I am a Goddess!!!
OK. Let me explain.
See, where I come from (India), women
are worshipped and highly respected as mother, sister and wife. We are placed
on a high pedestal and the men want us to stay there. But that’s not an easy
job! We need constant protection from all the evil in the world (Nah! We are
not the weapon-wielding, evil banishing Goddesses you see in Indian mythology.
That won’t serve the purpose per se. It’s
the pure, marvellous, unselfish, all-suffering, ever-forgiving ones I am talking
about) and obviously, the men cannot rely on our ‘woman-brains’ to think for
ourselves. And so, the Indian men have
taken upon themselves the herculean job of protecting the sanctity of Indian
women.
One must be wondering how they
carry out this job! Well, let me tell you they have performed wonderfully till
now! For example, girls are not allowed to go to the neighbourhood shops alone.
Why? Well, for the obvious reason that she is a girl!!! But it’s fine if she is
protected and accompanied by her five year old brother or cousin. BTW, they
have the full support of the mother and aunts in the family. So you see, men
are taught early on in their lives the most important lesson – women need
their protection. And they do their duty throughout their lives. They decide
what type of clothes the girls/women should wear, whom they should go out with, what friends
they should keep, what profession they should choose, and so on. Can you imagine
all the time they have to put into thinking all that?
Now, as hopeless we women are, we
continuously make their job harder! We want to work, we
want to have fun at parties, we want to wear short dresses, and what not (and that too when
men are trying so hard to maintain our Goddess status! Isn’t it just
outrageous?). So the men have to come out with new ways to keep us in line. Recently
I was told by a very educated person that all the rapes and sexual assaults on
women in our country are very much justified. Shell shocked? No, that was not
my response! See, he explained it to me in fair details as I am going to do
now. Well, it starts with Mother Nature. She made us women physically incapable
of doing anything by ourselves. Can we work in construction? No. Can we go run
a corporate house? No. Can we earn a living for ourselves? No. Can we do
grocery shopping for the house? No. Pay the bills, drive a car, go out of the
house after sunset? No, no and NO! Still, despite the best efforts of men, many
women do so, right? Actually, as it turns out, men regret that very much as
they want every woman to be inside the house leading a comfortable and
protected life.
But whimsical women!! So, men have
to stare at their body, grope them and objectify them if they go out in broad
daylight to creep them out of coming out of the house at all. Eve-teasing has
the same motive. And rapes! Many respected personalities of the country have
made that clear already. ‘Have you ever heard of a respectable woman getting
raped?’ Also, a video by AIB titled ‘It’s your fault, Ladies” starring actor Kalki Koechlin and
VJ Juhi Pandey explain in details how rapes are women’s fault. As the educated
man mentioned above explains, a girl going out at night partying has no right complaining
about rape if that happens to her. If a girl is partying late in the evening
or if she drinks, she deserves to get raped (but it is OK to go to a party with
husband or brother). And is not that what she does every day in the first place?
How else do you party?? Rape is not an assault; it’s a correctional measure in
India for those inglorious women who do not understand their position in the
society. And yeah, women should stop complaining about rapes when they happen. As
the man asks, (actually, most men have the same question it turns out) why don’t
women rape men instead? Then probably the men will stop. Well the answer is we
can’t. We are not physically strong enough to do that. And just because we can’t
do something, there is no reason to complain about those who can. That’s just so
immature!! So, women should stop whining and comply. And on the same note, when
a woman is not ashamed of herself after such an incident, takes it in her
stride just like she would have done if she was bitten by a stray dog instead,
she has no right to complain because that means she enjoyed it!! (I don’t get
the logic here but that’s not the guy’s fault! After all I have a woman’s
brain, right?). When such incidents happen to a child or a 70 years old woman,
they have good reasons then too. It’s just that I forgot to ask. Again, a woman’s
brain. Phew!!
What happens when women are
allowed to think for themselves? Well, India will become like American and
European countries! Yeah..that’s it. Why, this isn't a good enough reason for you? Have you
seen the way women live in those countries? They wear whatever they want, do
whatever job they want, marry whoever they like, literally divorce when they
are not compatible with their spouse, the children do not live with their
parents their whole life (that’s despicable and totally women’s fault I am
telling you!!) - in a nut shell they live their life!! That’s not Goddess-ly
at all. Have you seen the women decently covered from head to toe, silently doing the bidding of the male members of the
households, not going to schools or colleges or working and earning for that
matter to challenge the authority of the male heads – that should be the ideal
image of a woman!! And believe me, many Indian men are working very hard to
achieve that goal.
So, this brings me to my first sentence. I am a Goddess. I have been the woman who listens, and the best
part, never complains!! That was all I could do to make their job easier. The
men in our lives (father, brothers, husband, uncles, neighbours, moral police, etc.) work their asses off (pardon my French)
to protect us and keep us in our 'pedestal'. They don’t want us to come
down and toil hard to achieve our dreams but to be comfortable and depend on
them for all we want. But then again, haven’t they done enough? I think the
least we can do to thank them for their hard work of last hundreds of years is
to now reverse our positions and put them in that respected place and give them
the same comfort that they have provided us with.
Is that too much to ask?
