Early morning high! :) :)

Things that give you a high right in the morning!! :-) :-)

For the unaware, that's my post / article...  :-) :-) 

Glad that it reached so many people...

Thanks Glad2bawoman!! :-) :-) You got a very nice forum there and plenty of reach! :-)  

Glad to be a Woman!

You call her Braveheart, Amanat, Damini, Nirbhaya.

You admire her fighting spirit and courage.

You call her the Nations daughter.

You give up celebrating New Years because you say you are grieving for her.

You say you won’t disclose her name to the public for fear of shame, stigma, or protests by people over that.

You grieve with her family. You compensate them monetarily for their loss.

You announce that you will bring in new laws to reform this.

You show outrage at this act. You say that you are seething with fury. You condemn it. You hold candle-lit vigils.You conduct peace marches. You sympathise. You empathise. You preach that this will change.

Words like Capital Punishment, Death Penalty, Chemical Castration, Lifetime Imprisonment, Amendments to the Rape Act, all get bandied about.

And yet, nothing happens.

NOTHING. EVER. HAPPENS.

And anyone who even starts a change will be subdued until they are in a minority.

And yet again, this girl’s death will just become another statistic.

And these words will just remain that. WORDS.

And the country will continue to function like how it always does.

I am sorry; am I sounding too cynical? Too matter-of-fact?

Does that bother you?

Can you really blame me for it?

Just a few days after an entire nation’s protest, shock and outrage at this ghastly act, I read about another girl who was molested again in a moving bus again in Delhi. I read that a woman who was raped, went to the police station to file a complaint and she was raped there again. I read that a girl was being molested by her own brother for 3 years until she reported it.

And we are a country that says that we celebrate our women. Why, we say that our country IS a woman, and we call her Bharata Mata. Mother India.

Really!! Wow!! Now if that’s not an ignominy, I don’t know what is!!!

It’s my helplessness that’s making me write this. I seethe with fury every time I read about another act of violation of a woman’s dignity; much like anyone other girl. I feel that cold rage sweep over me every time I feel a man’s eyes wrongly on me; much like any other girl.

And yet I am helpless.

Because it has been drilled into me by every single person during my formative years that I AM A GIRL. That I am not supposed to wear that. That I am not supposed to go here. That I am not supposed to go alone. That I am not supposed to walk like this. That I shouldn’t attract attention to myself. I did ask questions. I did retort back. I did say that I can take care of myself. I rebelled in the ways that I knew. And yet, when I stepped out there, onto the roads, I knew they were right. It is a JUNGLE out there. Ages don’t matter. Looks don’t matter. What you wear does not matter. What matters is that you are a GIRL. That you are a member of the opposite sex. That you can be looked at, felt up, groped at, pinched, prodded, cupped, pushed and shoved just because you are a female. And that it doesn’t cease. At any time. Day or night. Indoors or Outdoors.

After a while, the questioning stops but the fear doesn’t. And in the place of those questions, other traits came up.

The survival instinct. The sixth sense that tells you when a man is getting too close for comfort. The strategic cover-up that happens when you know that a man’s looking where he is not supposed to. Of how to hide from roving eyes. Of what to do with sharp heels in a crowded places. Of how to use safety pins for in crowded buses. Of how to use the elbow jab when pushing through a crowd.

It’s a fight every day. And it’s never ending.

Yes! I am scared. But more than that, I am proud of the fact that I am a female. That I am a woman. I celebrate the fact that I was born a GIRL. And how much ever I lament the fact that guys have it easier than girls, I would never give up being a woman for anything.

Because how much ever men call us the weaker sex, we are really the stronger sex. Ask a guy to walk in our shoes for just one single day and they will know what stern stuff we are made of.

And the best and worst part of it is that, they are the ones who made us this way.

Twisted Irony!!

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This post also appeared here -- http://www.glad2bawoman.com/empowerment/you-speak/glad-be-woman and here -- http://pravasiexpress.com/index.php?desktop=&article=351  

Boundary Issues!! - A Guest Post from Glad2bawoman!!

Do you think I am talking about cricket? No I am not.

“My girlfriend has boundary issues man – I don’t think this is going to work.” The voice came over the telephone – cell phone, if you will. It was a winter morning, and I was curled up in a blanket, a cat on my toes and a great book in hand. However, duty bound by the tenuous bonds of friendship, I was being forced to listen to the travails of one of my friends. What was the problem? Boundary issues- as I said.

What exactly, were these boundaries that she was crossing, I ventured to ask.

Now this couple live with each other – a recent decision, they had moved into a small flat, much to the consternation of their parents – but that is a different story all together. “She takes my towel man!” (Why does he call me man?)

“She insists on wearing my tee-shirts, eats the eggs I have bought without replacing them and uses my towel. She insists on using my tawa. She shares my cigarettes. Not only that she insists on coming with me when I go out and wants to be updated about everything in my life!”

All this was said with an indignant howl. I sighed, my book was beckoning to me and my cat shifted on my toes. “But you guys live together, it’s obvious that the stuff that’s around will be used by both of you,” I said – trying to get him off my back.

“Don’t you understand – she doesn’t know where to draw lines, she must understand that a man has to have his own life. I don’t like my things being used.”

Upon hearing a disinterested “hmm” from my end he felt peeved and hung up. I gladly went back to my book and a second cat nudged its way onto my knees. But before being thoroughly immersed in the pages of another person’s life, I couldn’t help but think – boundary issues seemed to be, at least in my friend’s case – a way to hide the fact that he was in fact, a mean person who had not learnt to share.

Is your girlfriend taking your cigarette out of your mouth? Is she demanding you take your shirt off and give it to her? Does she bump off whatever is on your tawa and start cooking her own food? Isn’t she cooking for both of you on that tawa? Why should she sit at home while you go gallivanting? I wanted to ask my friend these questions, it was a different reason that I wanted to avoid another hour of vacuous talk. This would eventually end with the guy’s ego getting the better of him, leaving me frustrated about why I even try to explain something logically.

We, as a society don’t like sharing – we fear it encroaches into our private spaces. Letting someone share is a way of bonding with that person and bonds are extremely fragile nowadays, especially those to do with relationships. Whatever happened to agreeing that sharing is caring? What will happen to us in a world where a boyfriend dislikes his girlfriend sharing a cigarette? It’s all too bleak I tell you – let me go back to my book.

Guest post from www.glad2bawoman.com. Glad2bawoman is an online media company with over 73,000 members. For women and about women, the articles published on the site encompass a variety of topics such as Health, Relationships, Fashion and Empowerment.