Echos from the soul

​To some poetry is just jumbled words made to love beautiful. To some poetry is but a way to impress. And there are some to whom poetry is the very essence their everyday living hangs on.

Hats off to all those wonderful poets who have made our life colorful!

Here is a little something from your fan!
What madness is this thing,

Called poetry?

Where love becomes the sun and the moon

And the heart, the ocean blue

Where love becomes the seven seas,

The surfer quests to tame.

Spinning tales out of the crashing waves

Hoping for a footprint, in the sands of time
What absurdity is this thing,

Called poetry?

Delusional quotes carved

On the tombstone of the dead

Telling tales of lives

Of great men and of others

Of hope and hardships

Of lost lives in the struggle, called living.
What is this poetry? I asked.

The autumn leaves and its inner peace

The dancing rain and its untold joy

Take my breath away!

‘Poetry, my dear’, said the voice in my head.

‘..is all things beautiful’.

Then again, everything is beautiful.

In its own unique way.
The above is a humble tribute from a person who has spends many a happy moments in the company of poetry.

For the sake of Humanity, CHANGE!

I actually thought of writing another new story or attempt a poem but I guess the recent news I read in the newspaper made me think otherwise.  I believe this should be read not because you like to read but because you’re human.

‘ Woman Employee Gang-Raped in Hospital’

‘On UP’s eerie ‘rape road’, no traffic, no soul in sight’

‘Neighbor held for Rape, Murder of 16-Year-Old’

‘Teen Allegedly Raped, Strangled and Burnt by Men Who Stalked Her’

‘Close To Police Post, Woman, Daughter Gang-Raped For 3 Hours’

‘Gang rape videos on sale in Indian state’

 

Its so simple. One only needs to go online and search for ‘Rape in India’ to get results which would take days, even months to read. That is the condition of our beloved country and its citizens.

Another content read;

‘India is the place where sexual assault is rapidly increasing. Rape in India is one of India’s most common crimes against women. According to the National Crime Records Bureau 24,923 rape cases were reported across India in 2012, but experts agree that the number of unreported cases of sexual assault brings the total much higher. Out of these, 24,470 were committed by parents/family, relatives, neighbors and other known persons implying that, men known to the victim committed 98 per cent of reported rapes. The latest estimates suggest that a new case of rape is reported every 22 minutes in India.’

This got me wondering. Where are we headed?

We have been misguided right since our birth. Often we’ve heard the words spoken with pride ‘India is rich in its culture and its heritage. India has a huge diverse population who are living in harmony with each other’.

And no, sending a probe to Mars or developing a new vaccine is not even close to justifying it. Lets first save humanity at the grass root level before walking off towards something like that.

Does that sound like harmony to you?

I tell you today.

India is not a great country. India was a great country. India is not a safe haven. India was a safe haven. Plagued by casteism, rapes, honor killing, religious riots and corruption, we don’t deserve to be called great.

We keep living in the past. We keep living in the shadows of what we were once. We don’t have ISIS but we have something worse, faceless, nameless citizens who are doing literally the same. Only, we treat them as a common criminal rather than the terrorists that they are.

And yes, rape is terrorism, Rape Terrorism.

And the worst part is, the government is neither ready to face this nor ready to accept the situation we are in.

It all starts with the society. And society includes the film industry, the ad industry and the minds of the people.

Actor Siddharth in a tweet a few days ago mentioned that the film industry glorified the idea of stalking. Stalkers are shown as heros and the price is the girl. The girl becomes the trophy and the guy is a sweating athlete trying to grasp it.

What happens if he abandons this so called ‘fairplay’ in his pursuit? He’ll resort to torture, blackmail, rape, acid attack and subsequent murder of his ‘prize’.

Objectification is how it starts. Women are portrayed as objects of pleasure or pride. What do you do with an object you own? When you’re happy, you play with it. When you’re angry, you break it. And then?

That’s it. Its all done. And we go after the next object. Of course, we’re all greedy.

 

We talk about women empowerment and the success stories of strong women but we refuse to accept the fact that the reason most women are not strong and are not successful is because of the society and some men who dominate it.

Everybody would want to run after success but not at the cost of their own lives.

To empower women, first we need to get them out of their comfort zone so that they would be inspired to go after their dreams. But how would even they want to get out of their comfort zone if the outside world happens to be a war zone?

What should we do?

We should go medieval on them.

The juvenile age should be brought down to 14 years. Why?

‘3 Year Old Allegedly Sexually Abused’

When a three year old girl can be raped, a 14 year old can be punished. Because, that is the usual age when the desire towards pornography increases. Until the age of 14, a boy sees a girl as a girl. After that particular phase, she is viewed as an object of desire. This slowly gives rise to stalkers, perverts, sexual predators and before you know it, he goes off rapes a girl and comes back. And when he realizes that nobody can do anything, he simply would want to do more.

Won’t you, when you find out a crime is not exactly a crime?

The so called boy’s school and girl’s school should be abolished. There should only be co-eds. Because when a boy grows up with absolutely no interaction with the opposite gender, he stops seeing a girl as a girl. She is seen as a ‘maal’. That’s how eve-teasing starts. And it goes to stalking and before you know it, he comes back home a criminal.

The mindset of the society is a major factor in this. It is very normal for any boy to have sexual thoughts. They are suppressed, oppressed to the point where he realizes that having thoughts about sex is a crime. But what can he do? It is a burning desire and a crime and he fulfills it through the only way possible, rape.

The society needs to open up. We are not anymore, the traditional society where the girl touches the feet of her husband every odd day. We are a society where a girl goes on a solo trip around the world. We need to open up to the fact that sex is just a desire, much like the desire for love or money and it needs to be fulfilled. The way I see it, there are two options, either the society accepts the truth and after a few awkward years, we become normal and no one gets to suffer. Or, we do it the hard way and everyone gets to suffer and we get to learn from very bad and very sour experiences.

Of course this does not guarantee anything. This may help bring down the number in the future though.

Then what else is needed here?

The government. Laws should be strict. We are living in an age where people are clever enough to find their way through the loopholes in any law, find a way around any law or worst, find a way to pay off law. We should come up with strict laws and deal with criminals with iron hands. Fear is useful in a way. Fear scares off the cowards. A fear of not possible but inescapable death would do wonders. And no, it is not cold blooded murder, its for one’s self protection.

Who’s self protection? Every single woman out there.

Imagine, every 22 minutes a girl is getting raped. How long will it be before it gets to you or someone you know? What can you do if it ever happens?

Sober up. Stand up. Fight back.

‘The moment we stop fighting for each other, that’s the moment we lose our humanity’

-Unknown.

P.S I’m not talking out of the thin air here. I do have proof for every single news about rape that I have cited there.

 

 

Humanity- A well recited Myth!

We live in an organized, structured and developed society.  We have a law we have to adhere to. We have order and responsibility towards our society. We have smart men in expensive suits and women in chic dresses. We have taxis in the night, police in times of fear, doctors in times of need and the army in times of war. We have fire fighters, rescuers, safety patrols, even a vigilante to guard us while we sleep undisturbed.

My question is are we living in a developed society?

I’ll tell you what we have and then you may judge our society.

We have hunger. Millions of children, women and men die of starvation each day while the sheiks in the Gulf buy diamond encrusted gold Rolls Royces.

We have terrorism while the Heads of the State watch rallies from bullet proof cabins.

We have murderers, thieves, rapists, imposters who roam free in the society.

We have men who kill for the rights of women. We have men who kill for the rights of men. We have men who kill in the name of God and call upon God’s name to justify it.

We have the corrupted, the bribed, the evil minded. We have everything. We are everything.

There’s a quote by a character in a movie which I really love.

“We stopped checking for monsters under the bed when we realized they are within us”- The Joker.

We go off teaching the world how evolved we are. We call our past the dark ages. We call them barbarians who killed for no reason. We call the World Wars the dark days of the world. We call Hitler and Stalin tyrants.

But are we so different?

Everyday, we read about forest fires, earthquakes, tidal waves killing us one bit at a time. Everyday, we hear news about murders, air strikes, rapes, cheating and we turn a blind eye only because all we care about is our own little lives.

In the ancient days, men go to war and kill each other and we call the barbaric. Now, the same happens only, not so noticeable. But it still does happen.

The reason I love Game of Thrones is, it shows the naked truth in the plainest way possible. Men want power, money, glory, reputation, revenge and they want it no matter what.

They wanted it then. They want it now. Nothing’s changed. We are still the same cruel men who strut about doing what we do best. Only, we do it different this time. We wear suits. We drive a costly car. We run companies and we do what we’ve always done-destroy.

Humanity was not just built upon evil, viciousness, vile nature, bad thoughts and deeds. It was also built upon kindness, compassion, love, empathy. And a society is truly developed only when we understand what it truly means to be a human.

If one were to look at the society through such eyes, I would say we’ve not taken even one step in the right direction. If anything, we’ve forayed even more into the wrong direction. I’m not going to suggest any possible cures or something. It lies within you. There’s no structured way of finding it. But you’ll know it the moment you find it.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. Time is not so valuable but people have time only for those which they feel are valuable.

Pray.Faith.Believe

Do you remember when people say the world is riddled with evil? There’s this kind of evilness in everything starting from money to help to even love. That there are more bad guys than the good ones. That if this were to prevail, the world would end up as a great big prison with us, the humans, being the prisoners in it.

I used to think so too until I saw a series of events which transformed my presumptions once and for all.

When the planes hit the twin towers on 11^th of September, most of the people around the world were stuck with grief. Not anger but grief. Their hearts went out to those poor souls who lost their lives in that attack. Random people came forward to aid those stuck by that misfortune. Even now, people remember those who died in that attack. It’s not a good thing to dig up old, sour pasts but it is good to keep them in mind while moving forward with confidence.

When the terrorists attacked those innocent civilians in beautiful Paris, everybody came forward to help. There was so much love, so much compassion and so many people ready to help those in need. What does it say to us? The world is not inherently evil. On the contrary, the world is a dream filled with love, harmony and oneness.

The beauty of the world is neither the technology nor the advancement that we have achieved, its life itself. We are so busy working towards betterment that we have forgotten the most important thing in life, life itself. We have forgotten to cherish it in our quest to make it better. It is times like these we remember how wonderful and miraculous life is. It is times like this we stop thinking about our lives and look at the lives of those whose everyday life is filled with danger beyond imagination.

Times like these remind us of the treasure which is life. It is in hardship and suffering that we see some of the most beautiful traits of life-love, compassion and unselfishness. These are innate traits which don’t reveal themselves unless it’s absolutely necessary. These are the essence of life. The whole life is built on such goodness that the evil which has prevailed has no roots but just a stem and some leaves. It won’t last long. It won’t last even a day when all of us join hands in getting it out of our system.

There’s this quote about violence in this movie ‘The Imitation Game’,

“Do you know why people like violence? Because they find it deeply satisfying. Remove the satisfaction and the act will become hollow”

That’s how shallow violence is. Once people realize the depth love can reach, why would they even think of willfully hurting another individual?

It took us a Hitler to understand what weapons of mass destruction can cause to humankind. It took the French Revolution to realize the basic rights of humankind- liberty, equality and fraternity. It took us countless losses to constantly remind us of the pain a person can bring upon another.

We have suffered enough.

 

In the words of Elizabeth II

“It will be for us, the children of today, to make the world of tomorrow a better and a happier place”.

Pray for those souls who gave up their lives for the follies the rest of the humankind enacted. The only way that their souls would rest in peace is when we, the rest of the humankind realize what we have done and work towards a better and a happier tomorrow.

My Periscope

I have been living in Bangalore for the past four months and last afternoon, I was sitting in the common room enjoying a cup of hot coffee when the news which flashed upon the screen chilled me to my bones.

“A BPO employee gang-raped in the dead of the night in a moving van.”

The news reporter kept reading from her printed text as my mind went blank thinking about how cruel people have gotten. From the time when women were considered equal to God to the time where the rapist, in most cases happens to be victim’s close acquaintance, we have kept chanting like a mantra how much the country has developed.

Is this called development? Is neglecting the basic human rights and freedom called development? Is abusing the humankind called development?

We have developed obviously, in sky scrapers stretching to hundreds of feet and an equally tall crime rate. Should we be proud or should we take up a knife and become a vigilante?

Let me give you an example.

“Is India the rape capital of the world?”

I’m not saying it although I would kill to say it. It’s the heading of a report compiled by an American woman. Would you disagree? No, you would perhaps try to highlight the plight of women in her country in a piss poor attempt to cover up what’s happening in our country.

I don’t think covering up would work this time. In a country which recorded 24,923 cases of rape in 2012 which means around 2076 rape cases per month, 68 rape cases in every day which amounts to about 0.0007 rape cases per second, what can you cover up?

Now tell me are you proud of your country. Why would you be? You live in a country where it is justifiable for a woman to perceive every man she comes across in her life (including her parents, husband, kids, brothers and friends) as rapists.

And you know what the most chilling part is? This is just one-third of the actual rape cases happening in the country. The rest go unreported. Now do you have the urge to take up a gun and shoot down every single rapist in the country? If, someone like me with a simple calculator by my side could find out the filth that adorn our ‘developed’ country, why can’t people such as judges, lawyers and all of those who are considered learned men by the society can’t see it? Pardon, me but it makes me wonder. Are they a part of this too or are they patriotic souls who don’t give a damn about the country they are patriotic about?

Take some time off and go to Facebook. Open a photo of any celebrity, preferably actors and actresses from the Indian cinema. First let’s go with male. What would you see in the comments section? Almost 80% of the comments would be men and notice the comments made by female members. One would find a number of replies by random guys asking for their phone numbers. Take the photo of a female celebrity. Read the comments and you’d feel sick to your stomach about our fellow countrymen’s mentality.

Gentlemen, this is the current situation of our country. Are you ashamed now? You need any more reason to wish you had not been born a male?

And what’s the role of the government here? The judiciary system?

A muted audience.

A judiciary system that takes pride in adjourning a case and approving bail to a rape accused at a nominal fee so that everybody would be able to afford it. The media comes exactly after everything has happened to make more money out of it. The human rights group which is more concerned about the age of the rapist being a few months shy of 18 than about the condition of the victim deserves a mention here too.

I have one question for you. How can you live with yourself?

A lawyer who proudly says the attire of the woman was not proper which prompted the accused to rape the victim and the people blindly believing it to be the reason. You just cannot find a better lawyer in the courtroom. The media proudly walking into the scene of the crime disrupting even the tiny bit of investigation the police are trying to do and grandly declaring, “Another rape. Is there an end for this?” They stomp all over the place as if they have any right to and they say, “For want of safety, we won’t reveal the name of the victim.” And they reveal the address, family ties and every little secret about the victim in the name of ‘getting to the bottom of it’.

In a country where rape victims are considered more derogatory than the rapist, the media are being so helpful in such a trying time and I’m being bitterly sarcastic as if I try to talk normal, I would do nothing but abuse.

What do you think should we, the public do? Stand by and watch? You may but I can’t. We’ve stood by and watched long enough and its time the public raises their voices. This is a democracy isn’t it? And by Abraham Lincoln’s definition, “Democracy is a government of the people, by the people and for the people.”

Its time India becomes a democracy and start living by those great words.

I don’t believe in ‘educating’ young men from a very young age would put an end to it. First of all, you can’t put an end to it. So, their basic viewpoint itself is wrong. Second of all, rape is not a disease that you can curb with a solution. It’s a crime like thievery and terrorism. No matter how much you try, you can’t put an end to terrorist or a robber. Same goes here. You see, there are two ways to stop any crime-make the punishment extremely lethal or to cut the weed off when it’s budding by right education. The second would fail as there’s a technical glitch. It’s not a weed anymore but a fully grown banyan tree.

Now how would you deal with an overgrown unwanted tree? You chop the branches off one by one and finally, you get rid of the trunk along with every single root it has grown, making sure that it does not grow out again.

I wouldn’t suggest the death penalty as no man has the right to take the life of another man. I would suggest castration. Let the rapist have a taste of his own medicine. Let the victim sleep peacefully knowing that he can’t harm anymore woman in his life. I do know that most people believe that only God can punish man but seeing as how he is not here in the immediate vicinity, let’s make man the deciding authority for once, shall we?. What? You’d let a man to decide to rape but you would not let someone else to punish the offender? Have you no sense?

You think you are superior just because you have a thing in between your legs?  Being a man comes from first and foremost, respecting a woman and when you can’t do that, you don’t deserve to be a man.

Now if I had the power, what would I do as a solution for this?

A high speed court should see into the matter. A court that cannot be governed by the Supreme Court as most rapists are rich enough to appeal and stay the lower court’s orders against them.

A police system that is unfailing in justice. The police must encourage the victims to come forward because most of the cases go unreported as most victims are afraid to speak out about their horrific experience as when they do, the rest of the nation labels them as someone who has been sinned or something. Only the police can help them by becoming a helping hand to them in their challenging time. Every single rapist must know what it is to be labeled as a rapist. I assume every police officer has a family consisting of a wonderful wife and two little angelic daughters. Now is the time to show how they can contribute towards their protection.

The media should be encouraged to reveal the photo of the rapist to the general public. Every Indian must know and remember the photo of every rapist. This would stop repeat offence and it would show the rapist that the world is watching their every move and one wrong move would rain hell upon them. Why? Because when a rapist gets beaten to death by the public, the wannabe would think twice before doing it.

He maims a girl physically and psychologically and he gets to walk scot free? Not in my world he won’t.

The major task lies for the public. There should be neighborhood watch. For each neighborhood, the people living in the society must for a group which would have the record of everyone staying in their neighborhood. By this, they can keep an eye out for people with criminal records.

This may not be much but it is still better than what we have now. It can’t stop rape but it can reduce them drastically to make India a safer place for our womenfolk. Development means going towards the right direction and not extending the limbs in every direction, right and wrong alike.

Thank you for giving me an opportunity to shred what has been raging in my heart for a while now.

Jai Hind.