Daughter?? In India?? Gear her up, NOW!!

I cannot fathom as to how casually we can take rape cases that to gang rape cases like a robbery or any other corruption cases. Please understand whatever century we are in, rape is not exploitation of just the body, it takes away the soul from the body of the victim. The trauma they must be going through is unimaginable!!

But today I dont want to discuss about that. Enough of discussing now, we need to evaluate and find some solutions. And I am not talking big...I dont have the ability to change the government nor do I have the power to bring the SHOOT AT RISK/SIGHT policy for all the morons. And on the other side, I am totally against the concept of adapting to the society. I cannot ask my daughters to be clad in a BURKHA just because jerks outside might have a heneous eye on them. Common grow up, if girls start wearing BURKHA was the solution, Pakistan n other Islamic countries would have no rape cases at all. Beauty is always in the eyes of the beholder and similarly...GROSSNESS is also in the eyes of beholder.So lets not even go there!
Then being from an affluent society I can settle abroad without having to think about anything. But can I just find any place on earth where I can be sure of safety?? Not really!!:( And what about other girls of my country,who have no chance of running away from.this.situation?? )
So now, when I have ruled out locking the gurls in the house, making them wear a BURKHA and also running away from.my country.I am.left with some more bold ideas.
First is self defence. Teaching martial arts of any kind would make our kids physically strong if not for fighting.out the monsters, atleast for running away if the need be. Pepper spray should be gifted on birthdays. Rakhi n all.ocassions to remind the girls to carry them all.the time.
Second, avoid going in secluded places. Even with brothers boyfriends or husbands you can never b safe in a secluded place. Libraries, lifts, rest rooms, public buses, trains all should have cameras. Cameras will induce some amouny of fear of being caught. Most of the monsters doing such crimes are white collared citizens who have a lot of public fear otherwise. Every person has an angel and a devil.in him. Usually the angelic sides are for the world n devilish when you are sure of annonimity.
Third, strict punishment within 1 month of the crime. In India, there is no fear of law. The rich get away with the influence and the not so rich are confident of the impotency of our legal system. So lets for once be potent enough to bring such extreme rules. But again as I said, its not in my reaches. So no use discussing.
Teaching the new India our sons and brothers to respect women is part of the whole change required for improving the situation. Start from home and make sure girls at home are treated equally.
Now, last and the most important and unheard of things which I have to write is about the emotional strength.i know unlike the past times, new India has started to realise that the victim is at no fault..Parents now dont disown their poor girls for being raped and molested. They even try to help.them to cope.up.with the trauma. But I see it differently. I think we should educate them and prepare them to deal with such trauma irrespective of our status, caste creed or age. I mean as we give sex education to our kids, we should give.them education  for dealing.with traumas also. Its a very sensitive topic and none of us will ever be able to imagine our kids as a victim but imagine if GOD FORBID it happens. Most girls in India still commit suicide if they go through this. Even when they are not at fault, girls cannot take the trauma.
We Indians communicate.less.with our kids and we forget that in this process of maintaining an hierarchy we forget to.connect. If we connect with our kids, be it a relationship breakup or an exam failure or peer pressure or RAPE ...the kids will never feel.left out. Make them.emotionally so STRONG  that none of the odds on earth can shake them.

I may sound insane to you right now, but I am.sure I am not wrong!!! FOOD FOR THOUGHT!!

HEART BLEEDS FOR FREEDOM AT THE STROKE OF MIDNIGHT!!

At the stroke of midnight..when the roads are engulfed by the dark,

I want freedom to dawn in every heart of my country.
When I have an opinion, 
I want the freedom to opinionate it without thinking about my religion or caste or gender.
The every wrong I see around, 
I want the courage to protest and eliminate
The bygones be bygones, 
atleast now I want the leaders to awake and arise and for once keep the country before the self.
My people are full of tallent, 
let the merits for once be decided not by minority or majority but purely the worth
Love is our birth right and 
none needs a moral police to decide for us how who when n where we want to connect
Every kid in my country is my future, my countries future. 
I demand their basic right of education.
List can go on and you may choose to ignore me as greedy gruch. 
Before you do that, I insist to be treated as an EQUAL.
I am a WOMAN but still a HUMAN!!

This post is a part of Write Over the Weekend, an initiative for Indian Bloggers by BlogAdda

TALE OF DISCOVERY OF CINDERELLA

In India, the most undeserving people behave like kings and queens in front of the people below them. They knowingly/unknowingly humiliate their sub-ordinates, helpers, community helpers, drivers, maids and servants. Forget treating them equals, people don’t even treat them like humans. They often forget if it was not for these people, the equilibrium of our houses would go for a toss.

We have been taught to respectful and compassionate to all, irrespective of their jobs. And I tried to inculcate the same values in my kids since they were born.

Talking with respect to the plumbers, electricians, carpenters who come in the house for work. Being compassionate to the maids and servants working for us and doing all our house work was the first lesson I had taught my kids. When the staff at home is sick, I personally take them to the doctor and make sure they are not exerting themselves till they get better is what my kids have seen. And as rightly said, my daughter followed me and she displayed the same respect and compassion to the people working for us.

But things started changing when she started with her pre-school. I noticed that she is becoming more selfish, arrogant and disrespectful towards the staff. We have a  full time old staff at home which is like family and she started mistreating her. After a bit of research, I figured out that she is getting influenced by her surroundings. I saw kids around her are throwing tantrums, hitting their house maids, spitting at the drivers, screaming at the security guards, bullying the kids of the staff. I was so sorry for them and wished their parents realized what they are doing is what their kids are learning. I was very sad to hear from a 6 year old boasting to her mother that "I will handle this Maya(her house maid who is of her mothers age) Mumma, you don’t bother!". Do you really think, with this behaviour your kid would ever learn the RIGHT thing?

Now, before educating the world, I had a bigger task in my hand. I had a 3 year daughter who has already learnt a little bit of WRONG from her surroundings and now I had to "DO IT RIGHT". But I didn’t want to preach her, I wanted to educate her. I wanted her to figure out,  her own definition of GOOD and BAD. So I had a master plan to execute.

I told my house maid to stop doing all her work. I started this experiment on Saturday on a weekend, when I was off from work. She got up in the morning and shouted "Didi,, Du du", I told her "Beta, Didi is not well, you have to make your own milk!".She didn’t understand what I meant, then I told "Ok, I will make milk for you and bring, but you need to ask me politely". She pleaded " Mummy, please give me some milk!". I gave her milk. Then she shouted again, "Didi, I want that chocolate!". I again told her, "I would give it to you if you ask and not order!". Likewise, till Sunday evening, I corrected her. She understood that things will not move unless she requested me for it.

Then in the night during her bedtime stories, I told her the epitomic CINDERELLA story in which I purposely stressed on how the step mom and step sisters asked Cinderella to do all the work and spoke so disrespectfully to her. How life gets fortunate to some and unfortunate to some. At the end of the story I told her to summarize the story. And as expected, she co-related my house maid to Cinderella. She became compassionate towards Cinderella and in turn towards my house maid too. That was an enlightening moment for her; and a proud moment for me. She had absorbed just the correct thing I wanted to convey to her.

That was the last day when she misbehaved with my house maids, or driver or helpers. She has gone a step ahead of respect and compassion and started loving them. We go to restaurants and she asks my house maid what she wants to eat? If we don’t take my maid with us, she makes sure we are taking a parcel for her when we go back. She would not let me sleep in the afternoon on weekends, but makes sure my staff gets that one hour of rest in the afternoon every day. When my staff is not well, she is the one who goes close to her and gives the "JADDU ki JHAPPI" to heal her. She wanted to celebrate my maid’s birthday, but she didn’t know her birth date. So we have decided on a date when we celebrate my maid’s birthday. She takes care of all her smallest of wishes. Her television serials, her likings in sweets, her new clothe everything is her responsibility now. I can just see the 360 deg change in my doll after just a small lesson which I taught her.

I am not sure what she is going to be when she grows up. But I am sure, she is going to grow up to be a very nice human being. She feels the pain of people around her; she is compassionate towards the less fortunate. She can see their happiness and understand their sorrows. I just wanted to teach her to be HUMAN; she has proved me wrong and taught me how you can be a LOVELY HUMAN!!

I am sharing my Do RIght Stories at BlogAdda.com in association with Tata Capital.

Won the first prize and got an IPAD Mini 16 Gb. Thank you all for liking it.
http://blog.blogadda.com/2013/10/23/winners-do-right-stories-contest

Avani's dose of the day!! (13th August 2013)

My 1.5 yr old daughter "Avani" was sitting on my laps facing me and I was asking her to repeat A-Z after I pronounced the letters.
So here it goes
Mummy : A
Avani     : Aee
Mummy : B
Avani     : Ba
Mummy : C
Avani     : Chiii
and so on...
Avani was a little distracted, so I had to repeat it couple of times.
Mummy  : I...Avani look,,,IIIIIIIIII
Avani promptly replied
Avani     : Lub u!!

I read somewhere that you should often tell your loved ones that you love them. So I have a habbit of telling both my kids "I love you" all the time. So Avani remembered that and completed my "I" with the "LUB u". Like they complete me, they have started completing my sentences also. It was an AWWW moment for a mother.