Essay : I was only dreaming … by Arun Pandit

Yesterday night I was listening to the song “I wish I was a boy” by Beyonce and suddenly a thought struck my mind… ” I wish I was a girl”. I may appear a bit lout! But that’s what happened! All of a sudden hundreds of weird and funny thoughts began running through my mind. The oceans of lotions, the closets of clothes and shoes, the boys hovering around me and most importantly … what would I look like???It was getting crazy as well as funny! For an instance I almost forgot that I was a boy and I was getting deeper and deeper into this wild fantasy…

Suddenly a blinding light flashed across my face…and I saw a pious looking person clad in white robe…approaching me as if floating in the air…suddenly he spoke…” Son! Having fun! Enjoying the thoughts of becoming a girl???”I nodded as I couldn’t think of anything else…and immediately he was gone in thin air…And thereafter the whole arena turned into an empty hall…scary and dark…and I could begin to hear some bleak voices! They begin to magnify and I begin to listen them…it was a voice of a young girl…echoes went all around me saying….

I WILL NOT CRY!
EVEN THOUGH I HAVE GOT TEARS IN MY EYES!
I WILL NOT CRY!
EVEN THOUGH THE WORLD SEEMS TO ME LIKE A HOPELESS SKY!
I WILL NOT CRY!
EVEN THOUGH PEOPLE DOUBT ABOUT HOW MUCH I WILL TRY!
I WILL NOT CRY!
EVEN THOUGH I QUESTION MYSELF THAT CAN “I “!
I WILL NOT CRY!
EVEN THOUGH FOR MANY OF US IT IS A TIME TO SIGH!
I WILL NOT CRY!
EVEN THOUGH IT’S TIME TO SAY GOOD BYE!
I WILL NOT DIE!
BEFORE I GIVE IN ALL MY TRIES!
BECAUSE … HOPES ARE STILL ALIVE…
BECAUSE … HOPES ARE STILL ALIVE…

I didn’t knew what to do???Before I could do anything! I again heard the voice of the man I meet earlier…

He said in a painful and disturbed manner…

“Can you hear her soul…?

She is crying out loud…

Please tell me…

Please tell me…

Why do you want to kill me…?

Please let me see the world…

Please let me live…please… please…and the voice vanished … leaving the arena in a painful silence…and a series of images began to flash in my mind…

These were the voices of an unborn girl in her mother’s womb…waiting to be born…waiting to unleash her talents…waiting to make the world a better place to live in…

But what happened??? She was killed by her insouciant parents…an untold crime…silently buried into a nonplus affair….

His muse didn’t amuse me…rather left me in a state of retrospection….these few words seemed to me a never ending litany.

And within an instance I found myself on my bed…it was early in the morning…and I realized that I was only dreaming….

I realized that it is not funny to be a girl child… and I realized my thoughts about how nice it was being a girl was oblique in most respects…

And I thought… India …the oldest civilization of the world…India… the land of diversity…and it is India that we carry in our heart and soul… a nation where woman are regarded as god!

Where we worship goddess Saraswati for education…

Where we start all the functions with the Saraswati Vandana…

Where we worship goddess Lakshmi for wealth…and goddess kali and Durga for destroying the evils in the world…

We are proud of Kalpana Chawla, Arundhati Roy, Mother Teresa, Aishwarya, and Lata Mangeshkar…

And we boost of ourselves as being Indians… even more… humans…

But

HUMANS…how close are we to it?

Haven’t we become more lupine?? Aren’t we supposed to be called HU-MEANS…?

We worship mother India and we say that we are patriotic…

But look where we have landed???? What have we made of us…???

In this male dominated society the male population is growing at the expense of female population.

This is because males do not get consumed by the heinous acts by the so called fellow humans…the common thinking is that why not spend some 5000 on abortion now than to spend 5 lakhs in dowry when there daughters become nubile .

The act of having a family has reduced to more of an economic activity rather than the union of two souls…The thing even worse is that the educated people… and more shockingly … the educated women are also a part of it… who will listen to and understand women then???The laws are openly violated…showing a lax in the legal structure…Sati, Female infanticide and feticide is still prevalent across the country…No mulct is large enough to heal the wounds of these heinous crimes…

I alone cannot change the world friends!

It requires a collective and continuous effort to eradicate our earth from such incidences and give woman the actual respect and rights which they rightly deserve. Look around … your mother, sister, wife, friends, daughters… imagine life without them… think deeply about there role in your life … in your family… in the nation’s development and in shaping the future of the nation…They are not burden…they carry our burden…And as rightly said…” if you can’t respect women… you can’t respect anything

“Don’t check mother nature’s patience …

The balance of nature has a very delicate integument and the more we maul it like an oaf the harsher will be the consequences.

Let’s stop vacillating and understand that it’s mire which has reached inordinate proportions!

It is hard to muffle!

Help stop it! Don’t continue with this procrastinate approach!

The time to act is now…

Stop being an insensate stone…

Stop this mayhem!

Or maybe very soon we will see a holocaust engulfing mankind for its acts…

And this time I will not be dreaming…..

But it is hope that make me believe tha..

Together we can and we will limn a happy and discrimination free world!

With a message of hope I would like to end by quoting the lines of the great Tagore…

“Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high…

Where clear streams of reason has not lost its way…

Where the world is not divided into narrow domestic walls

Into that heaven of freedom …

Into that heaven of freedom …

Oh my father let my country be awake…

Oh my father let my country be awake…

– ARUN PANDIT @dontgiveup