When you point one finger, there are three fingers pointing back to you goes the saying. The recent statement made by the brave young man accompanying the one India calls braveheart raises a few disturbing questions that we need to answer honestly if we want to believe that all the protests that happened in the wake of the night of horror that saw a young life and her dreams crushed forever have any meaning.

For the past three weeks or so we have been lighting candles, shouting slogans, ‘braving” water canons, tear gas shells and the colonial ‘lathi (baton). We have been screaming ‘we want justice’, thinking that the gallows will rid us of all that is wrong. We have been clamouring for better laws, death for rapists, more police presence, fast track courts etc. We want everyone to become gender sensitive in the bat of an eyelid: the cops, the men of the street, the politicians and their acolytes. True that we got some of our demands: the court proceedings have begun and some vague decisions taken – police women in thanas, more patrolling etc. Yet while we were yelling and screaming, rapes continued relentlessly: a married woman with children, a eight year old, a seventeen year old. While we were screaming hoarse a man died while protecting a woman just as it had happened one year back in Mumbai. While we were shouting, politicians across the board made degrading comments bet it the ‘dented and painted’ one, or the India and Bharat one, or the skirts one, or the stepping out of line one. Our politicians masters as always remained mute or at best came up with some inane explanation.

Hanging the culprits is not going to be the panacea of all ills. It will of course give a sense of justice to the family of the violated and murdered child and maybe ease our collective conscience. Is that what we want. If yes then rapes and sexual assaults will carry on with impunity. Most of them will be the kind that do not stir our selective conscience.

We need to stop pointing the one finger and look at the three fingers pointing back. The testimony of the young man squarely puts the blame on each and everyone of us. The young man recounts the night of horror and shares some of the events that were not known. What is the most poignant account is by far the apathy of the passers by: auto rickshaws, people in cars and bikes who slowed down but quickly  drove on, the posse of spectators that stood watching the show and not proffering any help: be it a piece of cloth to cover the nudity of the violated woman or reach out and help. Everyone of those bystanders is you or me, and we must hang our heads in shame. Imagine what was going on in the souls of the two young people screaming and begging for help. I shudder when I think of it. The excuse if any is the fear of harassment by the police should we reach out and help anyone. Maybe it is time to ask for a new law that protects the person who helps anyone in need. In some countries like France for instance there is a law that prosecutes anyone who does not help a person in need. Perhaps that is what we should ask for. One more thing though. We need to look at ourselves and assess whether it is only the fear of harassment that keeps us from reaching out or whether it is simply that we do not care. And more than that we should ask ourselves with utmost honesty whether as of this moment we, you and I, will stop and reach out to anyone in distress. If we are not able to answer with a loud YES, then all our candles lights, sloganeering and marches will be meaningless.

The young man also talked about the totally revolting attitude of the police who apparently quibbled and lost precious time trying to decide the jurisdiction under which the case would need to be registered. The police rushed into damage mode giving figures and stats to prove this to be incorrect. But why should the young man lie? And giving the track record of our ‘beloved’ Delhi Police this seems more than plausible. We need to be asking for rigid protocols in all cases, protocols that need to be followed to the T. Protocols that lay out strict procedures that need to be followed in all cases. But alas this may just remain a chimera as just a day or so back, a young woman who sought police help after being aggressed by an auto rickshaw driver faced the same treatment when she called 100.  The voice at the other end gave me another number – 27854799 – and said that the area I was in came under the jurisdiction of the police who would attend to my call. And the much heralded women’s helpline kept ringing. What can one say!  The question will always remain in the minds of the grieving family and in ours too: would she have made it if she had been taken to hospital earlier? We will have to live with this all our lives.

The young man also said that he had to pick the body of his friend himself and put it in the police PCR. First of all why is it that well equipped ambulances manned by paramedics are not the ones that pick wounded people like it is done in every self respecting society. Picking a severely hurt body can be fatal if one does not know how to. This is something we have experienced first hand at project why! The police refused to pick up the body of a young mentally challenged young man who lay on the road with maggot infested wounds and screaming in pain. It is our staff who did it and accompanied the body to the hospital where we had to get the press to ensure that the young man was attended to! Over and above more PCR vans can we press for well equipped ambulances for all accident victims so that precious time is not lost.

Everyone is asking for change. Change in laws and in mindsets. The perpetrators of this horrific crimes were the product of our society. Hanging them will not stop us from breeding more of the same. Rapes have not stopped post our protests. Our patriarchal and feudal mindset is age old and is carried out first and foremost in our homes. The false and misplaced sense of power that men have in India, is the result of his upbringing and is mostly inculcated by the women in the family: the granny who wails at the birth of a grand daughter and places the ‘blame’ on the innocent daughter in law; the mother who mollycoddles the son and neglects the daughter, the sister who accepts a secondary role with silent acceptance. And this happens across the board! Should a sexual assault occur within the home and the girl have the courage to bring it up, it is the women of the family who rise as one and brush away the crime in the name of honour, thereby condemning the survivor to share a space with the perpetrator. Maybe it was time we as educated people stood up for our child no matter what the consequences. Can honour be more important than the pain of an bused child. It CANNOT and should not.

Perhaps it also time we stopped blaming a girl, no matter what her age is, for the assault she may experience. This is done time and again and in all homes rich or poor. She laughs too loud, dresses too revealingly and so on. And maybe we should start educating all people, men and women about the X and Y chromosome story and free the woman from the unfair accusation of being responsible for the sex of a child. WE women do not have the Y chromosome!!! I know of an educated gentlemen, or should I say supposedly educated, whose answered shocked me when we were discussing this topic. My son can do no wrong he quipped angrily. In the country where women Goddessed are worshipped night and day giving birth to a girl child is wrong. Maybe it is time we again looked into ourselves and see how guilty we are. Time to set our house in order before casting the first stone.

Another point that may see disturbing and unsettling to many and yet needs to be made is to look at who the perpetrators are and where did we as a society, go wrong. Let us take the case of the youngest accused. Before I go on, I would like to say that I am not defending anyone but simply trying to understand what makes a child a brutal criminal and assessing where we went wrong, as at this moment we have to live with the fact that rapes and sexual assault will happen. Today’s newspaper gives an interview with the mother of this boy. His family is the poorest in the village and lives under a plastic sheet. 11 years ago when he must have been just 6 he left the village to earn a living as he was the eldest and his father mentally ill. There are 5 younger children who do not go to school and need to travel 30 km to get work as labour. Today the mother does not wish to see her son. Her only worry is that now no one will marry her daughter. Take a moment to ponder over this. In 11 years a six year old kid became a barbaric killer. Six year olds need a home, the love of their family, food in their belly, a school to go to. Most of this is guaranteed under the Constitution. He is not meant to be thrown in the  big city alone. It took about a decade for him to become a killer, his only teacher the big city. A city that has passed many laws to protect children but failed to implement them. Had the child labour law been respected this boy should have been either sent back to his family or kept in a children’s home and received education. How many children have not seen working and yet how many of us have picked the phone and reported the matter. Many children work in homes of the rich and yet no one says anything. Another code of silence that needs to be broken.

There is debate about lowering the age of the Juvenile Justice Act. This Act was implemented as it was felt that children should be reformed and not punished as adults. This per se is a very sound approach. But it requires one important element: well run remand homes where the child is given an enabling environment that would allow hom to reform. All you need is visit one of these homes and you will realise that no one can be reformed in them. is it not time to demand for well run reforms homes for the children who have turned into criminals.

But before that we need to look at our school system. If our state run schools were well run, many problems we see would be set right. Perhaps it is time that all schools be made coeducational so that boys and girls grow together as buddies, competitors, friends.

It is also time that sex education, and here I do not mean a chapter on reproduction often hurried through, but age appropriate sex education, starting with good touch bad touch and explaining all emotions that children, tweens and teens go through, should be imparted to every child in school.  It is time we did that and not brush these under the carpet as we tend to do.

I could carry on and on but will not.

I simply would ask each one of us to look at the three fingers pointing back and be man enough to accept responsibility.

The past weeks has seen a city angry and outraged at the brutal and reprehensible assault on a young woman. One wonders what made this rape awaken our frozen consciences and come out of our convenient and self induced torpor. Rapes are not new. In fact there is a rape in our country every 22 minutes, that is 65 rapes a day! Not a figure to be proud of. Many of these are as reprehensible as the one that happened last month. What could be worst that the rape of a 2 year old and yet we kept silent. Perhaps it was because the victims were not ‘one of us’ and we felt immune from such aberrations. The rape of the young woman that shook us all was one we could identify with. It could have been our daughter or our sister as they too watch movies with their friends and may take a bus back home. This incident was too close for comfort and thus we shouted and protested and wanted to be heard. We clamoured for news laws, for severe punishment, for safer roads and so on. I can only hope that something positive comes out of our new collective persona.

Yet there are many things that should shake our conscience as human beings. One of them is the state of the homeless in the freezing winter. There are over 300 000 homeless in Delhi, including women and children. They are not hidden. We see them huddled under flyovers as we drive past. We see them sleeping on pavements as we return from a party or a late night movie. Every year the media run programmes on their plight. And yet we remain mute or at best to ease our consciences by donating a poor quality blanket. The same state that let down the one we call our braveheart, has only been able to make a paltry 154 shelters that can accommodate 7500 or a mere 2.5% of our homeless. In spite of court intervention nothing much seems to happen on the ground. Some homeless people have no option but sleep in public toilets to escape the biting cold.

While we layer ourselves with thermals and woollies, sit next to heaters and sip a hot mug of coffee, these people just pray that live through the night, and through every winter nights. No one cares for them. For politicians they are not vote banks and for the rest of the city they simply do not exist. They are brutalised by the police and often their paltry belongings confiscated. The women are abused and the children will never see a school. They are the most vulnerable and abandoned by one and all.

They too belong to the city we live in. Will the collective conscience that has been awakened by a brutal rape, raise its voice for these defenseless citizens of India.

Enough is enough! I have kept quiet for far too long. It is time I reclaimed every right that has been usurped from me. I do not want to be killed in the womb just because I am a girl. I want my birth to be celebrated and feted. I have the right to the same education, to as many toys, and to the same new school bag every year than the one my brother gets. I want to play outside like all children. I want to wear whatever I feel like and laugh as loudly as I can.

I do not belong to anyone. I am your daughter, your sister, your wife, your mother but I am first and foremost an independent being. I am ready to learn and respect values and want the right to abide by them because I want to, and not because you impose them on me. I do not want to be told what to do, think, see, touch, feel and  hear. I want to experience everything on my own. I want to feel the the coolness of the evening breeze and the warmth of the winter sun. I want to discover the world at my own pace and through my own eyes. I want to learn and grow with the same freedom as my brothers do. I want to go to school and not be used as a surrogate mother whenever needed and saddled  with household chores. I do not want to see my studies interrupted to look after ailing grandparents in the village. I do not want to be considered as a burden that one has to rid itself of by harnessing me to an unknown man.

I want to be the pride of my family. I also know what honour means so do not throw the izzat bogey to curb my freedom and make me do what you want. I want you to trust me implicitly and you must  if you have taught me right. I am not an object or a commodity. I am a person with dreams and aspirations. Please do not hijack them or stifle them. I do not want to be judged by a kangaroo court and killed if I decide to fall in love. I want the right to fall in love like any one else.

You worship Goddesses with a fervour that sometimes seems false and sanctimonious. When you sit and chant her name through the night, do you forget that she is a woman just like me and the best of respecting her would be to respect every woman you see. When will stop being so hypocritical! Your  double standards are galling. You will protect the women in your family but consider every other woman your plaything. I am sick and tired of all the groping, leering, ogling and all other kind of abuse you are master at every time I step out of my door. You rape with impunity be it a baby or a mature woman. Do you ever think that the 2 year old you violate could be your own child. You then unabashedly throw the blame on us for the crime you commit. It was what we wore, or the time of the day we were out, the place we were at and so on. Please tell me how a 2 year old in a play school was at the wrong place, at the wrong time and wearing inappropriate clothes or are diapers sexy too! You make me sick.

If a woman is violated and we demand justice you come up with asinine fixes: do not go out at night, do not wear skirts, do not own a cellphone etc. The best one is get her married. This is not acceptable. You have such disregard for us as even your prized abuses have to insult us. How many times a day do you f**** sisters and mothers. Have you ever thought of that.

Last month you abused and violated a young beautiful woman who only wanted to live life on her own terms with such violence and depravity that the nation shook and every woman in this country, young and old felt defiled. Yes you raped us all. But let me tell you one thing: you could not and never would violate her soul or spirit,

When we were on the streets  venting the rage we felt, you kept quiet at best, or blasted us with water and tear gas and broke sticks on our back. What were you trying to prove? That you were men! You even fell as low as  calling us painted and dented to once again try and denigrate us. You took a dying child on a plane ride when you knew she was going to die. And then you brought the braveheart back in the dead of night and cremated her like you would a thief. Was it because you were too scared of the very people you come and beg for votes once every five years.

How good you are at protecting yourselves. You clamp all kind of laws and restrictions against your own people. Let me tell you: you do not look good. We wanted you to come and grieve with us, to listen to our woes and suggestions. We did not want empty words that sounded so hollow. We have seen through your game.

Yes we want justice for the young woman whose dreams you crushed. But what about the millions of women waiting for justice and who have gone old waiting. Will you bring laws that ensure we do not get raped over and over again if we muster the courage to seek justice. Will you ensure that justice will come to all those waiting. Will you change the law that would make a rapist or abuser guilty till proved innocent? But that is not where it ends. We want to reclaim our space day and night. We want to be able to move freely at any time of the day and be safe no matter what we wear. We want to be respected and accepted as equal citizens.

We do not need protection, we need freedom be it in our homes or on the streets.

This is perhaps the first time that I am at a loss of words to usher a new year. Normally one is filled with hope and dreams and resolutions. But this year seems different as it has placed on our shoulders responsibilities we all have been shirking for far too long. Somehow 2012 can be divided into two parts: before December 16th and after December 16th and though the later is an infinitesimal part of the 365 days that make a Gregorian year, the last 15 days of the year gone by have shaken us of the comfort zone we had allowed ourselves to slink in. We were rudely awakened from an almost catatonic slumber that made us believe that all was well. Suddenly the conscience we had conveniently parked somewhere in the recesses of our minds was stirred and we had to accept the uncomfortable reality that we had we had failed in more ways than one. What was even more troubling was the fact that it had taken the most brutal and barbaric death of a beautiful young girl to make us come to our senses.

It is apposite that the young braveheart has remained anonymous and unnamed. She thus becomes every one’s daughter or sister and makes our irresponsible behaviour that much more unpardonable. For years we have been passively accepting rapes and other reprehensible acts without the outrage that must be felt by any self respecting human being. We conveniently brushed these aside by telling ourselves that such aberrations did not happen in the tiny confines of our lives. We clucked away news of children being abused and hurt when we should have screamed our indignation. As supposedly educated and aware citizens we never lend our voices to ensure that justice was done. We accepted corruption, inefficiency and venality in every realm of our lives. At best these made juicy drawing room  chats and never went beyond that. We accepted the arrogance of politicians and bureaucrats  and found ways of circumventing things when it concerned us. We too surreptitiously became partners in crime.

This how we have been shaken to see ourselves and what we see is not pretty. It makes us hand our heads in shame. But at the dawn of this new year we have been given a chance to redeem ourselves. I hope we will. If we do not then we are doomed.

It is a new year and I cannot but hope and pray that my family and my extended family and all my friends and supporters have a wonderful year. Is this not what one wishes fro those we love? As for myself I hope that I can walk that extra mile that would make the two Indias we live in come closer and learn to accept and respect each other just like the two little Angels in the picture, Utpal a child of the dark and Agstya my little grandson.

May 2013 bring the wisdom, sagacity and healing we so need.

2012 is coming to a close. It is time to reflect and ponder about the year gone and ask one’s self as candidly as possible whether we really walked the talk. 2012 was pwhy’s 12th year on the field, more than ample time to make the difference we set out to make more than a decade ago. I will in this post highlight some of the important moments of 2012 and view them in the light of the mission we gave ourselves when it all began. I would also beg your indulgence in case thing are not in chronological order, but isn’t that expected of a project that has always followed its heart.

Project Why has always endeavoured to keep in sync with the reality that surrounds us and put in perspective for the children we nurture. Thus I cannot but begin this narrative with today, a day when a whole nation mourns the death of the  braveheart who suffered the worst form of assault imaginable. Since that terrifying night I have been following the story with horror and dread, more so because the barbaric perpetrators come from the same social strata as the children we teach. This makes our responsibility and task that much more critical and compels us to look back at the gone years and assess the work we have done in a whole new manner. True our mission as stated time and again was and has been to provide quality education support to children from slums and give them the required skills to excel in school and in life. But was our definition of quality education broad enough? We always followed the Delors 4 pillars – learning: to know, to do, to be and to live together. But did we emphasise enough on the ‘live together’? Were we not swayed by the ‘to know’ as every parent across the board is? But it is not the moment to delve on what we cannot change. Today the people want to see a new India, one that is safe for all its citizens, one where every man learns to respect women, where laws are strong and justice delivered. Where little girls are taught how to protect themselves and sex talk is not taboo. Yes we need a change in mindsets as well as laws and mindsets can only be changed one day at a time starting at a young age. So as 2012 ends, we at project why have taken certain resolves.

We strongly believe that one of the best ways to get boys and girls to learn to accept and respect each other is that they grow together. We would like to see all state run schools become coeducational. However till that day comes we have no option but teach boys and girls at different times. However since last week we have decided that on all holidays boys and girls will come together to the project and interact in every way possible. It is heartwarming to see that though there was some reluctance and hesitation, particularly from the boys, within no time the children were working together as pals and chums.

Several workshops on self esteem and gender biases were held along the year. We will ensure that these are held with more often in the new year. We also plan to hold gender bias and sex education workshops for the staff as we realised that coming from traditional backgrounds, they are hesitant and uneasy and need to be taught how to address this issue with children of different ages.

We alas live in a society where the girl child is still in danger and needs to learn to protect herself. Therefore we are launching regular ‘good touch’, ‘bad touch’ classed for all our primary girls. We also plan to have awareness programmes with the parents and hope these will be useful.

The horrific rape that shook all of us was also discussed with the older children. They were then asked to write their feelings. I will share this with you in a subsequent post.

Now let me briefly share the main happenings of the year gone by. As always the children did us proud   and the project why results for all centres and all classes was 100%. Hats off to all children and their teachers. I guess we have by now fulfilled one of our main objectives: to contain drop out, mainstream children and ensure good results.

This year we held several workshops in all our centres: a  work shop on self esteem in our Okhla and Khader centre as we have realised that children from underprivileged homes have poor self esteem. A workshop on the girl child was also held at our Khader centre. A workshop for the teachers of the special section was held in September to introduce new approaches in teaching.

Our main workshop however was a workshop on Right to Education, held with the support of an eminent jurist and that ended in a postcard campaign whereby the children wrote of the Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court about the situation in their school. The children were charged up and wrote unabashedly about the violence and abuse by their teachers, the lack of facilities be it toilets or desks, the overcrowding of classes and the poor quality of teaching. These cards were included in a PIL with the judges demanding immediate action. Action was taken but the suspension of 2 teachers named by the student resulted in a huge problem for us as the teachers belonged to Khader village where our centre is located. Our landlord almost threw us out. It is the extremely wise and diplomatic skill of our coordinator Dharmendra that saved us from this explosive situation. Our children were also targeted in school but tempers calmed down and today the schools are functioning a tad better. This was  a lesson for all: bringing change is never easy. It needs courage and staying power.

For the women centre, it was a musical year as they had a western music workshop run by Diya, a young student from Singapore. A group of 8 children were introduced to western music and tried their hand at the guitar, the keyboard and bongos! In January 2012, Praveen one of our extremely talented student, began professional singing classes. His dream is to enter a singing reality show! More power to him.

2012 was also dancing year for the project children. It was decided to run dance workshops for all children, including the special ones.  And even though their performance would not meet  Bolshoi standards, the children had great fun and laughed to their hearts’ content.

We hope to have the children perform somewhere in 2013.

Everyone is invited!

This year it was the Okhla children who had the chance to get behind a camera thanks to the workshop run by one of our summer volunteers. You can see the pictures they took here.

We managed a few outings in spite of paucity of funds. The Govindpuri children went to the Science Museum, the Red Fort, the Children’s Park and India Gate. It was still open to the likes of you and me then. The special children went to Delhi Haat and Lodhi garden.

A group of children from Khader were taken to a movie and to an outing at the mall by some supporters.

As always we celebrated festivals: Republic Day, Independence Day, Gandhi Jayanti, Children’s Day, Diwali, Teacher’s Day, Eid and Xmas. On these days children often put up their own show with dances, exhibitions, speeches and song.

The star this year was undoubtedly our very own Santa.

We also had our share of visitors from all corners of the planet and of course our volunteer who make a huge difference as they bring a little of the world into our planet! We thank all of them warmly!

Some statistics and facts now: we are now a family of 1000! And to say that when we began we were a mere 40! We have a team of 45 and each one of them is precious and deserves to be saluted. The computer centre, library and secondary were shifted around. Secondary classes were started in our Govindpuri centre which now goes to class VII.

We would like to share two very special events.
Preeti from the special section has now been admitted to the Open school and is preparing for class X  and Shamika our special section in charge got the Karamveer Chakra award.

We are proud of you girls!

Our boarding school kids are well and growing by the day. They are good in their studies and participate in many activities: skating, yoga, dancing, music. I wish we could give this opportunity to every child.

Over 200 women completed their sewing and beauty courses this year. many of them have got employment and some of them even opened their own beauty parlours, two of them in the village. More power to you.

Planet Why remained frozen this year. All our efforts came to naught and we are now seriously thinking of alternatives. However our special children and Khader children kept the sustainability light alive.

The special children now make dream catchers that are on sale and our Khader chiildren made beautiful greeting cards that can be purchased on line. We hope these enterprises grow by leaps and bounds.

But all this would not have been possible without those who have believed in us and trusted us through the years. We hope you will continue to help us make a difference. To everyone a big thank you.

Happy 2013.

Yes I, the Indian woman, am dented and painted but not in the manner you politicians think! I am dented – and here I would like to use the verb ‘dent’ in its meaning ‘diminished’- from the very moment I am conceived. Even as I entered my mother’s womb, I knew everyone hoped I was a boy. If it was discovered that I was indeed a girl, I ran the risk of being brutally aborted and my tiny life ended in a pool of blood or a garbage bin. The day I was born, I was greeted with wails and tears and my mother cursed for not having born a son. You see the X Y chromosome story is understood by no one, or I guess they do not wish to understand as how can I boy do anything wrong. In my country giving birth to a child is wrong.

As I grew up I was often bewildered at what I saw. My brother always got what he wanted and I did not. I was often chided and put back to place. My brother got better food and even a better school bag. he even went to a private school while I had to go to the municipal one. I was often made to miss school as there was always something to do t home, and after the birth of my younger sibling, I became a surrogate mother even though I was just 6. I often heard my parents talking about me in disturbing words. Was I really a burden?

Imagine my surprise when as I grew a little older, I who loved playing on the street with other children, of being told that I had to remain in the house. It was not only my mother or father who scolded me, but even my younger brother, the very child I had carried on my hip for so long, never complaining. If I laughed too loud I was told to tone down as ‘girls’ were not meant to behave this way. If I peered out the window my brother pulled my braid and told me to ‘behave’. I never figured out what I was doing wrong as others laughed and peered out of windows.

I soon learnt one indubitable truth: a girl was controlled by a male – father, brother and the elusive husband that loomed large from the very moment I began understanding things. Time and again I saw my father abusing my mother in every way possible and saw her keep quiet or at best shed a few tears. I felt a boiling rage inside me and wondered why my mother did not react. Slowly I understood that this was the way things were and we as girls had no other choice but to comply. As my brothers grew older I even saw them abusing mother. I realised that we women were diminished in more ways than one.

If I was lucky I would escape the groping and harassment that many suffer within the confines of the so called safety of my home. It could be an uncle, a neighbour or even a friend. If I did gather the courage to speak up, then I was likely to be introduced to the deafening code of silence that is invoked in such cases by the very one who gave you life. That is when another stifling word was added to my vocabulary: ‘izzat’ – honour- ! I suddenly became the repository of the honour of my family even it I was the one who had been damaged and taken advantage of. I had to bear a shame I could not fathom. That is when I realised that we women had to live a double life and put of a show for the world to see. That is the day I knew that we dented women also had to be painted. Painted in the shades of patriarchy and its biased and baffling mores. I learnt to slowly reconcile myself to my station in life.

In spite of missing many classes to tend to chores at home, in spite of not being given the tuition so easily proffered to my male siblings or the books I needed, I studied hard and passed all my examinations. I guess it was the attraction of extra money that made my male handlers accept I take up a job. I was over the moon as it was a step to the freedom I so longed for. I stepped out of the house on that first day with a song in my heart and a head filled with dreams. How was I to know that another set of men would appear and remind me once again that I was just a woman in a world that belonged to men. The journey to my workplace made me open to sneers, lude remarks, groping and misplaced gestures. I learnt to make myself as small as I could and hope that I would reach my destination safe. Anger boiled inside me but I learnt to control it, in a way all women learn to in this land. That is also part of the paint job. If God forbid, something would have happened, I knew what awaited me. The ‘izzat’ scenario again from my very own, and had I gone over that then more abuse at the hand of law keepers and justice givers. If a woman is raped, she has to accept to be raped over and over again and even then she never gets justice.

Had I met a boy and fallen in love like every girl has the right to, I ran the risk of being killed by my own father or brother again in the name of ‘izzat’. So if I did fall in love, I knew it could only be covertly, till the day the men in my family found the next man to hand me over to. But those few days of love would be my silent rebellion and my few moments of freedom.

One fine day I will be told to get ready and look my best as a boy was coming to see me. Once again I could not but realise that I was a mere object. Should the boy like me, then I was to be hitched to him with a great relief from my family. Their duty was over, the burden passed on. Thank God the ‘izzat’ was intact.

Life would have come full circle. I would get pregnant and so conditioned was I, that I too would wish for a boy. I too would be chided for giving birth to a girl. I too would bear the abuse of my husband. I too would curtail the freedom of my daughter, buy a better school bag for my son and so on. I too would one day teach my daughter her place as a dented and painted object in a land where we venerate Goddesses.