Truth Be Told

Women have it tough in our world. With all the odds against them, they have put up a great fight and shown the level of strength that can put anyone to shame. All this leads to the oft repeated statements like ‘the world would be a better place if women ruled it’.  This statement is quite an ego booster and at times the closing comment of many arguments. The reality is quite different and bitter, as our daily encounters tell us.

One such recent brush with reality happened in the audio visual departments of one of the top medical colleges of the country. The schematics there are such that the women are in majority, including the head of the department. Among the male employees, there is a deaf and dumb individual, who has a MFA (Masters of Fine Arts) from Punjab University and is appointed on pure merit bases.

The expectation here would be that that his colleagues have a combination of admiration and soft spot for him, given his efforts to support his family with a lot going against him (A year ago he was diagnosed with kidney failure & went through transplantation). 

This employee’s life has been made hell at his work place in every possible manner. He is being cornered all the time, while the rest of the department goes about their work. Isolating him is not where this ends. When a third party intervened trying to solve the unseen problem, the head had a long list of complaints and they are quite interesting in their content. The high lights include:

• He sits in the same room, the women are in majority and they feel uncomfortable in his presences as they can’t talk among themselves with much ease.
• He takes a few minutes’ walk (something he has to do because otherwise his legs swell) after every hour on campus, which in her opinion makes the students uncomfortable. The students have never made any such complain. 
• Then she had a lot to say about his sister who at times picks and drops him.
• His presence is the source of overcrowding the ‘just four’ spacious offices that she has under her command.
• She can’t attend a senior doctor in the rooms due to his presence.

The list is a long one and has a lot of other similar serious allegations, none of which have anything to do with the quality of his work or anything that is somehow related to the workplace.

Handing over the world to women is not going to make things different. Power in whatever shape has a strange effect on people and women have fallen in the general line as well, except for few exceptions. Many a time a woman is suffering at the hands of another woman only. All these morons that are out there have not materialized from outer space, a major responsibility is on parenting and a lot of hypocrisy is going on in that department that calls for some serious attention. 

Desensitizing Ourselves

The word desensitized is something that we come across quite frequently these days. This word rose to its share of fame along with the rise in terrorist attacks in our country. However, I feel that now we use it like we use a number of other things to throw away responsibility from our shoulders. Things around us are getting from bad to worse and all we end up with is ‘ doesn't matter, we have been desensitized by now’.

What does this even mean?

We are in a state of desensitized mindset as long as other people are at the receiving end. When the circle tightens around our own necks, then there is no desensitized effect, it’s all active action and a need to respond. Double faced or Hypocrisy are the two most decent words I can think of for all this. 

Being able to laugh at yourself is a good thing BUT not everything is supposed to be used as a joke. Unfortunately, this is exactly what a number of people are doing. Some are of the opinion that this is just an extension of our desensitization. Again I don’t share this view point. I think that people who think that creating and mass-forwarding sms jokes, emails etc is not funny or your way of coping with the stress. It just shows that people are mentally sick and in need of psychiatric help.

The sad part is that this problem is no longer limited to a few people. The number of people involved in this is increasing and it is just reflective of our society’s mental state.

If we want to look at a better future and not just simply talk about it then we need to cure the way to think. This is the base from which we need to start. For this change, we don’t need any political party or figure to come forward. We will have to bring this change on our own. People on the upper side of the hierarchy will only change once the base of the pyramid changes itself.   




This piece was originally written for Jaag TV at http://www.jaag.tv/article_read.php?a=36

Educated-NOT

Generally speaking it is supposed to be the educated class of our country from which to get the hope to hold onto optimism when things are hitting new levels of low every day. Lack of education is what we put at the base of almost everything that is wrong with our homeland. A fact that is absolutely true.

The question however, is what to do of the educated class that refuses to show the traits that are supposed to distinguish them from the other group? This band of ‘parhe likhe jahil’ seem to be on the rise, at least as far as I am concerned. (Maybe I am not moving in the right circles! Anyways)

On Monday, a 23 year old Shams Alam murdered 19 year old Samar Wasti, a student of Kinnaird College and then committed suicide on the spot. He wanted to marry her and as a reaction to the refusal from her and her family he took her life as well as his own. The rest of the details we all know, thanks to our media who is running on the motto of ‘show it all’.

It was the reaction of people that made me smash my head in the wall. Not the reaction of the people in generally who we know are going to point their fingers at the girl even before they get to know what happened. I am talking about the reaction of our educated section of the society and frankly there was no difference in their opinion and that of an uneducated person. Don’t mention the degrees and you would not be able to tell the two apart. No wonder one of our politicians is of the view ‘Degree tu degree hoti ha, asli ho ya jali’ (A degree is just a degree, real or fake).

Some of the top comments were:

Ø  The fact that the boy committed suicide proves that the girl was responsible.

Ø  Girls these days are very good at manipulating the boys.

Ø  Boys don’t go to this extent if they are not provoked by the girls.

Ø  Girls hook up then when they can’t keep it from their families back out which results in such incidents.

To sum it all up, it was the girl’s fault she got killed and it was her fault YET AGAIN that the boy committed suicide. Seriously, WTF!

The fact that the girl’s father told the media that he knew the boy was bothering his daughter and had told him to back off. The fact that she was on the phone with her father telling him that he was harassing her and most of all the fact, that Samar’s father heard the shots that took her life on the phone were ignored by these people is simply mind boggling to put it in a polite manner.

Not to ignore the fact that this moral brigade is usually led by women themselves. Mothers, who nurture the basic thought process of their children and therefore, making sure that this bug is implanted in their grey matter.   

If our educated class thinks like this, then we are surely on a speedy trip to hell as a society.