India Must Redefine SHAME!

Apart from rising levels of population, intolerance, violence, crimes against women and corruption the largest democracy of the world called India has been dictatorially making life most inhuman for its children—supposed to be its future. Had there been a choice many souls from the ether would have straightaway rejected the offer of getting born in India!

Endless herds of street urchins engaged or forced into begging, rag-picking, illegal trafficking and plain abuse. A whole vista of little innocent faces falling prey to the curse of child labor. NOT ENOUGH!

Lives nipped in the bud through widely practiced female foeticide and at a later stage through infanticide.  The male dominated dowry-based society bashing up and killing girl children brutally and at will. Newborn babies getting killed thanks to hospital negligence and callousness. NOT ENOUGH!

Those who are lucky to be able to get a little older despite the most hostile environment are falling into open holes that abound all around them-enticing them and trapping them in. Sufferings and deaths continuing in a vicious circle. NOT ENOUGH!

Those who are lucky to grow up in well-to-do city families are falling prey to kidnappings and physical abuse that lurk in unpredictable corners all the time. NOT ENOUGH!

A 5^th standard school girl of a cultured city of Kolkata and in a university that was founded by the Nobel prize winning poet-composer-writer Rabindra Nath Tagore. Her crime was she could not get out of her habit of bed-wetting. The hostel warden, incidentally a lady too like the Chief Minister of the state, was mercilessly decisive in punishment. The warden forced the girl student to drink her own urine to teach her a lesson for bed-wetting. NOT ENOUGH!

India must redefine SHAME and try FEELING it!

Uttar Pradesh Top Cop Advice!

Article first published as India: The Honor Syndrome! on Technorati.

It had to be Uttar Pradesh again. The largest state of India—in northern India, politically strategic and notorious for a continuing feudal mindset. The ruler or the political party in power or the existing state machinery or the society at large hardly matter. In the last Assembly Elections a young and educated politician ousted Mayawati from power and great expectations were perceived across the country. But the feudal values persist, as always.

Most Indian families consider their female members as liabilities, because in a male-dominated repressive society women are always vulnerable and easy targets. The male members are licensed to do any acrobatics ranging from extramarital relationships to kidnappings and even murders. But within their families they strive to ‘protect’ their women from all such possible vagaries as they know that their counterparts in other families are out in the same atrocity mission. This is ‘honor’ for a family. If a female within a family suffers from such ignominies or tries to liberate herself from exploitation and assert her choice for her life she gets condemned for violating the ‘honor’ and the ‘lords’ of the family restores ‘honor’ by eliminating her and possibly her associates. ‘Honor Killings’ has been the most horrendous fact of the Indian society over the decades or even centuries.

One top cop from Uttar Pradesh vouched for this in the strongest manner possible. Cops are supposed to be ‘protectors’ in any state—feudal or liberal. Therefore, one family asked this top cop for investigation and help in the case of a teenage daughter of the family allegedly kidnapped by a local goon over two months back. A missing report was lodged much earlier in the local police station, but no action had been taken. The ‘honorable’ top police officer, instead of giving assurance for speeding up the investigation, advised the family to shoot her as he would have done the same if it happened to his own family. The new young Chief Minister decided only to transfer the officer as a means of ‘punishment’, but that was an extremely routine procedure like feudal way of life in the state. A reciprocity between ‘lords’?

Baby Falaks and Baby Afreens had only been the cruel manifestations of a basic feudal malady. At a deeper level lies the problem of female foeticide where concerned families, doctors and the socio-political system are all partners in crime. In the first episode of Satyameva Jayate Aamir Khan took up this huge societal problem and instantly struck an emotional chord all across India.

But coming from a superstar loved by the masses the situation was more of euphoria rather than a movement. While one ought not to deny an impact of Aamir Khan’s reality show that made some politicians agree to take action in some particular cases a lasting long-term impact was what one must look for.  Celebrities could only ignite a movement with their adorable presence and the movement had to be carried on by the people ultimately.

As long as the feudalistic mindset remains a force no solutions can ever emerge. 

After Baby Falak Now It Is Baby Afreen: Shame on India!

What a country we have! A country that has been worshiping the Shakti cult in the forms of Goddesses torture, brutalize and go on killing the human forms of the same cult. A country where no female is safe on the streets, on the trains, on the buses and even within the four walls of  their homes. Time to replace ‘India’ for ‘SHAME’! A country called SHAME and where people seem to be SHAMEless forever!

What a society we have! A society controlled by hordes of cowardly males (like a malignant tumor) who lust for females in every field of activity and never loses an opportunity to exploit them in every field of activity, but also want lots and lots of money to marry them! They do the malignant favor of marrying a girl for a huge bargain, start torturing her for more money, burn her or kill her if insistent demands are not met and then, if a girl child happens to get born to them they brutalize, maim and even kill the babies. Why don’t the males do one more big favor—get their rate cards written large and labeled in their foreheads along with detailed guidelines of what to follow after the so-called marriage so that millions of girls get forewarned and avoid the traps. As for the parents one of them has to be a male and so nothing positive can be expected. Time has come for the female force to get armed to the teeth and fight and fight with all their might to get rid of the malignant tumor of our society. Once for all. For good.

We know the story of the two-year-old Baby Falak who died in her third cardiac arrest after a nearly two-month struggle for survival. Now, three-month old Baby Afreen died of a cardiac arrest in a Bangalore hospital today.

What was Afreen’s fault? She was born a girl child to a male parent. That cowardly male could not accept the fact, started battering his wife for the 'crime' and then brutalized and bruised his own baby with indescribable cruelty. Afreen was hospitalized, but the little baby could not take it any longer and bid her goodbye to a country called SHAME.

Afreen’s mother cried out in anguish cursing her husband for the ghastly act and said in public that he did not deserve to live after this. The demonic male was arrested, put in police custody and a murder charge is being initiated. But what will follow? The case will drag on for years in usual way of our overburdened courts with hardly anything happening finally. And what about the preventive laws or bodies? What can we expect in a country where politicians do their best to oppose any law in favor of women; show more interest in political games, in making fortunes, in enjoying porno in public and in demanding free tickets for IPL and all glamor shows? What right do they have to celebrate events like International Day of the Girl Child or Child Abuse Prevention Day? First let 'day' dawn in your goddamned country.

An absolute shame that our country is this case is likely to be forgotten in matter of days. But in the true tradition of Shakti the female force ought not to take it passively any longer. They must rise in revolution, must demand separate stringent laws for instant justice and punishment and must unite to destroy the Evil. Now is the time!

The Horrid Truth About A Baby Girl!

A two-year old baby girl was admitted in a Delhi hospital on January 18, 2012. She was bruised and battered. She had serious head injuries and whole of her tiny body bore marks of torture and abuse. She had been fighting for life since then and as per the latest reports there were a few signs of recovery. The poor child had already suffered two cardiac arrests. Her name is Falak.

Her supposed mother, a minor of 14 years, brought the baby to the hospital herself and was detained by the police for interrogation. Later, she was handed over to the welfare department. Her name is Mahi.

The teenager ‘mother’ had also a horrid tale to tell. She reportedly confessed to the authorities that she herself abused the baby out of sheer frustration, but the head injury was caused by an accidental fall either from her bed or in the bathroom. Why she was so frustrated that made her abuse her ‘own’ baby?

Mahi’s tale went on. She was living with her father who physically tortured her on almost a daily basis. Sick of her miserable life she fled from her home, lived with her aunt for some time and was on the run again. Finally a twenty-something man spotted her and took her to his home. Again a saga of physical abuse followed.

To make matters worse, the man one day brought Falak out of nowhere and asked Mahi to take care of her. The minor girl already under tremendous stress could not come to terms with the added responsibility and her frustration started taking toll on the baby.

Mahi’s story seems to be only a part of the larger and murkier episode. Doctors say about Falak’s head injury that either a heavy object has been used to or her head has been smashed against a wall. There are also multiple fractures and wounds all over her body. Such brutalization cannot be caused by minor who claimed to be the ‘mother’ first.

Police investigations got some leads revealing that the man belonged to Mumbai and had a family there. But he was missing so far. Charges of kidnapping have been registered by the police against him and some other unknown people whose involvement seem pretty clear considering the enormity of  the brutal act.

The story is in a confused state, but its sordid details are real. In a country that celebrates the international year of the girl child and celebrated the birth of the seven-billionth baby only recently abuse and exploitation of the girl child continue unabated. Feudalistic pockets of the society still hate the birth of a girl child trying to prevent it by any means and the male-female ratio goes on decreasing further and further. Poverty makes millions of other homeless urchins. It’s only the dangerous streets and alleys of the country that strive to take care of the totally uncared lot.

Every Indian baby girl just cannot afford to get born to a celebrity family. But Falak now commands the nation’s attention as twenty doctors and thirty nurses are looking after her continuously. Shamed and concerned the nation prays for her recovery.