I know that this is just one of the many incidents that you may have read and usually i won't bother but j am so tired just really tired of being groped and touched everywhere just because i happen to be a woman. I still remember the first time i was touched without permission... I was a kid and didn't know better and thought it was just the way things were. The worst part? It was a relative! Then i grew up i realised that what happened was wrong but who do i tell it to? Who would believe me? Finally i told my friends and guess what? Mine was just a small drop in the big murky ocean of sexual predators who think it is okay to take advantage of a child just because they don't get caught. Well now i am an adult and i should be knowing better right? Let me tell you a story. Today i was travelling by a seater bus from Bangalore to Coimbatore. I boarded the bus and took my seat next to a very sweet woman. Then i tried to open the window n i couldnt so this wonderful man sitting behind helped me out and i smiled and thanked him. I have this apparently enviable character of being able to doze of immediately so i did and just some time back i woke up to hin rubbing my breast! Apparently my smile was an invitation!! And today i realised there is only so much i could do. I turned back to berate him while people just looked at me. He got up and left. Unopposed and in one piece to try again with somebody else some day. This is not the first and this won't be the last but other than hitting back what can i do? Wear appropriate clothes some might say...i was wearing a very loose and long top with a jacket over it... My next option would be a burkha if that's inappropriate. It is unfair that i have to finish nearly every journey disgusted and very very very angry. It's very exhausting and frustrating.

Just a thought

At the end of three years where a wide horizon of choices are suddenly once again your priority it’s hard not to reflect back on the life you have lived in a place that you have never grown to like. My college is and will always remain a symbol for conformity and utter suppression of the freedom, the freedom that we must’ve in order to become good professionals in our chosen fields. Here it was only meant to be on paper and not in action. The college, I don’t really have anything good to say but the people who I met will always linger…if not in the future at least in faint memories. I do regret a lot of things but I do not regret the person I have become today and the people who surround and our closest to me. Here, I found people who have formed a base on which my future life is going to be structured on. These are the people who have put up with my tantrums and made me feel like I could love myself again no matter whoever didn’t. In these three years I have made people love me and people hate me and I do not regret those moments of hate because that just molded me further into the person I am. Today I am feeling very introspective… I am thinking about the girl who left everything and just moved… she suffered through heartbreak, backstabbing and failure. There were long nights where she sat up just crying feeling more alone than ever. Incidents made sure that the crying didn’t stop at night and sometimes followed her into the morning. She made friends, lost a few with no regrets and moved on with the ones that remained. She is me and as I once again decide to choose a path that will take me from the place that’s become so familiar to god knows where I won’t make the same mistakes again. I will never leave behind my base.

A pale blue dot

Today I watched a movie called Men, Women and Children and it jus struck a chord within me. I cannot put it in words why I liked the movie so much but something about how it portrayed the reality of what’s happening in life without being too overwhelming.

“Pale blue dot by Carl Sagan

That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you heard of, every human being that ever was lived out their lives. Every young couple in love, every mother, father, hopeful child, every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there on the mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. How frequent their misunderstandings, how fervent their hatred. Our imagined self importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe is challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In all this darkness there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. Like it or not, for the moment the earth is where we make our stand. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. It underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we have ever known.”

One of the most underrated films I have ever seen.

QUORA ANSWERS

★

As an Indian boy what would be the one piece of advice you'd want to give to an Indian girl?

  

 -Akshat Seth, A Marxist

51 upvotes

Come out on the streets

Come out in large numbers

Come out in defiance of those that have for thousands of years kept you indoors- trapped, miserable and oppressed

Come out to shame the  bad fathers, the  violent husbands, the 'possessive' boyfriends, the oppressive khaps, the greedy market- to shame all the patriarchal forces and power structures enforced in the name of tradition, morality and honor.

Come out to shatter the the myth of 'beauty' imposed by Fair&Lovely.

Come out all ye women- young and old, married/unmarried, white, light brown, dark brown with your tresses or your hair loosened down in defiance

Come out shredding the pallus, the hijabs and all the symbols of oppression that patriarchy forced upon you.

Come out on the streets- shout, clap, dance around a bonfire and sing the songs of protest, singing them all through the night.

Come out and stay through the night, in large numbers and relegate the myth of 'night being unsafe' to the dustbins of a past to be forgotten.

O women of my country, come out and assert your right to live as human beings- equal in dignity. Spread the sweetness of your warmth, your music, your art all about you.

And still, if you so desire. give us a part of the music, the warmth, the compassion and the beauty that you are. Give us love, give us warmth and forever break away the inhuman tendency of mankind known as masculinity from us.

Come out- for freedom, justice and love.

NEW YEAR, SAME OL’ ME

So every year I make these grand resolutions and then follow the well traveled route of breaking them. A wise old person once said that New Year resolutions are meant to be broken and how right he was! The first week I am all geared up with the same old resolutions that I make year after year. Obviously it doesn't occur to me that there is a reason why the resolutions remain the same.

So this year I have decided no resolutions for me. Taking a year end review of myself I decided I did pretty okay in 2014. I found some new friends and I lost some old ones, I was taught grand life altering lessons and forgot them yet again, I cried, I laughed, I fought and I made up. There was a little bit of everything.  Most importantly I got a JOB! Nothing beats the joy of earning the money you spend (or part of the money you spend) so even though it’s part time or as some would say “barely enough to live on” but who cares?  I am happy. Then once again it is that time of the year when people are freaking about the things they didn’t do and remembering mostly the bad times. So if you want to take a resolution take one before the New Year which is that the next year you guys will concentrate on the good parts rather than the bad. Most importantly concentrate on very less whining and more of getting the work done. And you know what the funny part was? I didn’t put any effort in sticking to my list of resolutions and yet at the end of the year I see that I have accomplished most of them.  So you never know, maybe the key to accomplishing your resolutions is not to make any (if that makes sense).  And also people this new year try doing something different (don’t make it a resolution), step out of your comfort zone and most importantly make somebody happy.

So for once I am thinking why not just be happy being yourself and welcome the New Year with some friends, a good party and lots of love! 

GREEN INITIATIVES

Exorbitant amount of pollutants released in the air, deforestation, barren land, loss of biodiversity etc are the frequently seen issues that crop up daily in various media outlets but what you don’t hear every day is a groom demanding his in-laws to plant 250 trees in his ancestral land as the only condition for marriage! A village in Bhagalpur district has a unique tradition of planting at least ten trees whenever a girl was born. Yes, these stories may lose out on extensive coverage because they seem so unimportant and a small initiative but it is these very same efforts that could lead to a change to the vast amount of degradation that the environment in India is currently undergoing.

Environment problems are not just endemic to India. It is a global problem. Every place that contributes to a rise in pollutants not only affects their surrounding area but also alters a vital part of the entire global environment. We can’t just sit back twiddling out thumbs saying it does not affect us. You and I however small can create a change in positive manner if we just put the effort to do so. India, home to the second largest population in the world, can create a wider impact than most. Imagine if all people started thinking like that groom? I for one know that that it will lead to a lot more greener environment and might also play a huge role in abolishing the tradition of dowry that still rampant in parts of India.

LOOKING LIKE SOMEBODY

I was browsing to the news today when one of the snippets caught my attention. A man reportedly spent around $150k to look like his idol Kim Kardashian! I mean seriously? Of all the people he could choose he chose Kim Kardashian? Jokes apart, the debate on cosmetic surgery a.k.a plastic surgery has been going on for quite some time. In an increasingly superficial world, looks seem to have have taken precedence over most things.

I am not against plastic surgery. I am against the fact that most people opt for it without informing themselves about the risks and costs involved and therefore have unrealistic expectations from such procedures. Plastic surgery is after all a surgery and there are innumerable consequences the person has to deal with if it goes wrong.  Essentially, you have to first ensure that you have a strong support base. The changes you are going to make about yourself physically may not be noticed by stranger (unless you are going to turn into a celebrity look-alike like the man above), but your friends and family will definitely notice and some might even judge you for this. You have to ensure you have enough support around you to face that. Secondly, you have to face the possibility that you might not get the desired result. They are surgeons not magicians. So there is a chance you might end up looking worse instead of better. Thirdly, if you see plastic surgery as the solution to all your problems in life you might want to think again. What it does is changes your physical appearance and what it doesn’t is reinventing an entire new personality to go along with your body. Lastly ensure that you find a legal surgeon and learn the possible side effects or undesirable consequences of such a procedure. A lot of people experience pains after the surgery and also the recovery period can extend over months hence make an informed choice rather than banking on your ignorance.

Plastic surgery like everything else has its pro and cons. It can either make people lead a life with an improved self image and confidence or it can lead to the person ending up disillusioned and in place worse than before. So ensure that the surgery will give you an improved state of mind otherwise you might end up being someone you don’t want to be. LITERALLY.