We are a country that lives on bollywood!! We need our “stars” to endorse everything for us, right from underwear to shampoos to phones. Especially us, the people who were born in the 90s. For us there was no Doraemon or Shin Chan. We had to make do with the Salmans and the Shahrukhs. And oh, I loved them all!!! But now that I’m 22 and have seen the “World (Movies???)”, oh how much I despise the likes of Ra One and Dabangg!!!! I pity their lameness, their tackiness, and their ummm…. bollywoodness (Is that a word??? Well, there should be!!!). But there is still one man for whom I’ll never lose my respect. He’s a perfectionist, an intelligent moviemaker, an amazing actor who gives exemplary performances one after the other. Yes, I’m going to talk about the one only Aamir Khan today. More specifically, his show that everyone is talking about, Satyamev Jayate.
When the program started, I was wondering if it would just end up being any other talk show. But I was wrong. I think it was an intelligent attempt to address one of the vices that torment Indian society. It talked about female foeticide in a detailed sort of way that you can expect Aamir to come up with. And believe me, the statistics are shocking!!! The sex ratio has apparently lowered to 914 girls for every 1000 boys. But what is more shocking is the reason this is happening. It’s us, the humans. With our intelligence, our technological advances, our sophisticated machinery and the most important of all, our qualified doctors, we believe that we have the right to decide who lives and who doesn’t. It numbs me, and I’m sure the rest of us too, to think about those women who are tortured because they carry a girl in their womb. As I sat there with tears in my eyes, watching those three women (One of them actually had her face bitten by her husband because she delivered two girls!! I mean how horrible is that???), I couldn’t help but wonder the extent to which humans are capable of inflicting atrocities on one another. I remember reading this sentence once by this philosopher (I can’t remember the name!!! Aargh!!):
“Think of the worst thing you possibly can. Someone, somewhere has already done that”
As hard it is to believe this, I think it’s quite true. And believe me, I was horrified and I felt like screaming out watching that woman with her scarred face. How would any man, though not carying the child in him, even think of doing that??? How can a woman who herself has carried a child at some point of time or other, kick her own granddaughter down the stairs??? How could those doctors, who we entrust with our lives, be actually responsible of killing unborn girls and still live with it??? How could we be so ruthless, so heartless???
And then someone told me to look at the positive side of it. To look at the fact that those women fought back. To look at the incredible human capability to face, to overcome and to survive. To even decide to become independent after so many years of living a sheltered, protected, dependent life. To respect their guts. And the guts of all those who believe that change is possible, that change should begin with them. Its very easy for all of us to sit back and watch it and write about it but extremely difficult to actually make the decision of getting up and trying to bring about a change. If we can’t do that, let us at least take a pledge today that we won’t be those humans, that we would never decide who lives and who doesn’t, that we would love whoever that comes in our lives equally and try to make this world a better place to live. Because better place means happier lives. And all we want to do in this world is be happy, isn’t it???
Musings of a 22 year old 