Feminism: What it is and What it should be!

Feminism is the new cool of today’s generation. Have you ever participated in any feminism campaign? I can blindly say that a vast majority of you are nodding your heads right now! I guess it’s about time that we debunk the meaning of this overhyped word. The first issue addressed by most of the feminists is inequality in terms of placements, finance or in short all matters dealing with economical and political injustice. But why go so high up the ladder when the problem lies at the grass root level?

Most of the Indian families place cooking, laundry, and all other quotidian household chores in the bucket list of the wife - home based or working! The bourgeoisie class may keep maids and attendants but their responsibility too is placed on the lady of the house. So indirectly, it’s the fairer sex who is pushed to handle all the so called ‘homely’ duties. And howsoever much our society may have progressed, this practice is still prevalent in as high as  95% of Indian households. And why shouldn’t it be? Children are taught about these stereotypical roles even before they develop independent thinking. And more so in the Indian family setting. As a result of this, these conventional images are so deeply entrenched in their mind that even the thought of the father/husband cooking and doing laundry seems imponderable to them.

A good bulk of today’s feminists constitute the unmarried class. That results in a cavalier attitude towards these 'micro issues'. The media also targets the juicy, more controversial and debatable concerns to solicit more TRP. So holistically speaking, this whole women empowerment drive has become an ostentatious affair which is being endorsed by the juveniles for economical and personal gain while the core problem silently prevails. What is needed at this point is a educational reform, targeting the young minds and increased participation from the older generation.

The most important concern should be to break the orthodox views about gender stereotypes held by the Indian couples. A good fraction of the older women, let alone men, are still in favour of the patriarchal society and they believe that such a setting is “necessary” for the smooth functioning of the family. Even worse, they attribute it to the Indian culture and then teach the children to uphold their culture. It is these ridiculous, age old concepts that should be attacked.  

If these basic aspects of gender inequality are not resolved, then higher concerns like freedom on attires, marriage and jobs become moot points. Literature books for school level children should replace all gender biased prose and poetry with the ones empowering women and biographies of influential women. We shall, for once and for all, stop these gender stereotypes from being imprinted on their mind. The root of all this discrimination traces back to the pride and arrogance of men. Even though more and more members of the opposite sex are coming up to support the cause, a good fraction of them are still far far away from letting go of their dogma. The most prevalent mentality conjectures men doing household chores as a sign of weakness and self-abasement. Such sinister mentalities are bound to be eradicated for gender equality to take a firm stand amidst the society.

But before addressing the problem with men, the women must be made to realize their self worth and the fact that they did not get married to wash clothes and cook food. That cooking and washing is not an absolute must to get validated as the lady of the house in the eyes of the society. The few iconoclasts who have managed to thrive under all the criticisms and societal condemnation must be empowered and provided with resources to emancipate the others who are still tied by the clutches of tradition (?). They must then encourage and urge their husbands to do their fair share of household chores. And we must, for once and for all, stop referring to women as the weaker sex.

Let’s take a pledge to free the next generation from the curse of gender inequality and start taking steps to eradicate this disease ourselves rather than waiting for a visionary to start a revolution. After all, this is not something that can happen overnight. 

I am taking part in the #ShareTheLoad Challenge with Ariel and Aksharaat BlogAdda.

Oh damn....its a Monday!

There are days when our eyes pop open with the first ray of the sun and then there are days when even a bucketful of water splashed on our head can’t get our nerves alert! Yes, the latter are Mondays. Let’s face it, we all hate Mondays- the school goers, the office goers, the film industrialists and even the President of our country! It’s like the human bodies are tuned to experience an infinite level of inertia to move out of the bed every seven days, starting with a Monday!

It is definitely an arduous task to show up at your workplace on time on a Monday morning. But it takes an even gargantuan effort to pull off the super energetic, super vigilant Monday morning attitude throughout the day. It is not uncommon to find workers and clerks peacefully dozing during the day, the teachers and professors suddenly becoming more exacting and the students turning all peevish and apathetic. That’s the quintessence of a Monday morning.

It so happened that once the opening day of our school after the long, uneventful summer vacation turned out to be a Monday. And when Mondays get backed by almost a ‘month’ of complete torpor, disasters become inevitable. So I woke up late, skipped breakfast, and having missed my school bus, commuted by the overly packed public bus. After reaching school, in an utterly disheveled state, I realized I had put on two different shoes. In no less than ten minutes I was charged with wrong uniform and late arrival and I found myself waiting in front of the principal’s office. Just when I thought the day couldn’t get any worse, I was told I would have to wait for two hours. And then guess what, I fell asleep! Our very own principal found me snoring outside his office and had to call my parents to pick me up. Oh, the embarrassments that Mondays make us go through! On another occasion, I had spilled coffee on my boss because I was walking with my eyes almost shut through the corridors of our office and i happened to crash into him. I was retained in the job because of his merciful character but honestly, I hadn’t expected that. I had remained on my toes that entire day thinking my resignation letter would arrive any moment. But God bless such munificent souls who understand the blues of Monday mornings.

The only creatures who seem to have been exempted from this Monday morning curse are the infants. While for centuries, Mondays have been associated with words like “fresh”, “new”, “clean”, the reality seems to be quite the contrary. The very name of the day has become sleep inducing for the juveniles of Gen-Y! While we continue to ferret about for novel Monday-morning-wake-up solutions, let’s keep a moment of silence for all the inconveniences and stress that we’ve had had to face till date!
 
This post is a part of Write Over the Weekend, an initiative for Indian Bloggers by BlogAdda.

Delhi Diaries: 2

So it's been a semester and a half and Delhi has been treating me well. Things have not cooked up much since the last post but yeah I have made a few more acquaintances in this alien land. Lately, I have been introspecting on how my life would have been had I chosen to stay back in Kolkata. More soulful, definitely. But dull, nonetheless. That little adventure in every mundane task, that perpetual feeling of thrill, that feeling of brazen liberty, ah, that's something that makes Delhi worthwhile.

College has been the same though. Those same blunt stares, that alien like treatment and those pitiful eyes all gazing down at me every time I am found perched alone in the ever so cheerful canteen. Its weird how solitude has become such an abstract concept amongst the so called modern college goers. I have lost count of how many times unknown faces have come lingering around asking the same banal questions " why do you always stay alone? " " Don't you get bored?". It's not that I like it all the time of course, this being alone thing, but it has always been like this. I have never been good with people. I could never tolerate the obsequious, loud and showy ones.

I might be perceived as an anomaly in today's generation. A diversion from the stereotypical undergraduates. But awkward as it may sound, I've never been more proud of myself. It's true that I feel terribly lonely at times and burn with jealousy when I see those groups on the lawns happily chortling and breaking into smiles. But every good thing comes with a price right? Moreover it was my own decision to leave behind my city and come to Delhi. My roommate has been such a blessing for me. Perhaps, she is the reason which makes me say that Delhi is good. And my totally unexpected reunion with my high school love has left me spellbound of course. So practically I am left with these three people in Delhi. My only three lifelines. Her, him and HIM.

Watching movies have become an almost quotidian task for me. One or two everyday. Sometimes more but rarely less. Studies had taken a back seat for like a month in between when I had lost my head in the infamous Delhi University fests. In fact I had even invested a tremendous amount of time organizing one at our college without realizing how pointless it all was. Obviously, it ended up to be almost cataclysmic and then I spent the next few days regretting every single second that I wasted.

I also spent a considerable amount of time touring around in Delhi with my beloved boy. Well, you do know what happens when old love is rekindled, don't u? I suppose I have covered every place worth visiting. There have also been midnight parties. Big, fat, ugly ones! I danced like crazy. I got drunk like crazy. I collapsed like crazy. Perks of being 18. Haha. So now summing up everything, I am happy. Things are going as per my wish. I have got three wonderful people by my side. Life's good. 
Till the next time, adios.

Of esoteric forces and invisible rippples!

Of late, Einstein's 'gravitational waves' has created quite some stir in the world of science. And I reckon that its repetitive appearance in news headlines' might have made even the laymen curious. But owing to the utterly pedantic explanations given in the various articles, I suppose they have not been of much help to the non scientific community. So the question still persists, WHAT EXACTLY ARE GRAVITATIONAL WAVES?

To start with let's recall what gravity is. Yes, it's the mysterious force that helps you to walk about on the surface of Earth. To be a bit more precise, it's the force with which everything attracts every other thing with a magnitude, which, in ordinary cases is so less that its effect becomes unnoticeable. Now according to Einstein, there is more to gravity than just this. He, in his general theory of relativity says that gravity is not a force at all! It's just a consequence of the space time curvature, meaning that the dark sea in which all our planets float around is not really shapeless. It's got some particular geometry. And gravity is a result of this geometry. Okay, now try to digest this fact without much speculation.  And according to Einstein, when any mass moves, it leads to a change in this geometry. And this change, people, is communicated throughout the whole universe in the form of waves or ripples. That is what a gravitational wave is. Come on, its not that recondite, is it? Read on.

Now you must be thinking that masses keep moving around all the time so how in the world it took them so long for its detection? You see, these waves are not emitted by all moving masses. That honour just belongs to certain accelerating ones! So even though a lot of ripples trespass earth every single second, their intensity is so less that it's beyond the measuring capacity of our present day detectors. Now it's worth mentioning what actually happens when a gravitational wave passes through a certain region.

If you have ever noticed, when you throw stones in a pond, rippples are seen to emerge from that point and spread out in the form of circular waves and if a cork is placed in their path, it is found to bob up and down. The same happens in the case of gravitational waves. The region through which it passes gets stretched and the region adjacent to that gets strained. This is exactly what was exploited by the LIGO detectors. So there happened to be a massive collision between two binary pulsars( they are just super dense, radiation emitting stars, duh!) billions of light years away. And the emissive gravitational waves contained such a huge amount of energy that even after reaching Earth the strain produced by them fell within the limits of detection of our earth bound detectors!

Now automatically the next question should be, what use are these mysterious ripples of? Now this would require some knowledge of science so I'll just skip the explanations and brief the result. You see, the radiations(EM radiations) that our present day astronomers use for the study of early universe cannot provide them with information about the first few minutes of the Big bang, nor about certain dark, sophisticated, mysterious objects located far far away from us, so gravitational waves now come to their rescue. This is what all that rejoicing was about. Of course, the detection of gravitational waves has paved way for new cutting edge research and it will forever remain one of the greatest scientific milestones in the history of humanity.

Book Review:1

Rebecca

                                                                           -Daphne Du Maurier

"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.."
Even after half a century, Daphne DU Maurier's Rebecca continues to win hearts with its captivating plot and unpredictable twists. Originally published in 1938, this book has gained critical acclamation from critics all over the world and has been the recipient of the Anthony award for best novel of the century and the National book award for fiction. It has also been adapted as a movie by Alfred Hitchcock. This book, being a delightful juxtaposition of mystery and romance, has been at the zenith in the field of Gothic literature. The steady growth of suspense and the beautiful narration makes it totally engrossing and unputdownable.

The story kick starts with the heroine dreaming about a visit to Manderley, all deserted and ruined. The author does an excellent job here, describing the bucolic mansion in every bits and pieces, giving it an almost life like image. The plot then regresses back to how it all started. Mr Maximilian De Winter, the landlord of Manderley, was on one of his usual visits to the city of Monte Carlo, Italy. There he had a chance meeting with the snobbish Mrs Van Hoppers and the narrator. The narrator was a paid companion to Mrs Hoppers in relation. To quote from the text, "She is an employer. She's training me to be a thing called a companion, and she pays me ninety pounds a year." The narrator and Mr. De Winter got to know each other very closely in this short interval and by the end of the trip the narrator had landed up with a marriage proposal from 'Maxim' to which she happily consented.

Getting married to Maximilian De Winter was almost a dream come true for her, for now the infamous Manderley belonged to her. The first few days at Manderley were good excepting the cold reception by the housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers. But as said by Maxim, she was an 'extraordinary' character and just a housekeeper by profession so she could be ignored. The narrator's gauche manners were directly in contrast with the royal aura of the place but Mr. De Winter, being an perfect gentleman, never let her feel out of place. Her happiness turned out to be quite ephemeral though. As days passed she got subsumed by the ghost of Rebecca. It was as if her spirit lurked everywhere, in every nook and corner, of the humongous mansion. She realized how Rebecca had set a high standard for the position of the mistress of the house and how she would never be able to live up to it.

The sinister housekeeper was responsible to a great extent for intimating such feelings in her. She always dropped subtle signs indicating that she was no match to the former Mrs De Winter. It was not long before she noticed a marked change in the behavior of Maxim as well. He seldom used to get quiet. He used to stare outside the window blankly , with a lost look in his eyes and a deathlike pallor on his countenance and she knew then that he was thinking of Rebecca. Mrs Danvers'  diabolical intentions got very clear after she made the narrator dress up exactly like Rebecca at a grand ball at Manderley, thus creating a deep chasm between the two De Winters. She further glutted her mind with stories of how much Maxim loved Rebecca, how depressed he was on learning of her death, how he used to 'walk up and down the library' in agony for hours, how he had lost his mirth after her death. The young Mrs De Winter, helpless as she was, believed in all of these false conclusions.

Had it not been for the dramatic turn of events that took place next, their marriage would have been at stake. A diver accidentally chanced upon Rebecca's boat and to everyone's surprise, there lied a body in the boat's cabin. After much inquiry and speculation, Mrs De Winter dawned upon the fact that it was Rebecca's body itself and it was none other than her beloved husband who had murdered her. She then learned of their unsuccessful marriage, the notorious character of the woman adored by all and most importantly the fact that Maxim never loved Rebecca. Even though murder is a treacherous deed, unforgivable by all means, Mrs De Winter stood by her husband through all the odds in an attempt to save him from getting convicted. And even though they succeeded at that, Rebecca won in the end for upon returning at Manderley, they found it on fire. She succeeded in taking away from Maximilian De Winter his only great possession.

Although it's an open ended story, it can be clearly concluded from the circumstances that it was Mrs Danvers who had set the mansion on fire. It is worth noting at this point that the name of the narrator had been taken only once in the entire story which according to me might just be another tool to highlight the fact that even though Rebecca was dead in person, she still remained the true Mrs De Winter in essence. It has also been an outstanding effort on the part of Du Maurier to make the presence of Rebecca felt so deeply at every point of the narrative thus justifying the title. All in all, it is an extraordinary book with an extraordinary theme and extraordinary characters which is sure to keep you enraptured till the very end.

Delhi Diaries.

Little did I know about what was in store for me in this puny not so famous college of this infamous university. With a heavy heart and fake courage etched on every muscle of my face, I moved in to Delhi, fingers crossed, hoping for the best. The first day was totally dismal. The strange faces combined with their their nonchalance towards me, the indifferent attitude of the teachers and the suffocating atmosphere made the college a perfect dystopian world. I was clueless regarding my chances of survival in this foreign land. At once I made up my mind to return to my hometown but a look at the family photo reminded me of the acrimony between me and my parents which had escalated in the recent past. No, there was no returning back now.

I used to walk about the narrow dusty corridors of the college premises carrying a tantalizing smile on my face that belied my inner turmoil. I was a head turner. People watched me from a distance ; they treated me like a fascinating object. This continued till the day I met him. 

HIM. He was a comfort, the only island in this sea of inhospitality. There was something magnetic about him. His radiant personality, friendly gestures and that warm smile drew unprecedented amount of attention. I was particularly impressed by the inherent calmness with which he handled all the daily chores.

He had this amazing ability to listen. Yes, to keep quiet and LISTEN. It's a rarity these days. He was a person, I knew, I could call up anytime and mutter gibberish and I knew, even one hour into the chat, that he was paying utmost attention to every trivial detail of the mundane routine things. He was someone before whom I did not have to think twice, someone who made me rethink, someone I could pour all my frustration into, someone who lived by the day, someone who taught me to live by the day, someone whom I could hug anytime I wanted and I knew he would hug me right back, someone who never got bored of my relentless rantings, someone fiercely liberal, someone ruthlessly cute, someone who made college life possible.  

He was one in a million. With him, every moment deserved being captured. He added colour to my monochrome life, gave a boost to my fading zeal, a spark to my lacklustre eyes, a touch of pink to my white wings, cleansed me of my plagued thoughts and made me smile a thousand smiles. To you, dear one, I raise my cauldron full of hot bubbling love. 

Here's to our perennial friendship and the wonderful years lying ahead. 
Cheers, mate. :)

P.S  I might have acted like a cheese ball and made it all cheesy but hey, I love you OK? Never ever ever change for anyone. Remain the annoying idiot that you are. ;)

Late Night Thoughts.

Nerd. That was my first impression of him. A high level technical nerd. Being sapiosexual myself, I was instantly drawn to him. He was dumbfounded? I bet. We hadn't met before we knew every intricate detail of the most trivial events which were locked in the deepest vault of our hearts. So dear readers, imagine our first meet. Two strangers coming up, shaking hands and then being like "I know 'everything' about you. Let's have some ice cream, shall we?" Creepy? Weird? Awkward? Haha. That was us. And we were proud of that.

Mainstream was a word which could be used as a perfect antonym for us. We were in love? Hopelessly. But do not commit the mistake of degrading him to a position as superfluous as a 'boyfriend'. We shared a 'divine' bond which is beyond the comprehending power of you muggles. We were the perfect inseparable duo. Things between us had escalated up at a meteoric pace.

Uh, you pervert, what are you thinking?
He started scolding and instructing me like he was my daddy in disguise. I wouldn't study? He had a long lecture prepared already. I was low? He had a bucket full of spiced up jokes all brewed and ready to be served. And the cutest thing about this intellectual badass? No matter how much I annoyed him, all he did was a transitory break up, followed by a doomed period of silence and then his caramelized "how could you think I would just leave you and go?" And this, dear audience, was usually followed by a volcanic eruption of tears from my side and some melodrama usually considered 'cute' by chauvinists all across the world.

Yeah, the point I missed. He was a chauvinist and I was a feminist. And our opinions on almost everything under the sun always lied on opposite poles. So as is evident, our daily conversations were never complete without a heavy dose of argument. But no matter how deadly they became, they always ended by 3 at night with a "damn, it's 3. Go to sleep. Love you. Bye." 'Aww' level? Ultra.

And don't even ask about our secret dates. They usually started with him entering 20-40 minutes late with umpteenth swag and a convivial smile followed by me running about the entire mall, cafe, whatever powered by steam, him following me, an hour long apology session stretched to a cuddling session and then teary goodbyes.

That's pretty much about this idiot who has had a significant amount of influence in my life. Things might have gone a bit rocky between us in the bygone month, but I know we are way too flexible to break. We can bend up, down, twist, untwist, and find a solution to everything. Till then, let's hope for the best. Adios.

P.S This is dedicated to a very special idiot who has and still means a lot to me.