Women's Day! Really?

You are celebrating women’s day. Have you given your maid a day off today?

So, here we are! “Celebrating Women’s Day” in all its symbolism, hyperbole and Lo! Some institutions have even released a video ‘celebrating’ women!

Even our government thinks it is “an honour” to work towards furthering women empowerment in the country across wide range of sectors! Wow!

Okay. Let’s do a reality check.

Charity begins at home. Right? So, all the women in the world, please check if you have given an off to your domestic help on ‘Women’s Day?’

Even if they don’t know what it is, even if they take off whenever they wish, did any one of you gave her an off today, saying, “It’s a woman’s day’. Enjoy. Its your off today! Tomorrow it goes! (As if at home, she will catch up with long over-due sleep and won’t have to work her bones out, anyway!) But, did we do it?

See, how it happens – I told my domestic help, “Didi, Aaj aurton ka din hai. Aap aaram kijiye. Aapki aaj chutti hai” (Sis, its women’s day today. You just take rest. It’s your off today). The near-50-year-old asks, “Aurton ka din?” (Woman’s Day?) What’s that? Who celebrates it? Is it an Indian festival? What happens this day? I tell her how the whole world ‘celebrates’ it. She smiled in her sleeves, in disbelief! And said, “Hamare gaon main nah hota ye tyohaar” (My village doesn’t celebrate this festival).

And that’s the bitter truth.

No one celebrates it in the true spirit. Please tell me how many village panchayats, companies, corporate houses, state governments, Central government have come out with a scheme for their benefit today? How many gave them off today with pay, and how many celebrated them just like that-- by presenting them a flower, a gift, a bouquet, and offering gratitude?

How many women have celebrated other women? Except just sending a two-year-old meme, defining women! How many women have actually thought that instead of bringing their women colleagues down, they would lift them up and stand up for them if their own favorite bosses have harassed them? How many women have put their foot down for other women, maltreated in their offices for their complexion, caste, religion, nationality, attire, work ethics and so on? How many women have decided that they wouldn’t be competitive but helping the other women make their space – especially those women who claim on various stages that they do this?

The reality is, most of them, don’t! They cut the throat of their women colleagues in offices, stay away from women friends who are “not useful” anymore and push themselves enough to be recognized in the same old lobby whose reality is ugly, fake and biased! There is everything but humility and humanity in such women-led, women-created lobbies who fake championing the cause of the women. I would rather go for those females who speak up, are recognized but never become a part of that lobby. You can count such literally ‘liberated’ women on your fingers.

In India, the ground reality of Rajasthan says women used to make the other women feel guilty for giving birth to a female child. Researches show that the infants were either killed in the womb by other women of the family or in-laws’ or by making the infant girls sip water mixed with crushed glass; so they cut themselves and die of excessive internal bleeding!

Unless the women supports and lifts other women, anywhere in the world, especially in India, women can never be celebrated on this or any other day. The only space where I saw women lifting each other is the farmers’ agitation site and Shaheen Bagh protest, where the fight was collective – for food and identity, respectively! In both these organic movements, no single women was seen being highlighted as a leader but often for age like Bilquis dadi along with three more grandmothers who stood their ground.

And yes! The women ‘champions’ celebrated and backed by brands of media, reached there, took selfies; promoted themselves on instagram, twitter and other social media accounts and “owned up” the organic movement as it gained international fame! Much to champion the cause – after the cause didn’t even need them! These ‘champions’ of women now shout from different stages about how they ‘covered’ the movement and slept there with other women on the road in chilly-winter nights, while the cctv footage, administration-run videos and register entries deny that!

Let’s come back home! A media house has launched a video celebrating the girl in the women! And yes, it well decorates the song celebrating well-heeled, well-dressed, outgoing women who don’t need a celebration. They have already liberated themselves from the clutches of your symbolic, fake celebration, dude!

The video doesn’t celebrate women on protest, nor those who work for the nation silently in villages and towns, women with special abilities and mothers who don’t discard a special child and live her life for them, the women who fights for her wronged husbands and sons by the governments, political or non- political outfits!

Let’s see what our Prime Minister has to say on this day. He “greets” the women virtually, via his favorite media and says that “India takes pride in their many accomplishments.” He salutes them too. And then tweets this.

“Saluting our indomitable #NariShakti on International Women's Day! India takes pride in the many accomplishments of the women of our nation. It is our Government's honour to be getting the opportunity to work towards furthering women empowerment across a wide range of sectors.”

A report in the media eulogizes our PM saying he has “often highlighted his government’s schemes like free cooking gas cylinders, opening of bank accounts, building toilets”, saying that woman empowerment has been a central theme of these programmmes.

Women and cooking gas, go hand in hand. Women and thier rights? No! I wonder if this report has been filed by a woman only! The reality of toilet building has already seen the light of the day via various reports filed by the alternate media.

The nations’ women would have saluted him if he had ordered a probe into the incidents in which women were disgraced on road, at and during various protests in India, raped in Kashmir, Unnao, UP, Delhi, MP and other smaller cities and towns inculcating fear among the wrong doers. If he had today given a nod to a law to be passed today itself, in which any women of the nation, if indignified, anywhere in his India, would be able to lodge an FIR without fear of the police, local anti-social elements, even political leaders!

Idealistic. Right?

That’s why we escape to certain films (Yes, there her commodification is a huge issue. And voices are being raised against it, by women herself!), poetry, arts, and theatre, culture where women’s reality is shown and she is often eulogized and paid gratitude too. The songs, the films and the poetry made on her, further helps the society honour her by those, who really mean it.

Much for this day, people. Let’s not fake it up anymore!

Today is famous poet and lyricist’s Sahir Ludhiyanvi’s 100th birth anniversary also. I am reminded of his famous couplet from film Phir Subah Hogi (Raj Kapoor/Mala Sinha), music by Khayyam. It celebrate the women, in words of love and gratitude;

Phir na keeje meri gustakh nigahi ka gila; dekhiye aapne phir pyar se dekha mujhko

Main kahan tak na nigaaon ko palatne deti, Aapke dil ne kai baar pukaara mujhko

(Please don’t blame me for my fascination of you; See, you saw me with love, repeatedly

For how long I wouldn’t have looked back at you; Your heart called me out, repeatedly)

Can we really celebrate females like this and make her feel protected and wanted?