GIRLS !

A friend was blessed with a baby girl a few days ago,his second ,and was quite distressed by sympathy calls.
Its navratra time,and almost every household worships little girls as kanjaks (little devis).
In a casual chat during an odd job,our old electrician tells me that the marriage proposal of his son (class 3 dropout,unemployed)did not materialise.because though the girl was ok (12th pass,working) ,her complexion was wheatish!
A few kms. away the same evening,at a farewell party at a friend's place,much to the amusement of all the guests,his old mother confronts his boss in crackling bhojpuri,about the office policy of not allowing more than two kids.
The much embarrased friend admits that due to her constant nagging about his two daughters and  the need to have a son ,he had cooked up the entire office policy story !

I hate to think this is India 2010,where daughters are still considered not good enough to complete a family.A son is still the ticket to salvation and pride,because daughters will go away to another family.
Yes to another good family only if they are fair ,slim,tall and beautiful !
Why ?why?
Will it ever change?
The need is not to worship little girls as devi ,but to give all girls a warm welcome in our lives and society,to treat them with equal love and respect .
Our girls don't need validation of their existence but acceptance of their being.

LOVE , *** aur bahut kuch !

I am no film critic and generally also I avoid passing judgements on other people's creative outputs.So whatever opinion I have about a poem,a book, a film or any other art piece I try keeping it to myself.However ,I do feel like absolving Ekta Kapoor of some of her saas-bahu sins for producing a film called Love,Sex aur Dhoka.Not that its a masterpiece,but Dibakar Banerjee does raise some relevant questions for the Youtube generation.

• We are liberated enough to send our daughters to film schools ,but are we ready to accept their decisions about their own life?
• Our society was always ridden with class and caste problems,but why are honour killings rising faster than our literacy rate?
• We take pride in the globalisation of our country but what about the productification(my word!) of women in our media?
• It is nice to have cameras in our phones,safety cameras in our stores,nanny cams in our homes,but are we mature enough to handle the voyeur in our mind?
• When we have hundreds of friends on ****book and 1000000+ scraps in **kut ,aren't we stealing away time from our real life relationships?
• Is privacy only a kind of setting online ?
• Are we a society of scopophiliacs,so hungry for entertainment that we can sell our own private moments for it?

The quest to find these answers is on,atleast till I get the gory image of the brutal honour killing in the film out of my mind,and I am sure it will be a long time.

I SALUTE THE MARTYRS

It is 23 March today,and because it is not valentines day,mothers day,fathers day,uncles day or any other such archies endorsed day we choose to forget that it is Martyrs' day- the day three young men ,Bhagat Singh,Sukhdev and Rajguru were martyred.
I won't be self-righteous and so have to admit that I am ashamed of myself that I also had no clue till I saw an Ad in the paper.
I have always believed that Bhagat Singh, had he lived more,would have surely been one of India's most learned and insightful leaders.In his short life-span he exhibited unmatched determination,sparkling intellect and a broad vision for a bright future for his motherland,qualities that any nation would be proud to have in their young leaders.
He was a self-proclaimed atheist who believed in himself more than God.
Lets pray and hope that his spirit lives on and inspires all of us to do whatever little we can for a better society and a stronger nation.