MY HEART LIES WITH YOU

I and Puneet were notorious for bunking classes and ridiculous activities all over campus. But this was something bolder and far more exciting than all our previous emprise. We stepped down from bus midway to our college. The theatre was only few minutes away. This was the first time we planned to watch cinema secretly and all alone. From buying tickets, waiting in the longue and then finally finding our seats it was heart pounding, sweaty palm journey with adrenalin rushing all the time.

All this lasted till Anil Kapoor stepped on the screen. I forgot all the chips and chocolates we had for munching. His character had it all and transformed me into a different world. He was brave enough to marry a rape victim and defy all social norms. He gave her love, care and respect a girl deserves even though she lost her virginity. He even gave shelter to children from his fathers illicit relations. Are real men ever this strong? Is there anyone broad minded enough to accept brothers and sisters from an illicit relation of a parent?

All through the movie I kept arguing with myself over reel life and real life. How many such heroes exist in reality? There was an advocate, brother of my friend, who was willing to marry one of her clients, also a rape victim. Why virginity of a girl wasn’t an issue for him? Why peer pressure didn’t bother him? But his family used to mock him and never showed any respect or interest for such a match.

Recently I mentioned to an attendant that his mother was abused by his own father for years. And he is the one who is responsible for her anguish and physical illness.  The seeming literate and educated attendant jumped and hurled choicest invectives to me. It was his chauvinism or show of masculinity, I wondered and thanked God when he left without grabbing my collar and hitting me. Was his father above humanity?  What counts more muscle power or mental strength I thought ? Can a son rise against the misdeeds of father and not care about consequences?

Back then I and Puneet were two teenagers mesmerized by the movie and our new gained independence. Leaving the theater I told Puneet that Anil Kapoor had become my knight in shinning armour. “Mine too” Puneet said and we burst into laughter. We sang hamara dil aapke paas hai for Anil Kapoor all our way back home.

LETTER TO A HUSBAND

Darling Husband,

On International Women’s Day I have a few announcements to make. Since all your wedding vows have withered its time to enact a new Post-Nuptial Contract. You have been into relaxing mode ever since we married.

You expect me to be a machine, a friend, an advisor, a cook, an encyclopedia, angel face …but never accept me to be a human being. Your honesty has been declining in terms of treatment towards me. Is this the way you dealt with me when we first met? I now wonder about your selective hearing, cluelessness - or maybe a learned helplessness, emotional handicap.

We concurred to share all household responsibilities 50/50.Post marriage slowly and steadily I have been made the head maid supervising everything and if I do not "take charge” you let things fall apart and remain surgically attached to T.V. remote, rooted to the couch.

To have a baby was a joint decision, joint joy as well as joint responsibility. It is frustrating when I can't check-out for a few days - or even just kick it after a hard day of work - without knowing our children would then only eat fast food, not get to bed in time, have a bath etc.

I am most resentful about my career. You get lot of good strokes with your job because you put many extra hours in it while I am instead zooming out of work so that everything at our home works smoothly. Husbands’ professional success doesn’t mean that the wife’s career is reduced to ashes.

TREAT ME EQUALLY AS A PARTNER

All your grandiloquence about our equivalence has come to nothing. You promised equal partnership in everything but haven’t lived up to your rhetoric. Marriage is like two people pulling a cart together. It isn’t possible until both of us give 100% of our mind, soul and bodies. The moment we join in matrimony you cannot separate yourself as 1+1 equals 1 now and not 2.

You are captain of our ship by mutual agreement. I trust you, your decisions and navigation in most matters. That doesn’t mean I am inferior or incapable of judgement or resolving matters. I am your intellectual equal, as well-read as you. You have greater strength for protecting me and not for domination. Our inequalities are for performing different tasks.

We cannot avoid conflict, resentment, inharmony until both of us are open to discussions and decisions on equal basis so that neither of us is ever considered inferior or less important to the relationship. The dynamics of equality can only be maintained with more effort on your part.

MORALITY OF OUR MARRIAGE

You can’t be a moon shinning and smiling to the world and being cold and dark to me. This is inadequate concept of marriage if husband thinks he can serve god and be a good human being without being good to his wife. God is god of justice he cannot reward your injustice towards me.

Further your spiritual journey is incomplete without me. Remember I am your missing half. You cannot achieve salvation by treating your wife as your mistress.

I WANT MY INDIVIDUALITY

As long as we dated I enjoyed your undivided attention, compliments, appreciation, and encouragement in each and every thing I did. I had value and was treated as a person. Before marriage you laid awake all night thinking about all I said and post marriage you sleep before even I start to speak. Have I made a mistake by saying yes?  I feel trapped in this web all the time.

Marriage has caused you to regress and emotionally stunted. You respect your friends as persons as beings while I remain one of your most prized possessions, your most handy gadget to keep your house going. I am an individual, worthy of talking, be heard and understood. As a wife I have emotional needs and special desires which you have been extremely unfair in fulfilling.

You treat your China better than your ordinary dish isn’t it? So from now on I need your attention and respect as a person. I refuse to accept your indifference and lethargy any longer. When you respect an individual as a person you make genuine effort to be interested in them, in their likes, dislikes and problems.

I will neither dominate and fight for my rights nor will I be dominated by you and be a family slave. From now on I require to be treated equally on all grounds.

                                                                                      Your ever loving Wife

A DOLL DIES

How else will you describe a miniature Snow White? For that is what she was, an over-sized doll with blood red lips, milky white complexion and delicate black hair same as the narration of a fairy tale. She might have weighed a little over 10 pounds and must have breathed her last some hours ago, when she was alive and born out of real womb.

 It was just an ordinary morning, a decade back, of second professional of my Degree in Medicine. Visiting a morgue, at least once, was compulsory part of Forensic Medicine Syllabi. I deliberately delayed and made every attempt to escape the horror till the last day. This isolated building was the most horrid part of the city’s biggest hospital. An eager throng was surging to and fro. Men were crowding and elbowing each other. Few relatives wailed sitting on the tiny platform outside the main hall .Darkness of death was palpable all around.

The odour of formalin and stench of rotten flesh filled my lungs. There were jars, big and small, all around with dust as thick as emulsion coat over them and viscera carefully preserved within them. In the centre was a large examination table which was used for dissection, examination, investigation or whatever. Knives, blades, chisels, forceps, scissors of different sizes and shapes were neatly stacked nearby. Along with my professor and a male colleague we were accompanied by a dark, bare-torsoed, undertaker type person, straight from a late night horror show, a morgue attendant.

My eyes fell on the bodies that were lying on the side tables. One of an old man, a middle-aged male and there was this doll. I could no longer concentrate on the cirrhotic liver or gun shot wounds of the two other bodies.  I went closer and made the flies fly that greedily hovered around her.  “She will not wake up dear”, my colleague made a callous remark. Oh! She was dead. It was then I noticed her maggot filled wound on her left cheek. The realization of her being a corpse brought me back to my senses. Up till then she appeared to be deep in tranquil sleep.

The Prof started his narration on the next specimen.She was found abandoned, next to a heap of garbage, by ragpickers, who reported to police. She was strangled soon after birth by a pajama string or a thin nylon rope. There was a deep and thin scarlet groove encircling her short chubby neck. The big lacerated wound on the back of her head revealed that she was thrown against a wall, probably to be dumped. Later, while lying over the litter her left cheek was bitten by carnivore or a rodent. Her umbilical cord hung loosely from abdomen like a grown ascaris. I felt my intestines churn.

I gathered nerves to launch my volley of questions to Prof as to what must have been the cause of this and if he was sure about infanticide. He assured me that this was not the first time he saw or dealt with the murder of new born, always a girl. This case according to him was better than the rest as the body and genitalia hadn’t been mutilated and were fairly recognizable. Since in our country pre-natal sex determination is banned some people resort to such barbaric ways to get rid of girl child.

Her body lay cold and defunct before me, now pulverised by autopsy .I remember having read that a millennia and half back in Saudi Arabia baby girls were buried alive. It seems all the scriptures, laws and conventions still haven’t been able to change mindsets of few. My first and last visit to the morgue was from frightening, horrifying to one the most memorable days of my life. The whole episode had a neurotoxic effect on my system. I went into a state of mental paresis not being able to decide whether to rejoice at my survival or wail for a death. Celebrations of International Women’s Day no longer interested me.