Sunday, March 8, 2009

women's day?

Oh god! i am really feeling sick. for the past few days, i am being assaulted by this 'woman's day' mania. everywhere i go, i see shops-right from the biggest one in town to the smallest of boutiques offering WD discount. also thrown in are 'surprise gifts' for female shoppers, 'attractive offers' on women apparels and cosmetics (though they turn out to be a ridiculous 5% discount is another story), mindless forms to be filled where they ask 'insightful' and 'thought provoking question' like

*i love being a woman because...(as if we have a choice on selecting our gender)
*of the following women, who do you relate yourself to?
1.Sania Mirza 2. Mother theresa 3. Kalpana Chawla 4. Sonia Gandhi
(i mean, please grow up people. why should any woman relate herself with any of the abovesaid? )

radio stations mouthing absolutely senseless sentences comprising of the words 'liberation' and 'empowerment' over and over again inbetween songs which vulgarly describes the female physical parts, interviewing eminent female achievers and boring them to tears with questions which sound as if they were prepared by a 5th grader...UGH!

as a culmination of this madness, today i woke up to a barrage of sms saying 'happy women's day :)' ridding my inbox of these messages alone took me a solid 20 minutes. after brushing, i sat down to read the papers with a steaming cuppa. apart from the news, every article-editorials, columns, magazine sections and even advertisements were filled with WD crap. in our home, we buy 4 papers and believe me people, not even a single paper had a trace of sanity today.

what is the poin in making such hue and cry for a single day? is it really going to make a difference? definitely celebrating women's day - atleast in a way it is being celebrated in these recent years is NOT going to change the lives of women. like everything else, WD too is now riddled with crass commercialism. as a first step towards doing something meaningful for women, we women must first change our attitude. what attitude you ask? ok, let me share with you an incident which happened on friday (6.3.09).

in our building, we have this absolutely adorable 6yr old kid. his mom works in a corporate and his dad is currently on a 3 month official visit to the US. his maternal grandmother takes care of him till his mom returns home from work.

that day, his mom came home late as they were hosting WD celebrations in her work place. she came back home by 11.30pm and was greeted by her sleepy,happy child and a worried, grumpy mother. me and my family were watching all these proceedings.

after saying good nights and locking our door, my mom, in her most 'holier than thou' voice said "she(mother of the kid) really is very irresponsible. how can she party at her office when she has a child to come back home for? poor kid."
i said, "but mom, its not like as if she abandoned the kid in the streets. he was left in the care of his grandmother. so what is the big issue here?"
"stop arguing with me aruna. as a mother, it is her duty to take care of the child. she must have come home early. afterall, she must not forget that she is a female."
"but amma, that is precisely why she was late today." was my bewildered reply. i never expected this kind of attitude in my educated, working mother.

now, do you accept wih me, that these celebrations are absolutely pointless unless and until we women first change out attitude and outlook for any change to take place in our society?

5 comments:

Marlin Jar said...

Makes me very sad, your mom's words. Sorry.

"Of the following women, who do you relate yourself to?
1.Sania Mirza 2. Mother theresa 3. Kalpana Chawla 4. Sonia Gandhi"
What the fish? First of all I hate the exhaustive nature of the options. Most of all, I detect condescension in these kind of questions -- I'm sure they were not set by a woman.

Totally happy, Kanali, that you aren't one of those people who take irrational pride in their sex (be it male or female). High-fives!

BK said...

Normally i prefer not to comment on sensitive issues :)..
honestly you tried to make a bold statement. the outlook of women should change if we can expect any significant change in the outlook of the whole society.

pls hav a look at my post. http://www.writeupcafe.com/2009/03/christmas-in-vatican.html
(its completely unrelated though)

aswin jayaraman said...

I am +1 for your opinion

Subramaniam said...

The opinions expressed by people definetly exhibit enormous variations(moresoever in case the conversation is between people with a generation gap).

Yet the more significant aspects of what you say are truely heartfelt. Relating herself to someone isnt something a woman can call self actualisation as you point out. And yes... RJ's definetly over-do their jobs on any special day lol... I soo agree with the first comment regarding the exhaustive list of people that "you relate to" in order to project yourself as a dynamic personality.

Krishnan said...

sorry aruna i am not support u about this matter, if the kids mom take celeberation in regular basis oh, we can not say the child future