Life is a bitch. Isn’t it? It slays. Especially to women who are still struggling to live a peaceful life. Deliberations become a need when you travel long distances. Travelling teaches. I always try to calm myself whenever deliberations are about women. A month back I was travelling from Srinagar to my hometown Anantnag. It was an ordinary spring day in Kashmir. I put on my earphones. I have a very unconventional musical preference. In the middle seat there was a rough looking, swarthy man looking at me with a raised eye-brow. I didn’t pay heed. He kept looking back and oozing a sigh every time. I pulled my earphones down around my neck and dared to ask that man what’s the matter why is he groaning. I asked, Uncle Kharei Cha (is everything ok). Waiting for his response he gave me a cold vibe as if I have asked for his kidney. He cocked his head out and started complaining about women (as expected). Pity coursed through the whole vehicle like an intoxicating drug in the bloodstream. All the fellow passengers even the women in the car kept looking at each other with furrowed foreheads. An electrified silence canopied the whole car. To cease this silence, that man went on to say it is because of girls like me who are responsible for earthquakes and flash floods. I sigh. And I laughed at what he just said. I was formerly of the belief that it is because of the sudden release of energy in the earth’s lithosphere that creates seismic waves. But that man must be credited for changing my perception.
What I read, studied throughout these years seemed useless for a while. It is because of us these natural calamities occur. I lingered in the middle of the car, I felt torn as I always did in such situations. I clench my fist, squeeze my eyes shut and bury my head with ire. The bitterness the unruliness he expressed left me estranged. Questions were tugging at the edges of my mind and I was unable to answer any of them. If the world doesn’t need us why do we then exist? At this age when I am in my twenties, experienced enough negativity around me, I worry about the attitude men still have towards women. Times have changed, narratives have changed but they still aren’t coming out from their male dominated ancestry. The mindset harboring domination and supremacy has forced them not to accept or welcome the change.
A women who gave you birth into such a beautiful world, she is the reason you are able to breathe, walk, speak and eat, and you have a problem with her expression. You aren’t able to digest she is a women, she has an opinion A woman is not bound to suppressive dictates; absorbing traits of women shouldn’t be taken as Cush. Like you, every woman has the right to live with dignity and respect. She wants equality without anger. A life she deserves to live. Educating women isn’t the only way to empower her, giving a space where she can have her own opinion, where she can express her heart out, where she can live without fear and coercion, this is the space she must be given, she must reclaim. Nowadays the word Feminism has taken the world into storm, even the fiery feminists aren’t sparing anyone. But feminism to me is something different.
My idea of feminism is very simple and clear, it isn’t about to hate misogynists, it is not to be above men or anybody else, it is to be equal without hatred and with our own strengths. And that strength comes from our ability to care, to nurture and to protect. Woman is a divine creature; her womb is home to the divine, a source of life for our species. But before being a mother, a daughter, a sister and a wife, she is an individual with an opinion. We have a right to question everything, and we will raise questions. It isn’t easy to change tradition overnight, but our continuous efforts will pave a way one day.
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