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.