Let women pay the price, 'cause men will be men

While I was growing up, I wasn't much sure of what exactly gratitude meant. But, I did learn the meaning of being good to everyone and having a generous heart. That - my parents did exhibit always.

As I grew up, I learnt the importance of being thankful to every person I met. No matter how menial the job done by one is, or how unimportant one's job might look, I understood every person has a role in shaping our lives. It might look inconsequential but, that I learnt is, on the surface.

Living in the city of Chennai, is so much different to living where I belong to. I don't have to think twice before stepping out of the house alone, or about returning from work late at night still having to walk for a short distance before reaching my door.

Reading about the plentitude of rapes that happen each day in cities and in villages, leaves me in discomfort. Every woman, actually. It is not like Chennai does not have rapes happening but as far as I have learnt, being a female who walks around alone many times and returns late from work on some days, I sure do know that this is the safest place I have lived among all the places that I have lived in till now. 

Mothers and fathers can only ask us to take care and to be safe and keep worrying until we are back home.

I still remember, a few years back, I had a habit of saying thank you to auto drivers, cab drivers, akkas, annas, bus conductors et al, in short everyone I could come across.

I still remember the early morning, a month back, when I had to avail a cab at 3.15. It was the faith that I had in Chennai being one of the safest cities in India, that I went ahead and booked the cab. I still was skeptical about how safe I would be at that point of the night. But I went ahead.

That morning, I was safely dropped off at the airport.

A few days later, I had the office cab dropping me back home after my work hours at late night. 

It was then I realized, every time I thanked the driver it was to a great extent, thankfulness for dropping me off without trying to outrage my modesty. News of sexual assaults on women or even on female infants has become so ubiqitous that one can not help but live in skepticism and doubt.

Amid all this, when I am alone and hire a cab, I do not see a driver but a potential rapist. Sad, but true.

Delhi is mocked as the rape capital of India. Rape victims get burnt, their families tortured.

Victims undergo torture by the perpetrator, and then by the society which fails to understand their ordeal, because they haven't undegone it, yet.

The world might have become a smaller place, so have our hearts. Our society is developing, as claimed, but when I look around I don't see development reaching neither the lowest ebbs of the society nor all the echelons of the society. 

Society treats women as objects, eye candies, arm candies, items. And we don't bat an eyelash. 

Because, all is in jest. For you, even the lives of women.

The blame is laid on women for rapes, for wearing provocative clothes, for inviting trouble, and for asking for it.

But never do we shame the man who assaults a woman and does not even leave that baby who had just turned 2. 

Is this the better place we all dreamt of and wanted to work towards? I hope not. 

All said , women have reduced to means of cashing in on, for the society. A politician promises better days for women because he needs the seat, a film maker needs an item song objectifying a woman and her body, because he knows that is how he could earn money,  beauty prodcuts aim at pitting women against themselves - because it is essential that they feel inferior to themselves and help the multinational money-minting machine earn some more bucks. 

This is the world that we have reduced to. 

Unless the mindset of people doesn't change, the world will never become a better place - never for the womankind.

I still hope I could go back to the days when I used to thank men around out of plain gratitude, and not because they did not lay a hand on me. 

Justice served? No, not really

Yakub Memon was hanged on his 53rd birthday, on July 30th, for being a part of the group which orchestrated the 1993 bomb blasts in Mumbai which killed around 260 people and injuring 700. 

Many across the nation are lauding the SC decision to hang Memon in order to get justice for the lives lost in the blasts and to 'set an example, a message which would be sent across Pakistan.'

Going back to where it all began from, the deadly blasts were the brainchild and handiwork of Dawood Ibrahim and Mushtaq Memon (Yakub's brother - known more as Tiger Memon), and the involvement of Pakistan's ISI is also alleged. 

The blasts were planned as a relation to the killings of Muslims ensued by the Babri Masjid demolition in Ayodhya. The riots killed over 900 people and injured many more. The first question that arises is that why was no justice asked in this case. So many people were killed, irrespective of their religion, caste, creed - Indian were killed. 

In 2006, of the seven members of the Memon family, Court pronounced four guilty, acquitted three. 12 convicts including Yakub were awarded death penalty while 20 were given life sentence. In 2013, except for Yakub, SC commuted the remaining 10 convicts' death penalty to life imprisonment. After the sudden hanging of Ajmal Kasab and Afzal Guru for their crimes, awarding death penalty to Memon is something to raise eyebrows on. Memon's case will be taken by the non-Hindus to be an attack on them. 

One of the reasons that Yakub was convicted for was his involvement in the conspiracy. But so were other members whose death sentences were later commuted. Are they not equally guilty? If their sentences could have been reduced, so could Memon's be. The real conspirators are out there, maybe grinning over India's lackadaisical judicial system and lax police. It has been over two decades that the blast took place, our system  hasn't been able to catch the biggest fishes in the pond of underworld. Neither has justice been delivered, and if hanging Yakub is the way to deliver justice, it certainly is not. 

It is clear that he is being made the scapegoat for our inefficiency to be able to get to Tiger. 

It is clear that he is being targeted so that we have something to show to Pakistan. But the real question is will justice be served? 

Indian citizens and people involved in the law and police, of the likes of S.N. Thapa (former 

additional customs collector - now dead), R K Singh (Former assistant commissioner of customs), Mohammed Sultan Sayyed (former customs superintendent), Jaywant Gurav (former customs inspector), S S Talwadekar (former customs superintendent) were all found guilty and given RI. Nobody is questioning the judiciary's decision on that.

Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar, who was involved in the Delhi blasts of 1993 was given a shortened sentence after his life imprisonment was commuted. That was because he was suffering from schizophrenia and the court had taken too long to come up with a sentence. Sounds similar? These were the grounds on which initially Yakub Memon had filed a mercy plea, which ultimately was rejected.

Death penalty in the Nirbhaya case is justified because law in India awards death penalty in the 'rarest of the rare' cases. How does Yakub Memon fit the bill here? He does not, had he fit him and the other convicts who had their sentences commuted would have all fit.

The hanging of Memon, unfortunately, is like Afzal Guru's hanging, mired in a lot of political strategies. Hanging a man after delaying the case for over 22 years doesn't bring justice. Hanging a man who surrendered and helped police as an approver, in making a breakthrough in the Mumbai blasts, is a shame. He was not innocent, but Indian judiciary's decision has not been rapt. Doubts linger on every aspect of statements made by the police. Like Memon's claim that he came back to India with his family or if he was nabbed from an airport in Kathandu or from a railway station in Delhi. Talking about sending a message to Tiger and Dawood, or setting an example to act as a deterrent, or exemplifying the achievement of justice, Memon's death has failed to do any of it.

Memon tried a lot to save himself from the death penalty but it was not of any help.

Punish a man for his brother's crimes. That is what the Indian system did.