A rescue of no mean proportions

It was a common man on a day of uncommons. A common man, amidst the cacophony of celebrations. A mere common man who dragged up the fallen idol, back on it's pedestal. The procession had halted for a split second. The elderly matrons had started to chant, as the idol comically toppled over. You see, it is not auspicious to see the gods slither and slant. We don't allow our deities the margin of error. Poor dears. Such impossible stress! But then like that stray mindless act of faith that sustains the Hindu universe in the minds of it's devotees, a common man stood with his legs wide apart, pulled on the ropes, wrestled with the bindings and up and about, the high and mighty went! In that one instant, man and God were equal. I wondered if the rituals ever, were meant to be thus commonplace.
I am not religious. Or should I say, I am not sure if I am yet. I have too many questions and religion has too many answers for everything else. And yet during those few days of festivities, I find myself giving faith a patient hearing. If you ask me to interpret, I would probably say that God had toppled over so that man could feel godlike in that one instant. Much like in our imaginary universe, we like to believe that God might pull us up, when we happen to slither and slide. But funnily enough, this being, this entity, this God, usually exercises a will of his own. Suppose toppling was his chosen game?
So when Ganesha found himself prostrate on the ground, the fisher boy jumped to his rescue. The elderly matrons chanted, blew on conch shells, shook their heads harder and all was well. The procession still had it's merits. Ganesha still had most of his limbs intact. Only the common fisher boy, grew half and inch taller with pride. After all, his was a rescue of no mean proportions.

A mark on him

There was a mark on him. A mark, probably meant to warn me off the damage that was about to be inflicted. Some say that in the bigger scheme of things, in the strange ways the universe conspires to let damage attract damage. Or conversely to let hellfire attract inflammable bundles of woodstock. Only the match has to be lighted. And all that remains is smoke and burn. 
There is a perverse sense of intensity in the toxicity of such a fireball. When all hell breaks loose, and all one can do is burn in heat. Slowly and then with putridity. In the aftermath of doused remains, it is hard to guess who drew whom in. The toxicity, the damage, the intensity, the passion, the overdrawn strings of resistance. I can only state with certainty that passion doesn't warrant grovelling. Neither does it beg for attention. So when the fire has consumed the remnants of affection, intensity picks up it's head and walks out of the pyre. Damaged, yet pieced together. Singed and yet whole. Patterns of the cosmos repeats it's cycle till the time that somehow the voids get clogged back up. Bundled up and pushed behind the curtains of pretense. Until the next instance that the hellfire attracts hellfire.

If adventures had a soul

If adventures had a soul, I would find him and chain him down. The hollows of the heart, the insignificance of sorrows, all of it. And none of it. I would find him and chain him down. In ancient times, there would be droughts. The concepts of little as compared to the abundance of present reality. There would be droughts, and not a drop of water would trickle down the parched sky, onto the equally fractured earth. There would be droughts and just like you and me, there would come a thousand old children of the soil. They would till, they would toil and they would perish. The luxury of abundance, just like the luxury of thought wouldn't be available to them. And so there would be droughts as opposed to floods. As meticulously as abundance breeds floods, so does ire breed void. As he moves from flesh to flesh, from ecstasy to rapture, the lacuna of stillness fades. So if you find abundance wrapped up in folds of abstract, chain him down, sit him across and converse. Maybe will the floodgates open. Will the soul to re-inhabit, speck by speck, drop by drop.

Do we have to hate men?

They said in the previous times that, behind every successful man, there is always a woman. A woman who inspires and motivates. A woman who supports and sacrifices. So men are supposed to care for them. But roll back to the 21^st century, women are strong and proud. They are fearless and successful. They wield as much power as any other. So why are the men still supposed to care? This is a question of questionable intents which has of late bothered so many. In the wake of the #metoo movement, we often hear our men, complaining. Why did it have to come to this? Why couldn’t we all be languishing in blissful oblivion like we always did. Why do we women have to hate our men? Honestly we don’t have to. And we don’t either.

Men, like all God’s creation, are beautiful. Quite tongue in cheekily so. They till, they toil. They provide and sustain, following the patterns set for them by the almighty creator, who very conveniently also happens to be of the male gender, 90% of the time, in the least. Keeping the religious debate aside, patriarchy runs through the veins of our social framework. Providers are protectors. Protection, entitles them to concession and concessions can be forced. When a woman defies that protective cover, she opens up the channel for judgement and discord. And then comes the force, which is rarely with her (pun intended). Her non commitment to rules could be of any degree. It could be as irrelevant as being beautiful or aesthetically pleasing to look at. It really doesn’t matter. As and when she challenges set norms, she has to be accordingly dealt with.

This is the common narrative of the feminist order. And it is largely true. Just that, sometimes it isn’t. It is not a far flung conclusion that there still does exist a relatively healthy number of good men around (and I am keeping our fathers out of this debate). By good I don’t mean, the quintessential Indian boy. No thank you! But those friends, the colleagues, cousins, acquaintances even, who happen to be very much a part of our everyday lives. And who make it a lot more fun, most of the times. When we interact, have a conversation, become friends, it is usually outside of the gender filter. We choose people to spend our time with, because they intrigue us, interest us and sometimes challenge us. There are still those men who count women, as important parts or influences in their lives simply because they connected despite their gender and subsequent differences.  

There are those men who are fiercely feminist and there are those women who are vocally misogynists. Personal opinions have as many colours as the spectrum allows in a rainbow. In the increasingly polar and non inclusive society that we are building for our kids, what is surprising is how we are consciously segmenting our interactions with others, packing them in neat little boxes to be stowed away in fear of social censure. Notwithstanding the fact that women should off course voice their opinions, experiences, concerns, as freely as men do, but what is imperative is men should start treating women as any other equal. Amidst the loud noise of feminist chatter, what is drowning is the voice of strong women, who are now rising up and denying any form of special gender consideration. We women do not hate our men. What we hate is the patronising attitude, the inconsiderate condescension.

One would think that with the growing prominence of women’s rights and freedom of expression, the necessity and requirement of sustenance provided by a man would take a backseat. Sadly, that is not the case. The increasing need of putting a man down to shore up a woman’s place, defeats the purpose of upholding the collective feminine pride. Does a woman’s self worth revolve around how she is/was treated by a man?

Contrary to biblical beliefs of God having created man and a woman being created out of a man’s rib, essentially making her a diminutive of his all encompassing self, post industrial revolution world presented us with an egalitarian society. As the decades slowly glide by, we have successfully freed ourselves of many of our prominent social evils. Slavery, colonization, untouchability, religious orthodoxy etc are more or less a thing of the past. Despite us moving out of proverbial dark ages, women continue of be treated as second rate citizens. Yes, they don’t conduct elaborate witch hunts or burn us at stake anymore. But discrimination has never really faded. And the new found aggression is only widening the gap.

So what the future generation needs to imbibe is that everyone is equal in the truest sense. Just as a girl doesn’t deserve to be mistreated or manhandled in any way, in the same way, it is not necessary to limit interactions between male and females out of fear of social embargoes. Neither is a man root cause of all kinds of social abuse, nor is a woman an epitome of all that is just and true in the world. Experiences are individualistic and so should be the judgement (if any at all). And lastly, no, we don’t need to hate men in order to be feminists. All men don’t have to die.