I recently went for a trip to Pondicherry along with my friends and during the trip a lot of interesting conversations happened among which there was this one conversation that stuck in my head. It was about the problems that Indian women have to face on a daily basis.
While having dinner a friend was complaining about how men passed lewd comments on her at the beach and many other places. Then she went on to discuss about how it was different from Bangalore and Delhi and how she faced this from men on a regular basis. I was completely shocked hearing all those stories and that’s when other girls also joined in with their own stories. While I was trying to come up with ideas in my mind to defend good men, another girl retorted “Are yar.. get used to it.. ” with an expression which showed that she had enough of the discussion. When I told her that I felt bad because of the pessimistic attitude that she had towards this topic then she said that she has faced so much of these things on a daily basis that she has no faith that it will ever change.
It was so disheartening to imagine how a girl might feel when someone passes a comment on her on the road. And on top of all that they have to face it every single day (And I haven’t yet discussed about the groping and touching at public places). I can’t imagine living a life like that. I won’t hide it but I felt really lucky about being a man in this country.
All this makes me think what exactly is wrong with our system and how can it be fixed? When I asked others what could be the solution for this problem, no one had a good answer. Someone pointed out education, but I’m sure you must have noticed educated people doing the same thing. According to me the problem lies at the roots. Parents should teach their children how to behave with women. Instead of the kids learning things from Bollywood, television and friends they should learn it from parents. Parents should be more open to their kids and “talk”, I think that’s a very good point to get started.
Dear Women, please know your rights. Government has made many rules to prevent harassment of women but they are not strictly followed. Most of the times women themselves are too scared to pursue the criminals and that’s the reason why they roam around freely repeating the same thing again and again. If even one of you stands up against these people, that will make a huge difference. Scoopwhoop published a very nice article explaining some women rights, do read it.
I don’t deny the fact that I am guilty too in this whole thing in some way or the other. I didn’t try to stop people around me from doing such thing. I did crack jokes and supported jokes which supported this mentality. A lesson well learnt. 🙂
Friends, please spread the word and do what you can to make this country a better place for women.