A Mumbai For Women

It was a Saturday. It was a lazy afternoon. And to top it all, it required for me to travel an hour on the Mumbai local train to reach the venue. But still I went for the 'Mumbai For Women' blogger's meet, organized by The Times of India and Indiblogger. This wasn't to be the first time I'd be part of something that would rather require the involvement of women.

Like the entire nation, I too, was awakened by the sheer effrontery of the Nirbhaya gang-rape case in the capital. The unprovoked and dastardly attack brought me to a face-off with how uncivilized our society has ultimately turned out to be. That how every essence of safety that we've carefully put up for ourselves, has been rendered senseless. Why is the progressive Indian society passively accepting this situation, for the last decade?

Like a fellow blogger pointed out, unfortunately we're all here at this point of confrontation because of the use of a rusted, L-shaped, metallic wheel jack handle - the infamous rod. Before this case, it was the 'chalta hai' and 'mango baatein' attitude that easily held us separated from the horrific truth. What a shame!

The meet brought out the various outlook of the people of Mumbai, men and women alike, on the issue of how safe Mumbai is for women and what can be the responsibilities of it's citizens to make it even better. Now I'm not a Mumbaikar. I have just arrived a few months ago from Vellore (say Chennai, for a better societal perspective), where I studied and Kolkata, which is my home. And as I see, things are lot better in the financial capital of India. Being not from Bombay, I tried to associate on a much larger palette, with an otherwise city-centric issue.

Statistics show that Mumbai is safe for women, over many other major cities in the country. And yet as the experiences speak, it has a crazy molester at Powai, stalking girls late in the night. Women being eve-teased by unknown men at Antop Hill. For a woman, travelling on the common compartment of a local train still means daring a stare, or a lewd remark, a suggestive smirk or even a physical brush of mildly offensive intent.

So natural conclusion from all this comes to the point where the women begin to accept that men, except their fathers maybe, are generally bad. But is it really?

A woman is being beaten by her alcoholic husband every night. The beatings are enough to develop visible wounds and scars. Those, she can apply ointments on. But why continue hiding her emotional scars by claiming that 'her husband otherwise loves her, and it's only when he drinks..'? Why does a young, independent modern woman keeps the number of her hair dresser in her cellphone while avoiding to store an emergency helpline number? Why did the group of young women I met at the silent candlelight vigil at Kolkata (to  show our solidarity with the Delhi gang-rape victim) insisted rather on taking innumerable photos of themselves being part of something happening, and tweet about it simultaneously?

The problem is of a higher level, not answered in the way a society divides itself on the ground of gender and sex. It is ultimately a culmination of social, political and mental failures in this country. We desperately need education, awareness, information and an understanding of mutual respect among people to bring back that forgotten sense of security.

And if I'm allowed to take potshots and point a finger at, in this connection, I'd like to point at the ways modern women are portrayed in the TV serials and Bollywood movies. They're not always some expensive saree-clad gossipy figure who has no sense of what goes on in the world beyond the zone about her palace-of-a-house and the neighbouring aunty's sex-life! And show me one one woman at a wedding, who would be dancing to songs like Fevicol se and Munni badnaam hui in such suggestive choreography! In my personal opinion, people like Malaika Arora Khan and Ekta Kapoor need to undergo rehabilitation, with the former one needing it ASAP.

For all I know, the modern Indian woman is an entrepreneur, a CEO, a journalist, a social worker, an author, a fashion designer, an artist. Then again, she also is a fashion blogger, a happy homemaker, a gamer, a technology buff, a food blogger, a travel blogger, a poet, a daunting yet dashing host and what not! What more can you expect from our friends, daughters, mothers, wives, and sisters? Can they not expect a little respect? A little care? That little feeling of being loved?

Change begins at home.

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Thank you Indiblogger for the wonderful blogger's meet, which was also my first Indimeet. Hope I get to attend more of these in the future. Thanks much for the opportunity to be meeting some of the most amazing contemporary Indian bloggers, to be talking to few very tenacious journalists of the ToI, and for the much-needed sandwich in the end!