?

Maybe it is not hubris we should aim for, but its opposite Sophrosyne which is the virtue of  healthy-mindedness and from there self-control or moderation guided by knowledge and balance. Sophrosyne is a Greek Goddess considered to be one of the good spirit that escaped Pandora’s box. She is the spirit of  moderation, self-control, temperance, restraint, and discretion. Whereas we humans have embraced Hubris with great haste, few of us even know of Sophrosyne.

If we accept that we are the dot you do not see, then we are forced to abandon Hubris and seek Sophrosyne and remember that we are an infinitesimal part of a Universe we have no control on. All we can aspire to is temperance and self control. But sadly that is not the case around us.

If you look around, you see only hubris.

What would you call the politician who had everything on a platter should he have followed the precepts of Sophrosyne and moved with temperance and self control. But he wants to conquer Rome in a day!

What do you call the politicians who rush and pass bills to garner vote banks if not hubristic. No one cares about the outcome as long as one can get back in power. We have had quite a few of these lately. In today’s world no one is willing to wait. They want it all and they want it now!

Some want statues of themselves, others aim for the tallest one in the world. One who dreams of the top cuts a huge birthday cake in the shape of the Parliament House. Is it not hubris.

And that is not all, to garner more brownie points bills that have lain gathering dusts for years at an end and not been passed, are passed through Ordinances, there validity a mere months if they are not ratified by Parliament. Who cares. Elections are now and vote banks need to be seduced now!

Our politicians are great followers of hubris. More so if it gets them in power and what ensues.

And everything has conjured to make this possible. When we started our lives Ranjan and I, we had a scooter, no TV and very little in the bank. Things came slowly and steadily as we worked towards getting them. It was the BC days – before credit – and you had to live within your means. Now with you can get anything you want. You are even solicited to do so as is proved by the number of calls you get offering you loans and credit cards. Moderation, self-control, temperance, restraint, and discretion are all thrown out of the window.

Hubris breeds impatience. Hubris coaxes illusions of grandeur. And we all fall for it. I guess I did too when I thought I could build Planet Why and let myself be swayed by an impossible dream. And is it not hubris that makes me want to see Project Why live beyond me. Why can I not just accept the maxim: The King is dead, long live the kind.

It is time I took a serious look at the dot you cannot see and tempered my life. It is time I embraced Sophrosyne and accepted that it is not I, but someone greater that controls our lives and thus decideds what happens next. I simply need to follow. Only then will doors open!