The collateral existence

Growing up in a society where the literary world and the world of realism played a centrifugal role is certainly to spawn a generation of miscegenetic ideas and 21st century is no less. Here is man, regardless of race, religion, ethnicity, caste, strata or nationality, ruling since aeons with ace time attesting to his existence. With every passing age, necessity has been the mother of invention, mankind evolved but a man's heart and mind have hemmed and hawed when it came down to the existence of his counterpart, woman.  

 

Not that I am a feminist, however, I do proclaim shooting up on the edifice of Bengal Renaissance.  This afternoon, while viewing Ray's Mahanagar, for the nth time, I was wondering women still are herded to a survival by the herdsman where they deem the place safer and seamless from the perplexities of life. Let alone working on a square platform, she is "raped" by man for her very entity since the day she enters this world, she is "raped" by man for accessing basic health care and education, she is "raped" by man given to a marriage where dowry, in the veneer of a tradition abiding wife zapped up in the partisan societal fabric, is a harbinger of wealth and domestic servitude.

 

So when you hear the news of rape in media now, happening all over the world, the angst is obvious for women of all stratum, educated or ignorant, religious or asthetic, black or white. The very morale of such activity lies in the fact that man seem to completely enjoy crushing a spirit born free whose bodyily essentiality is defined and articulated only under his thumb rule. So when you hear about religious laws sheathing women from contributing to a nation's governance and collective policies, "I have a dream" speech commemorating 50 years of Martin Luther King Jr's March on Washington signify a waning fervour in 2013. So what if a commoner giving birth to a baby boy in 2013, he is baptized as a prince to be. The blood that flows in his body is royal, his lineage truncated to paternal only. So what if a blast ripped through a bus carrying female university students makes the news headlines in 2013, let us count the hits on our social media platform we have by spreading the word to the world lapping it up with the indiscriminate fire attack by the militia on the hospital building where the injured were taken into. So what if the Indian currency plummeting, the showbiz world is feasting on the box office collections of 'Chennai Express' both in India and abroad. The emotional quotient at the cinematic climax, set at a remote village in the southern part of India, toyed with a woman's sensitivity of not being heeded to in the 21st century laves the hearts of millions and mints money pivotal to the field of commerce.  

 

Just so while writing this piece, I receive the news of an expat's wife, our families live in the same building, praying not for a girl child, time is not deathly quiet. Crossing the longtitudes and latitudes of the world does not necessarily imply that you start ignoring your ancestry and their age-old institution of belief who had bequeathed us patronage in furthering the ancestral tree that takes root in a man. I feel the vibes soft-pedalled by the expat's wife - the societal stigma associated with delivering a girl child. Stoking up the fire is her quiet plea for help. She called up to consult me in putting up a plan to set her domestic chaos straight when she leaves for home on a mother-to-be break. Men love to be cosseted so much that they simply tend to forget that with marriage comes responsibility - both financial and moral - and need more than two shoulders to lift the millstone. We women are proud to be hanger-on. And yes this of course exudes peace in domesticated lives.

This is quite apparent when the world is fixated at Syrian crisis; the first lady of Syria, toned in grandiose lifestyle, is far from the media glare. Well her husband is there fighting at the front knowing all too well that she and her children can retreat to a safe haven anywhere in the world courtesy money, power and influence.  

Watching 'Mahanagar' this weekend I mustered all that is to take beyond the film is to preserve the treasure trove left behind by Ray for our children and theirs for the collateral existence of women is likely to perish only with the extinction of human race and not anytime soon.