NAVRATRI SNAPSHOTS 2015



•  A 40 years old, mother of two teenagers is distributing ice-cream sticks on the road near her apartment complex to street children. Some of them pre-teen and teenage boys, soon she is being pulled and groped and loud whistles and leering and she runs back inside the gated residential complex. The misguided kids enjoy the free ice-cream, aunty goes back to her condo, runs a hot bath and all that remains of the incident are the wrappers piled on the footpath.
  When we let go of any incidents as minor incidents of street harassment, don’t we pave way for far more dire incidents?
  What makes our boys believe they are entitled to rowdy behaviour ?Is our "Charity" misguided?

•  I am watching news, my little one who is unaware of the technical gross details of sexual violence and RAPE, knows the word and knows that it is a cruel and bad thing to do to anyone. She stops colouring and after overhearing bits and pieces of a debate over the rape of two minors, she asks, "Mumma why do people hate and hurt little girls , so much? " I have no convincing answers.

• In a neighbourhood Kirtan, almost every other song or line has the word "laal" (red), traditionally the colour for married women ( Saubhagyavatis), those singing these lines loudest are widowed mothers, sisters and wives , sitting in a corner away from the deity, the inauspicious women.

• Not far from the Indian capital two little children are charred to death because they were not fortunate enough to be born upper caste, we look away and feel we have done our bit for the future kids of this country by distributing a few plates of poori-halwa.

•P : Mumma we Indians are generally brown you said , because of our genes and race and ,and climate.

Me: Yes dear.

P: Then why are all the goddesses fair, other than Kaali?

Me: ahmm....

P: and why don't they make Kaali beautiful? If a woman becomes angry does she become ugly?

I have taken some time from her to answer these difficult questions.