To come into knowledge and digest the truth that your child has thoughtfully walked ahead, both head and heart ahead, of you, and also to discover an unknown godforsaken person in your family, who has for so long not been a part of your daily cycle and thought, has taken the cinch to move out of the stupid norms you have built unjustifiably, is simply a bolt from the blue for the orthodox Methodist.
Who likes winds of change, honestly we talk of change, to banter about it in a comfortable sofa, sipping away an Irish coffee in the cool ambience of a subtle music. And blah and blah and blah the banter goes…today we saw this thief being punished by the mob. A woman being smashed to death under the wheels of a speeding bus and that her body was being dragged to the nearest hospital…the nearest hospital is just 10 meters away from the place of accident yet...it takes half an hour for the medics to come! We Literati can do all the talking we can and wallow in our own sorrow at the sorry state of affairs. When ever will there be a time to lift up the cudgel and say enough is enough said and done, we must now act on our own words. When!
That indeed is enough! Enough of deviation from the subject. Of the many cases of honour killing that happen we rarely get to see few reported in the newspapers or in the local news or so in fact the national news too. Even more so highlighting one is just the instigating another honour killing.
Each day has made its usual course and has ended on its own at a more appalling note. Each day a small incident makes its four liner mark to an extension on the page Five or six or eight where you find more gory details, and your blood boils. Where are we headed? Are we the subtle brutes? Aren’t we the ones who have thought to make a mark and move ahead?
Gross injustice has been done to the ones who chose to move ahead in life and take and talk changes. Mai did not deserve to be gang-raped, a woman need not have acid thrown over her face only because she refused to marry the feudal lord of her sister or for that matter any inhuman brute of an ogre, who had been lusting for her ever since he saw her. A man and a woman need not be killed if they loved each other and it was the same Gotra that came their way! And if your son or the daughter on whose wedding you had thought of splurging your wealth stayed out of it and chose to marry a man way below her station. So much it shames you. Does it not? But does it not shame you when you lust or look at another man’s wife whom you out of pretensions of reverence call Bhabiji!
It seems it is now taking a place of pride among people and every day there is a little more of it. To add insult to the injury, to alleviate the stance of the lover’s the televisions show try to typecast it by portraying the fate of lovers of the same Gotra. What was the result? One of the two lovers was hanged to death and the other bereaving and living turned mad. Moral of the story death awaits the one who protest.
We are the ones who have made the caste systems, for the one who makes sweets is called Mr. Halwai, the weaver Mr. Ansari, the land lord of the upper class Mr. Zamindar or Babu Sheikh or Boro Babu, the Brahmin Mr. Pandit , Mr. Qazi, Mr. Bannerjee, and the irony of fate lies that the ones who could only grovel and manage to stand up on their own are the middle class people. Struggling with making of their own identity own place grappling to be heard. These are the voices of the present generation.
Why honour your inflated pride when you cannot honour the life the other has chose to live. It’s time to grow up there are better things that are troubling the mankind. Haven’t we made the chains we opt to live in with? Haven’t we chained our own emotions to such a deep derogation that, when we see someone else take the lead; we lash out like vulpine creatures making successful attempts to devour them? The irony is such that people are successful. The sheer irony of brutality taking its course daily and winning over again and again. And an enlightening four liner making its course to the daily, Daily.
Does an honour killing inspire fear in us, when we think of moving out of the usual and take it on the rocks on our own! No not in the least! In fact it makes us feel more primitive. It was better when men ran about food hunting with a leather skin tied to the girdle than the affluent display of gold rings on every finger and lapel. We are so livid to see the pretensions of the cultured society, and each time a man from the civilized wild beats his female infant to death or rapes his maid. Don’t men deserved to be killed on that note. I leave the question to you.
