Why the Hyper Reaction? Ask any Woman how is it to “Feel like a Raped Woman”?

Salman Khan is not alone; when he said, “I felt like a raped woman”, comparing his ‘extreme exhaustion to the condition of a raped woman”. This was during the now infamous interview with the video film magazine that has led to this huge media uproar. His defenders and opponents, men and women, family and friends, fans and critics have the most predictable arguments for or against it. Those apologizing on behalf of Salman attribute the faux pas to something like these, ‘His intentions were good”, “He did not mean it”, “He should not have said it” or “I know he respects women so he should apologize for hurting women sentiments”. I even heard rightly that a famed feminist Madhu Kishwar on live television went ahead highlighting Salman’s sensitivity towards “raped women” by comparing “his fatigue and pain” with their sorry state.

While all those who wait for this Khan to falter, found this the most apt opportunity to take him to class. “He must apologize”, “He has to”. From his antecedents to his present stardom he was made accountable for all in the present context.

But wait! Is it Salman the only one out there naïve enough not to exactly understand the analogy of “how it feels like a raped woman”. And if he is not, shouldn’t all those apologizing or objecting men and women talk out loud and clear that “Rape remark is not about hurting women sentiments” but “undermining an extremely heinous gender crime that has afflicted generations”.  The issue is not what he said but how simply he said, trivializing “a condition of victims of extreme violence”.

It is certainly not just the loose talk of Salman the hero that brings in the outcry. It is actually the triviality, belittlement, ridicule, the indifference, the insensitivity, the callousness, the bigotry, the discrimination, the injustice towards someone’s worst fears and misery that makes it the gravest offence. Salman’s casualness just brings forth the deep sickening mindset scaring women up to the extent of deep despair and panic that nothing’s going to change and never will.

No women would deny that if not “Raped” they still have spent all their lives in fear of being “Raped”. That’s why the foremost thing a woman would look for in this world is her safety and security. Not from a wild animal or a weapon but from fellow beings!

So women break open every door, climb the mountains, cut open your heart, create upheaval, turn the world upside down until fellow men understand and estimate your pain, trauma, anguish, anger for your “raped state or your persistent fear of being in a raped state”.

Sometime back during the 2014 elections Bengali filmstar and a heart throb of Bengali movies Dev, presently an elected member of parliament had made a similar comparison. He had said about the hard work he was putting in during election campaigns, “It is just like getting raped, Yaar..you can shout, or you can enjoy.”

Seriously, he thought “being overworked” was “to be like being raped as a woman”. And that “as he enjoyed his extra load of work so did women being raped”. He later apologized for his absurd and disgusting remark but that the apology was for “hurting the sentiments of women community” and not for “the state where women lived in perpetual fear and despair”. He still won elections with huge margin with blessings of the woman party chief Mamata Banerjee. But when he had said this in presence of no woman in the public space, no one could show him the anguish, the humiliation, the pain he brought to those who also chose him as their leader and thought would bring in a change to their “state of fear and terror of being Raped”.

Mulayam Singh Yadav highly respected for his political acumen actually to a big and loud round of applause in a public rally had said, “Ladkon se galti ho jati hai. uske liye kya unhe fasi di jayegi”. The men laughed and jeered while the fewer women present curled up into a bonsai state, not venturing to invite attention or else who knew in what state they would have had been pushed into.

“Rape? Blame it on the short skirts!” BJP MLA from Alwar, Rajasthan had said that sexual harassment arises from the fact that schoolgirls wearing skirts drew attention from miscreants (who!) on the way to and from school. Madhya Pradesh BJP leader Vijayvargiya now a prominent face of national TV gave the example of “Sita-Haran’ in the Ramayana- how women who step out of their boundaries (restricted area) are bound to get into trouble”.

A close male journalist friend recently while comparing “reservations for communities in the country”, compared “women to be a reserved section only because they have a right to take men to court “for rape”. “Being a woman is a privilege, you do enjoy reservations. You can charge a male colleague with rape and get him punished” was his scholarly observation. He really believed “women use rape privilege to overpower/control men” but he conveniently overlooked the “persistent state of under privileges women have been living in for ages until to be raped and killed”. Also that it easily passed off his mind that, being a man he enjoyed rights for a larger space in public life, larger share in the world, larger say in dealing with crime and violence only because women have been pushed to their self-afflicted safe zones due to the persistent terror of ‘Being Raped”.

Examples are umpteen and everyday ones, simpler, usable and acceptable. Some say “If the roads are not safe for women why do they venture outside”. Truly, women should be furthered in their bonsai-ed state so that one day they are just invisible so as to escape “Being Raped”.

Look around and see through at homes, roads, offices, schools, colleges, cinema halls amongst ordinary men and women all like you and me talking and taking so casually the ‘terrible state of women and they being raped”. A regressive remark will not make much of a difference as an apology would not set all things right.

But still this needs to be told loud, clear and noisily over and over again to ensure it reaches all eyes, ears and minds. Had the crime been so slight why would fellow women find it so difficult to fight it out all by themselves? Why would men threat women with ultimate punishment as “Rape”? Why would men warn opponents with raping their women folks to teach them a lesson? Why would raped women commit suicide? Why would the law make “Rape” to be such a grave offence?

Dear Salman and all men and women alike who really think or even don’t think that “Rape” is a gravest level of violence against any fellow being only because of their gender; Yes, hear it loud and clear!

Women have not just felt like raped, but lived in fear of being ‘raped’ all through their lives. This is not the fear and uncertainty of some accident, illness, fatigue or torture it is the abject distress of violence perpetrated by fellow beings sharing the same worldly space.

There could be nothing as brutal as being ‘raped’ for women because of the levels of violence perpetrated towards human beings, an additional one and the most torturous all due to their sex. It is not a wound that would heal with medicine.

And that’s why the hyper reaction!

Next time don’t compare on behalf of a woman saying “it felt like being raped” because you have never lived with the fear of such violence day in and day out today and all days. Ask her how it feels when she cannot step out of home out of fear, how insignificantly she has lived because of her gender, how she has endured captivity just to escape “being raped”.

It severely hurts Salman! Don’t compare, “Rape” to a general situation. It is certainly not the pain that you would go through either as an ordinary man or the hero “Sultan”.

West Bengal Elections: “What is it to vote?” Ask Women in Sundarbans who voted today

Seventy Five Year old Saraswati Giri holds hand of her fifty five year old third son Narendra to walk comfortably in her red and white saree to the polling booth at the Bali Purbopara High school in Bali island, one among the fifty four of the low lying clustered islands inhabited by people in Sundarbans in West Bengal. She is a voter of Goshaba assembly constituency in south 24 paragana district going to polls in the fifth phase of elections in the state. She doesn’t remember how many times she has voted in her life. Living in a wildlife conflict zone in equal fear and fancy for the forests, her only wish today to vote is that “her leader will someday find measures to lessen the dependence of the people of her village on jungles”. She does not know whom she is voting for nor has she even heard his name. She has not seen him ever come to their area except for during a campaign this time in the bazaar for a few minutes that she learnt from her son later. She still does not know who he was and which party did he campaign for. Her son has guided her with the symbol where she needs to press the button. And she is doing so for her son.

“My only wish is that our dependence on the jungles for livelihood should go down. I have seen people living in fear. I have lived in fear of the tigers, snakes, crocodiles and also the regular high tides that wash away our homes. I wish may be we had a better place to live”.

The women folks are excitedly queuing up at the school. Some come with their children, some with their families. Political parties have arranged special battery driven cart vans to ferry the voters to the polling station. Women are waiting patiently to avail the facility. The elderly and the ones with children get the first preference. They have worn their newer clothes, taken their morning baths, cooked the food early to be ready to vote. Ask any of them about their leaders they are voting for and they would unabashedly show their ignorance.

“We do not need to know. Anyways no one is listening to us”, says fifty four year old Amita Pradhan, the younger sister- in-law of Saraswati Giri. “Voting is a customary practice so we must vote”, she explains. She walked four kilometers in the thirty nine degree celsius temperature to cast her vote. Leading a life in the island for the last forty years when she was married and sent to her husband’s house, she has only five times travelled out of the island. Twice during the floods and thrice to visit a doctor in the mainland! Ask her what is she voting for and she would come up with her only desire for a hospital in the island! “Just two days ago my neighbor Arabindo Mondal’s thirteen year son died due to high fever at home. The village doctor (Quack medical practitioner) prescribed medicines and just after having it he collapsed”, she tells her fears. “We see people dying for even simple health problems”.

The island of more than five thousand family houses does not even have a primary health centre and to reach the nearest health clinic people spend not less than an hour on the public boats to reach Gosaba block on mainland. Quack medical practitioners are the only available medical support for the people. Asha workers have been introduced in the last couple of years but with limited facilities, they cannot cover the entire area. There is no direct electricity yet limited solar panels and grids in individual homes provide electricity to the few. Nights in many homes are still dark yet the privileged ones use diesel run generators to light their homes. Others cannot afford but for boats to ferry people islands to mainland, air conditioners to run in newer resorts, Televisions in the select homes, the means of electricity is either by the two extreme measures; through the solar panels and grids or the diesel generators in the already vulnerable ecosystem.

Twenty six year old Lokhi (Lakshmi) Manna has also walked five kilometers to the Bijaynagar high school in Bali islands to cast her vote. She came in with her children. Her husband works in Kolkata and despite repeated knocks on her door by political party workers forcing her to call him to cast his vote she could not contact him in the last two days. “He was supposed to come. But do not know what has happened. The mobile network was so bad that I could not contact him. Party workers came looking for him and since he was not there I had to come early today. We have to as voting is our right although that does not change anything in my life”, she ruefully complains. Displaying her voter id card she adds, “My age and date of birth are all wrongly imprinted here”. Renubala, another seventy year old from 9 no Bali Bijoygarh looks concerned for her vote. She was turned away from one booth because that was not her booth. Whilelooking fro the right placeto vote she says, “Before I die, I would like to have my people get forests rights (jungler adhikar) in these jungles”. The Forest Rights Act of 2006 provides rights to forest dwelling people to pursue livelihood in the jungles. This is implemented in other forest areas of West Bengal but not in Sundarbans due to its vulnerable ecosystem. Yet people are totally dependent on the vulnerable forests be it for honey, wood or fishing in the forest waters.

The polling officer taking a guess divulges that almost fifty percent of the people have already voted in the first few hours of polling and it was peaceful. People in long queues still wait for their turn to participate in the democratic process probably the only way to register their place in the policy making of their country.

Pushpa Mondal, a forty year old excited about voting even in the remotest corner of the country says, “It doesn’t matter whether we are important. This is the time we just feel important. And this time I ask for adequate connectivity to the city. We are totally dependent on the jungles. We do not have other options. Men and women go collecting crabs and Bagda prawns (Tiger prawns) and are either caught by crocodile, tiger or even stung by snakes. If anyone wants votes they should also value us”.

Not Conversion but Miracles made Mother Teresa a Saint

In a country where miracles have been the driving force behind faith and religious practices, Mother Teresa is finally ready to be canonized as a saint for two of her miracles that she performed on her devotees. Vatican the headquarters of the Roman Catholic Church and home to Pope, the Bishop of Rome and the leader of the worldwide Roman Catholic Church approved Mother Teresa’s elevation to sainthood and set September 4, 2016 as the date for her official canonization. The Archbishop Thomas D’Souza while performing the thanksgiving special mass for the saint said that “the canonization was a formality but an important one”.

Mother Teresa is being elevated to be a saint of the Roman Catholic Church after she performed a second miracle on a person from Brazil who had prayed to her after her death and was cured of multiple tumors of the brain. The church had beatified her after considering the first case of a tribal Bengali woman from Jalpaiguri in West Bengal, who had disposed before the church about the miracle that cleared her of a malignant tumor after praying to Mother.

As the church gave the final clearance to Mother’s sainthood, the Blessed Teresa of Calcutta as she is popularly known, will on September 4^th 2016 in a gala ceremony in Rome be declared “Saint Teresa of Calcutta”. The city that she made home and served the ‘poorest of the poor’ has the headquarters of the “missionaries of charity”, the order of catholic nuns founded by her. The novices and Mother Teresa’s devotees have been worshipping her much before she was even considered being a saint.

Sunita Kumar a renowned artist has been associated with the Missionaries of charities for the last thirty six years. A practicing Sikh married to a practicing Hindu she had been vociferously and voluntarily serving as the official spokesperson of the Missionaries of Charity for the last thirty years. She has had drawn numerous sketches of Mother Teresa recognizable by her trademark petite look in white and blue bordered cotton saree. Displaying one of her best art work on Mother she explains, “Most of them were signed by Mother but Mother just questioned me always that where were her eyes and lips, not marked in the sketches? I explained her then that I saw the saint in her. She did not need physical features to be identified. In fact her presence was so colossal that I never felt the need to draw features to explain her presence. She was always recognizable”. Sunita Kumar a grandmother now adds that she herself has had a personal experience of Mother’s miracles. “Just two hours before Mother’s death, I had asked her to pray for my young child suffering from Hepaptis B then. But after Mother was gone we checked him out of curiosity and it was gone from his body. My child recovered and I cannot forget this ever”.

Similarly with folded hands Margeret Rose of Park Street in Kolkata prays every day near Mother Teresa’s statue. On the evening of the special mass at the “Home”, while men and women participating in the mass took turns to visit the adjoining exhibition room and learn options on volunteering at the several homes run by the Missionaries of Charity worldwide, Rose remained indifferent to the flurry of activity around. She was in deep thoughts with Mother with big drops of tears flowing down her cheeks. She finished after complete half an hour of prayers. “Mother was a saint always and I have been praying to her even when she was alive”, says the seventy four year old frail woman who comes daily walking down through busy congested lanes to reach Mother’s home in the narrow lane with the wide gates. “I owe my life to her. Her touch was magical and I live till today only because of that saintly magic”.

Novice nuns in their plain white sarees carrying their books, graduate sisters in the trademark blue border and whitesaree, head covered with one end of the saree and pinned neatly come one after another to touch the tomb, bow, pray quietly and leave as part of their daily routine. “We have prayed to her earlier too. Indeed, now it means the world recognizes her powers as a saint. But for us she was the call, hence I came all the way from Orissa at the age of eighteen to be a sister at the missionaries of charity. It took complete five years to be so”, says sister Aaronette M.C., a sister from Orissa who has spent fifteen years in service with the Missionaries and has travelled the world spreading Mother Teresa’s doctrine for the “poorest of the poor”. The order of about five thousand nuns has millions of followers across the world from all faiths.

This gains significance particularly now after the recent spur of violent attacks on churches and on the several Christian priests across the country for allegedly converting poor Hindues and tribals to Christianity. Mother even in her lifetime has faced persistent indictment for conversions and it continues till today. Just last year the Rashtriya Swamsevak Sangh Chief Mohan Bhagwat raked up the controversy by saying “People like Mother Teresa did good work and service, but her aim was to convert the poor to Christianity. This kind of service is devalued if conversions are done in the name of service to the poor”. The after effect of the statement was so impactful that the Central Government even considered bringing in a national anti conversion law.

That time Bhagwat did not question Mother’s powers to perform miracles that won her the “Faithful”. He was rather questioning her service to the people as the reason for conversion. What concerned him was the fact that faithful Hindues were converting to faithful Christians and all due to Mother Teresa’s service for the poor people. He conceded that she was doing service with a selfish motive of converting the poor.

It is a fact that Mother till she lived had spent 45 years serving the poor, the destitute, the sick, the orphaned, and the dying, the untouchables on the streets of Kolkata and many other places. It was her body of work and service to the nation that made her “Mother”. The destitute, the untouchables, the ugly, the unwanted joined her for the love that she gave to the poorest of the poor. Mother was a mother in real sense for her compassion towards the people and her dedication to work for the ‘poorest of the poor’ living in the most wretched conditions.

But that is no miracle. Her sainthood is attributed for the miracles she performed on people and cured them in miraculous circumstances. Bhagwat or anyone questioning Mother’s motive does not have any concerns on the miracles that the “Blessed Teresa of Calcutta” performed. Nor does he or his likes want to question the rationality behind the miracles.

Bhagwat could be partly correct to question Mother’s real motive of service to the poor. Mother was a staunch practicing Christian and she had vehemently in her lifetime conceded that “her faith in Jesus and the church was supreme” and she followed “her faith vehemently”. It is but simple that saints have the power not just to perform miracles but equally influence people by their way of life and the service towards humanity. Many must have willingly chosen to walk her path for the service she did for them. And why should not people of a democracy have that right to decide whom they want to follow or worship.

“Her aura is immense. It was her call that made me a nun of the order” says Sr. Deena M.C who took to conversion by choice to follow the leader of the order. Finally Sunita Kumar refuting all charges adds, “Mother practiced a philosophy of humanity where she never asked her followers to convert to her faith. I prayed with her in the same chapel where she always asked me to pray the way I knew”. “She has always been the saint as I know her”.

Ironically, all her followers decided to follow her by being touched by her ability to perform humanly service towards people. But Mother Teresa is a saint today for some miracles that many might find doubtful. Her service towards human kind is known to everyone yet nineteen years after her death she is questioned for her motive to do service and not for her miracles. Also the fact remains that the making of a saint in today’s world is also by virtue of performing miracles and not necessarily by the constant tedious hard work for the betterment of humanity.