Where do I stand?

I have been thinking over the past few days if to write or not about the issue regarding the documentary made and then banned on the Nirbhaya gang rape. A lot is being written. But I chose not to write coz I felt by writing it I would make it real. I didn't want that.

Probably I was running away from the truth. I still wanted to believe that India as a country and as a society has moved a bit forward. That I, being a modern Indian women who wanted to give back to the society was gaining some respect in the society.

Today while browsing youtube I stumble across the original documentary, India's Daughter : Indian rapist BBC documentary Delhi Nirbhaya full HD 

And as I watched, I felt very insecure. I was not getting scared of being raped...I was insecure about my very existence. 

Who am I?

I tried writing that in the first line of this post but I kept deleting my words. I wrote I was a "Girl", then wrote I was a "Indian Woman", then shifted to "Human". But none of the letter made any word that I was secure with. 

I am a human being and I am of female sex. Yes, I don't have a penis and do have boobs.

But never in my life before have I wrote this about me. I have always wrote I was a film maker. A thinking individual. An artist. One who wants to do for the society. 

But which society? The same society where a lawyer says, "We have a beautiful culture. Woman have no place in this culture."- is the society that I want to work for? 

Or do I belong to the society of that mother who knowing that her son has raped someone so brutally still cries and says that the government forced her son to commit suicide. Or maybe I belong to that wife's society where she refuses to believe that her husband should be given a death penalty for his crime against another woman. She rallies for her husband saying by hanging him the rapes wont stop. She says then the government should kill her and also her son along with her husband. Which society do I belong in?

Worse still I see a rapist sitting and telling that by giving the death punishment, the government was sending a wrong message- now the rapists would surely kill their victims after raping them, earlier they used to ONLY rape them.

Infact there are more choice for me to belong with. I could choose from a society of by standers standing over the writhing naked body of two human beings refusing to help OR the squads of police who stands tall still and says that Delhi is a safe city. India is a safe country. But all options are just..... I don't know the word..... maybe there isn't one for the kind of desolation, isolation and humiliation I feel being India's daughter.

By the time I finished watching the documentary and started writing the blog the video was pulled down. It has been banned in India. But why? Are we so vain in our false notion of our culture that we don't want to see whats going wrong? How can we just sit by seeing our own daughters suffering like this?

I keep fighting with my mom saying that I am in an industry where I can and probably will get late to reach home and I blame my mother for being conservative and orthodox in her view. But which mother won't be scared if this is the country I live in. Where I am not looked upon as a fellow human being but as "food" [That is what the convicted's lawyer called women on roads to be.]. 

I don't know if we are moving forward or are we rolling back! You can call me a feminist and probably I am...but this fight is for all of us...humans....

Marriage Hassles!!

Today three of my friends are getting married. Am I happy for them? Hell yeah! I am so damn happy! But the moment someone hears it, the next statement that stumbles out of their mouth is, "Now get yourself a husband too..." OMG! No!

I am happy for all the people getting married but that doesn't mean that I want to right now. More over, married to whom? There should be a person that I want to get married to, right! But no, the Indian society supposedly doesn't work that way. "You are of age"- they say. What age? People start their career at 40. What age!

An Indian household goes through a complete change once the daughter of the household steps on to her twenties. Suddenly the "oh so independent" parents, who have till then supported and rooted for their daughter's equality and position in life, suddenly turns and starts stressing more on how it is important to have some one else to take care. Why do we need someone else to take care, we are capable. You have brought us up to be independent then why can't we take care of ourselves if we want to?

And God forbid if by chance you have stepped to the dangerous age of above 26! To top that up you say that you are busy with or perhaps still settling your career! O my poor friend you have invited trouble. Suddenly the same parents and well wishers who were praising you for being so keen on having a career suddenly shift stands and says ". But career isn't everything!" But what I fail to understand is that who is saying career is everything here? I am not. But it is important to me and I want it to be important too. And another question, is marriage then everything? What's the harm in being single till you find the right person!

Right person- now this is a term which has become a joke for me since my mother had started looking for grooms for me from the different matrimonial sites! Everybody claims that He is the right person. The write ups are hilarious! First of all bongs who are not fluent in English trying to write about themselves in English make hell of a laughing stock. 

This profile belongs to a guy who has a Phd degree and then says the last line.
"THOSE WHO ARE SERIOUS GIVE ME A TOUCH........."

It becomes hilarious to even go through the profiles. But one thing that hit me very hard during the initial days of this ridiculous thing was the fact that how still society looks at women.

I being a modern girl and being brought up in an urban setup thought the society have changed a bit at least but I was proven completely wrong once I started going through the profiles and the column where they write what they desire in a bride. Somehow the words that kept recurring were "Homely, conventional, beautiful, fair." Is that all society looks for in a woman. If I seriously posses these few traits would I be a perfect human being? It was very demoralizing to think, where I was working my ass to get a proper place in this society, this society thought and expected so less from me!

More irritating perhaps are the friends who completely go through a marriage mental shift. The moment they land up married suddenly they gain all knowledge of the world and starts pestering you to get married too. Why?! It was only few months back that even they were complaining about their parents pestering them to get married!

I am on the verge of thirty and I have nothing against getting married. I want to get married. To a person I am in love with. With whom I feel I want to spend my life with. Not with some random guy that I don't know. And if this society doesn't accept me this way....well they can go F@*k themselves!