This is for all the angry people

Beatles composed a beautiful song ‘For all the Lonely People’. This one is for all the ‘lovely wives’ who take up legal battles defending their husbands molesting fourteen year olds. Sorry folks, Mrs Tigerwood’s sisterhood can wait. This is time to salute Mrs Rathore and her exemplary courage, for not only living with such a man happily ever- after( after molestation of the likes of Ruchika, there must have been many more, of course) but also safeguarding the sacred institution of marriage under ALL circumstances. Such a family alone can rear children who will NEVER question their father’s shameful acts of spinelessness.

Enacting scenes out of films like Goondaraj, our former Director General of Police, Haryana, SPS Rathore forced the school where his own daughter was studying to expel Ruchika for daring to challenge his rightful act of feeling her body. So what if this girl was only 14, as young as his own daughter. Did his daughter ever confront him for taking away rights of another girl like her?

Men, in our society have their fiefdoms and are allowed a right to extend their territories. Government and corporates allow their senior personnel several perks, feeling eye- candies is part of the package. Wonder if Mr Rathore wanted to feel his own nieces and daughter’s friends, what would lovely Mrs Rathore do? Would his daughter be allowed to raise voice?

Because this man did not know where to stop!

And why would he stop, for everyone in our CIVILIZED society offered to pave way for his gallantry march of male-hood. Did his neighbours socially boycott him? A convent school, like Sacred Heart (!!!) in the Union Territory of Chandigarh, would not close down by keeping a girl who was trying to fight to protect her honour. Were there no teachers, nuns, mothers, neighbours who had gone through a similar experience and would empathise with this girl’s plight. Sure, this convent had many wards of senior IAS officers, were they all scared of a 14 year old girl’s courage to make them fall into deafening silence. Or, her courage made them feel measly of their own cowardice!

Perhaps, all these ‘family men n women’ were as nice as Mrs Rathore, saving their own little worlds for their little girls, who, they were sure would never have to face a Rathore. They shut their doors and windows when Ruchika’s brother was paraded in posh Sector- 6, handcuffed. They shut their ears to Ruchika’s once boisterous life silenced into perpetual house arrest after her expulsion from school. They did not break this silence when she consumed poison to protect her family’s honour. She fought for three years to give up after the sixth case of car theft was slapped on her kid brother, then 14, a student of prestigious Saint Johns School.

For three long years these nice men and women, who never exercise any right, nor voice, discourage their children from pursuing anything close to what Ruchika did, maintained silence of hypocrisy. They ensured a dead- secure future for them and their children. Treading safe path, keeping away from trouble. These are the people who feed opportunism; if the man is powerful, negotiate, enjoy fruits of life. Body can also be a commodity, given on lease for reasons of security.

These nice people would call girls like Ruchika, stubborn, impractical, a threat to institution of domesticating good, homely, obedient girls for matrimonial purposes.

It is not as much about men like Mr Rathore, it is about how girls are not allowed dignity of their person. How many mothers tell their daughters to maintain silence, to avoid trouble. They are conditioned into believing that they can let go of their right over their own body for larger good of future and the family. Men like Rathore are products of the same social set up, where woman are not given respect even within family. Where men alone are perceived to carry power, where women are forced to remain their shadows. Support of a wife in a case as blatant as this one, would certainly embolden rogues like Rathore. It is also such a sad reminder of our social reality, where so called educated women still lack courage to speak up their mind.

If Ruchika and Aradhana exemplify courage against gender politics, lovely Mrs Rathore is a case negating it all.

Pix women lithograph- Courtesy Flickr.com

Is Copenhagen listening

How Indians are discouraged from buying cars

Our Sarkar is not aware of what incredible service it renders to the cause of reducing carbon footprints.

If you have to get just one car registered at Panchkula, in a lifetime, you will never think of repeating the experience.

Wonder, how people think of possessing a fleet of cars! If you have to get them registered, “two is crowd!”

One experience of going through the “testing patience, faith in God and temper” will leave you with profound realisation- that all material possessions are not worth possessing.

To begin with, sarkar will make you realise that a document, as authentic as passport ( given by sarkar itself) is not good enough proof of your existence. So, a bored- with- life, balding vakeel sitting under an equally balding neem tree on a chair panting for breath under his weight with a nineteenth century brief case filled with stamp papers, one stapler and a tube of gum placed on dilapidated table, supported with two bricks, will provide an affidavit for the proof of your existence.

And, how would he know, that you are X,Y or Z? He will check your passport, voter ID, or, ration card !

No! This is not ridiculous. This is faith. This is procedure.

Double protection!

The tables; sad, broken, discoloured, dysfunctional- representing the lives and livelihood of notaries and vakils are surrounded with some forsaken trucks. No, the notary verifying my papers by putting a blue stamp( while he talks, few people just pick the seal and stamp their papers on their own) dispels this myth. The trucks were confiscated for not possessing right papers. So, you learn in one day- relevance of keeping papers in order for a good, orderly life, not to be confiscated.

The typist who typed like a robot, without ever looking at what letters were being printed on paper, looked like a man robbed of all his dreams. If you don’t see dreams, you fail to see anything. His life sure was confiscated.

The whole set up is designed with a view to make the person seeking registration, run away from the scene as soon as possible. And, this is achieved by petty people demanding unreasonable price for such petty jobs as stamping your paper.

No wonder, people want to get rid of the ordeal.

But, this was just the beginning.

With authentic chasis and engine no. provided by a reputed global manufacturing company of cars, you had to look for an illiterate boy who can provide you pencil print of the same, to be attached with your file.

Why? God alone knows!

That provides proof of your car.

This is followed by one more verification of vehicle by our sarkari inspector.

The quality control of the manufacturing company that gives details of all sorts for the car is to be further ascertained by a traffic inspector, who, god knows why again verifies car’s quality by inspecting the vehicle. And how does he do it? By slamming doors and bonnet!

I ask him, feigning innocence, what is horse power?

He avoids me.

Now is the time to again stand in a queue.

When my turn arrives ( this was the second- day I had to take half day off from work to get the car registered) the inspector scrutinises me to ask, why do I write my father’s name along with mine, instead of husband’s ?

I thought I live in a democracy that gives equal choices to genders.

Sarkar, certainly has no value for the time of its denizens.

After all that ordeal and four more visits to the office, this is the fifth month, I am still waiting for RC.

Courtesy- Flickr.com India Marches on by Deetinani