How many choices women have?

Entering Puberty is a difficult phase of anybody's life,especially a girl's life. It is painful physically, outrageous emotionally and exhausting mentally but what adds icing to the cake is the reaction of society toward a girl's changing body. It is definitely not easy when the entire family or the society expects a 11 or 12 year old girl to suddenly grow up and learn to live in her maryadaas (limits) as soon as possible.

So difficult for a girl to handle such horrible reactions when she is trying to figure out herself and it is not the problem that is faced by the small town or village girls but many girls in my country face such problems in a way or another. 

Choices are not meant for us, what is meant for us are the decisions taken by our society, our relatives, our family, our parents and they are too good at disguising them as choices. What is even more interesting is that, nowadays the Advertising sector is also very keen on celebrating the modern Indian women( remember vogue empowerment video featuring deepika padukone), although these choices are basically their disguised opinions manipulating young girls in certain way to be more free, independent and rebellious, which to an extend is good but for what? may be to join their advertising agencies and taking a pride in showing off their vital assets which are then compared to their prestigious products, be it  a motorcycle or a car or a engine, the Advertising agencies have redefines the value of women's body parts.

Sometimes I feel that a women's breast, her thighs, her belly and her ass is given so much of attention that people fail to recognize her spirit. Parents are so busy preaching her to be shy, submissive, simple and scarifying that they forget to teach her to be courageous and confident.

Very often I think that why do young girls grow up listening to the story of Cinderella and snow white but not the stories of Rani laxmi bai and joan of ark. A mother always keeps a eye on her grown up girl regarding what she wears, how she speaks to her elders, what she wears then why not the same mother consider it her responsibility to talk to her regarding sex and periods.

So busy is the Modern Indian women to become the perfect example of what the society idolizes that somewhere she loses herself, after a certain point of time she really forget who she is and who would put so much of time to find oneself back which may not fit what the society expects her to be.

As a girl I was often criticized for being rebellious, for wearing short clothes,especially by my relatives, eventually they were successful putting me into Indian wears, I still feel awkward and shy wearing short clothes( guess, they were successful in giving me a wound). I was also criticized for being outspoken and many more thing. To your surprise I was also criticized by my fellow classmates for discussing periods (Menstrual cycle). I was criticized for making a choice of being a writer and I am still often criticized because I choose to make choices not sacrifices.

Women like kalpana chawla, kiran Bedi, Indra Nooyi also made some choices, some really tough choices and who better can fit the example of Modern Indian women than them.

Newslaundry!!!

www.Newslaundry.com, how I came to know about this website is as interesting as this website.

So I was preparing for some mass comm and journalism entrance exams and was mostly relying on the newspapers, internet and Television News channels,of course they were so full of bizzard that one could probably have a headache or a heart attack.

I was desperately looking for some true and real source of information. I was not at all interested in knowing the point of view of some superficial journos, I googled for some of the best journos in India (and trust me that particular website which I opened, I don't remember the name of the website though, did not contain names like Barkha dutt, rajdeep sardesai and arnab gowswami), the name that topped that list was Arun shourie and I googled for some of his interviews which were truly amazing, in one of his interviews where he was being interviewed by another journalist called Madhu Trehan ( that website had ranked her on the 9th no.). It was some Bangalore literary festival and the anchor was introducing both of them, during Madhu trehan's Introduction he mentioned about Newslaundry .com and Boom!! something clicked. Newslaundry, the name sounded really cool. I searched for the website and the first thing that I saw on the website was the Clothesline, absolutely hilarious anchored by Madhu trehan .The entire website is pretty amazing be it the articles or the blogs or the interviews and one of my favorites is NL hafta, where they present the news of the entire week and present their point of view on it, lovely and must to be heard. I love some of the amazing interviews done by Abhinandan sekhri, he is a excellent interviewer.
So here the point comes why did I choosed newslaundry to be my ultimate source of information, it is because of the credibility that this venture has shown me. It is a very heartbreaking fact that most of the news that we read in the newspapers or see in the news channels has the sole purpose to increase their audience by hook or crook which has corrupted the entire journalism system.
In the words of Madhu trehan, Abhinandan sekhri and their NL team, In a democracy the media is the watch dog and the watch dog is supposed to be free. In some of the most famous Media houses, a candidate is not preferred on the basis of his/her merit but on the basis of how they are able to attract the advertisers, hence when the advertisers pay, the advertisers are served, when the government pays the government is served and when the people pay the people are served.

You can subscribe to Newslaundry on youtube or like it on facebook or twitter or you can  pay to support the venture and be the part of the change.
At the same time I also want to tell all the readers that newslaundry can have its own drawbacks and the people heading Newslaundry,are also entitled to their opinions, likes and dislikes and point of views, so as a viewer it is also our responsibility to dig deep into any issue and not make generalizations regarding certain matters.
there are certain interviews and articles that I do not find very appealing and they really fall in the bad light but yes I can surely say that Newslandry is better than all the crappy newschannels which are extremely misleading.
one more thing I would like to flaunt the badge that I have got from newslaundry to keep the press free.I would like the readers to check it out the website and make decide for themselves

Why is it important to give it back

From the time immemorial, societies have been made in order to protect their particular community of particular ethnicity.They emerge, move to glory if work together with harmony and sometimes get destroyed as well. Reasons can be anonymous like natural calamity, invasion from other civilizations but the most common of all the reasons have been internal conflict which has brought down the most biggest civilizations.

So the point here to ponder is that how does the internal conflicts arise, how do people are ready to  go against their own people who give them social, economic and political stability.The major reason  behind it being that these very rights are being snatched away from them as well as their personal rights are also under danger.

usually such kind of problems arise in those societies where there is a very stark division between two or more communities like in Belgium, there is a history of conflict of two decades between dutch speaking and french speaking population or the major reason behind the French Revolution had been the clashes between the the wealthy and affluent class and the labor class.

conflicts usually arise when there is no compatibility between the existing communities and in grave situation can often lead to violence sometimes they are structured in the society and if they happen frequently they have a tendency to become a a cult which leads to the suppression of a particular group, the most common example of such kind of violence is domestic violence in middle east or the Muslim countries where beating the women of the house is embedded in cultural values of the people.

or sati pratha or polygamy which for a long time was a part of Hindu culture for a long time or witch hunting practices in the middle ages in Europe which led to the mass killing of women population. 

Structural violence lies at a very surface level and can be eliminated but once it finds it's roots in the cultural system, it becomes very hard to eliminate. 

Cultural violence is very hard to tackle is because then the religious and personal sentiments of the people find refuge in such practices and once anything is attached with religious values or culture of a community its very difficult to subside it. It can sometimes take centuries to eliminate such wrong practices.

the wrong interpretation of the jihadi theory by the fanatic Islamists is now a global concern.

Hence according to my opinion, it becomes important to weed out the problems before they start creating major problems. Structural violence should be tackled first handedly before it grows into a major problem, how I do not know, but I know one thing for sure that sometimes it is important to shed some blood in order to make some peace, sometimes it is important to give it back.