Tuesday 7 March 2017

An open letter to Maneka Gandhi

Dear Maneka Gandhi,

Adolescence=hormonal outburts=lakshman rekha= cage=animals =mating season

But, we are not animals. That's the whole difference. We are humans and we have been gifted with intellect, reasoning, selfcontrol and many such attributes which is the main reason we are different from animals. So if you try to exercise control over humans in the same way that you control animals during their hormonal outburts, then you lose the entire logic here.

Sex education. Yes. This is the time to teach them about sex education, unprotected sex, unwanted pregnancy, sexual abuse, STDs, consent, etc.
And this has to be taught to both boys and girls alike. What kind of a thought is this to instead exercise control on them in such a manner ? And at such an age where they are already self discovering and learning about their physiological needs from the wrong sources mostly?
Why can't their energies be channelled instead in more productive and social causes? Why can't educational institutions and hostels come up with innovative ways to address this instead of talking unpractically and unrealistically about locking up boys and girls.  Is it a zoo? Are they animals?
I am apalled at this coming from a woman whom I had some regard for amongst a herd of ignorant leaders. And reading this the first thing in the morning a day before Women's day, just gave me a setback into a hundred years.
Is this progress or are we regressing into stone age? What message will you be sending out to these boys and girls? That the only way to refrain from an interaction with the opposote sex is by locking yourself up? That if something wrong happens to a boy or girl sexually then hormones are to be blamed and not ethics, morals and character.
Waah Maneka ji, slow claps for you! You just reiterated what these male leaders have been saying all along.

-A mother of a girl and boy.

Monday 6 March 2017

HOPE

I pick up my pen to write some lines
Maybe a sonnet, or a verse that rhymes.
I can't think of what I should say
Should I talk about this bright new day?
Should it be a story that I should dare,
Or shall I write of the heartache and despair?
And the betrayals this heart has borne?
Maybe I'll pen the pains life has shown.

I think of all my struggles in life,
The battles I have won with strife,
What was it that made me cope?
Was it this thing called hope?
Yes hope it was that made me go,
Faith kept pushing me through the low.
It was hope that I lost never
My hope in hope will stay forever!