(Happy) New Year

It's the end of the year. A beautiful year, some would say. A sense of hope, newness and positivity.   But what we really have got is blood on our hands! Our hands are soaked with the blood of a girl who was one among us, a girl for whose life we were all in some way responsible.

Rape is not new to this country. It has been existent since since the old and young of this country can remember. It was a crime then and it is a crime now. Then why is it that it is still taken so lightly? Why is it that we have no solutions to curbing it? It is not something that has risen out of the blue. It has taken such a heinous incident for us to wake up and take notice of it. 'Amanat', 'Nirbhaya', 'Damini', 'Daughter of India'  had to be the unfortunate sacrifice for us, 'culturally rich citizens' to absorb the magnitude of this crime. What about the thousands of unsung, unnamed victims who've stifled their screams and gulped down her tears, because, 'we are a culturally rich country!'

What culture are we talking about? The culture of asking your daughter/sister/mother/wife/girlfriend to pack pepper spray in her bag because she might get assaulted? The culture of asking the women of your house to stay under house arrest after 6 because they might be raped? The culture of dictating to a woman what she 'needs' to wear rather than what she 'wants' to wear because her clothes will draw unwanted attention to her and she might be assaulted/ molested/ raped? And who gives these instructions? The men, who for the love of God, cannot seem to keep their urges and needs under control! Men who seem to believe that the only way of showing their so-called dominance over women  is by raping them. The men who worship Kali, Durga, Maa, Devi...

'Amanat' has ignited fire in us. This fire has been ignited way too many times earlier. It has just been extinguished sooner or later with no effect. Politicians have given flowery, moving speeches in the past and they continue to do so today. People tweet condolences and follow it up the next second with where the hottest New Year bash is going to be. People shed a few tears and continue their gossip. If nothing, we're a bunch of wonderfully hypocritical people.

May your soul rest in peace, for you have fought untiringly, if not for anything else, for the sheer will to live. I hope and pray fervently that your efforts will not go waste and that your death will not be in vain.

Musings

It was Friendship Day last weekend and throughout the day I was reminded about how we used to celebrate it as kids. How things suddenly seem so different. No, I'm not 80 years old! But the celebrations of friendship has changed considerably.

As kids the preparations for the day would begin months in advance. We would begin collecting wool at least a month in advance. Then the laborious process would begin. We would braid the wool into different patterns (get mom's to do when we were younger). We would make 'special' bands for our 'best friends'. The not-so-good ones would be reserved for acquaintances or 'emergencies'!

Everyone got a 'friendship band'. We were judged by the number of bands we received. They acted like  a measure. We were judged by the number of friends we had. We still are! We are forever judged by the kind and the number of friends we have.

A 'best friend' would normally be the person sitting next to you in class/bus. The ones who stayed with you for a couple of years became 'friends for life'. Why then did it suddenly become so complicated?

I think we all started growing up. We realized that 'best friends' and 'friends for life' didn't exist. Our bubble about friendship began to burst. We began to get very selective about our friends.

We all manage different sets of friends. Friends from school, college, neighborhood, hobby classes etc. Some people know how to strike a balance. Some others get carried away with one set that they forget that the others exist. Strings begin to strain. New strings are attached everyday. Stings get shuffled. One day you realize that it's just you holding on to the sting. The other person has let it go.

No, I am not a loner who hates making friends. I may not be the most friendliest person on earth, but I do have friends. Whatever changes my definition of friendship has gone through and the many branches that it now has - additions, deletions, the ones I've stopped caring about, the ones I've started caring about, the ones that have become stronger, the ones that have become weaker, I am really proud of all those because somewhere they define me.