Paraaya Dhan

 

This is wrong. This is just wrong.

I can’t stop shaking with rage and the tears are making it difficult to type.

Dr. Chirag was cycling to the nearby Ambedkar Hospital in the wee hours of a sultry morning in the capital when he noticed something before falling off his bike. Holding in its mouth, a stray was walking past with the hurried gait of a triumphant hunter carrying the remnants of a creature that needed immediate attention. The doctor rushed the canine’s intended meal to his hospital where the gravity of her condition became abundantly clear.

This new-born girl child was barely a few hours old when she had been brusquely tossed into a dumpster by her murderous parents. Scavenging for food, the canine foraged through its contents and found what a majority wouldn’t consider making a meal of.

The child sustained injuries that will leave her debilitated for the rest of her life. One of her eyes was ripped out of the socket; her nose was missing as were several portions of her face, hands and feet.

The youngling has been provided with as much treatment as is permissible for a baby’s body. She lies surrounded in balls of cotton on a bed whose sheets need changing several times over. TV crews have blurred out her face – she now looks like a rude reminder of gender inequality and female infanticide.

For a country whose collective psyche borders on the psychotic when it comes to the boy child, this is not an unusual occurrence. Murdering the girl child is a national sport that several provincial families indulge in.

Social norms make it near impossible to change a mindset that is discriminatory at the very least. Women are considered a burden and I don’t just speak of this dilemma in the lower rungs of society. Regardless of social class, foeticide has a chilling history in India.

Two years ago, on my birthday, the only news that dominated most channels was the untimely death of Steve Irwin until I surfed over to a local channel from the capital that provided footage of several babies, some with the umbilical cord still attached, floating buoyantly in their shallow graves around the Lake Palace in the blue city of Udaipur.

Seven/eight bodies had floated over near the highway to where the camera crews had pitched their apparatus to give Indians rousing the world over with glimpses of a reprehensible veracity.

The social stigma associated with the birthing of a girl in India are deep rooted and steeped in tradition. It is expected of the daughter to help her mother with household chores when she’s considered able bodied.

She must learn about kitchen essentials – education may not even be a priority. Until a few decades ago, child marriages were the norm in the suffocating parochial families in Rajasthan and other societies in the country where this was permissible.

Even though it is against the law, child marriages are a redundant reality and still occur in various parts of the country. And the system of dowry ensures an early realization of the burden the parents have to nurture for life. Even the most educated insist on demanding dowry and a woman who marries without any is shunned not just by the masculine of the species. Dowry related deaths are a daily occurrence that we are now inured against.

In a country where the current woman to men ratio is 820 to 1000, violence against the species of burden seems like a natural progression. And this violence begins in the womb.

I am pro-choice and have fairly right wing views regarding abortion; but I cannot possibly condone the murder of an unwanted child that has been birthed. It is such heinous acts of murder that remind me of the futility of laws that have been conceived over the years for protecting children regardless of gender.

We live in a society that needs mental reforming; the endeavour being to create an atmosphere that does not pronounce women the weaker sex. The prejudice is in the mind. It is just not enough to be a human being anymore. Not only does the woman have to be beautiful, cultured and house trained she must also come with her own inheritance and must offer that for the use of her in-laws and others who deem fit to deride her.

Humanity has all but disappeared. It’s hard to believe what I read and see on the news – and can’t imagine who would find it in their heart to trash a tiny gurgling bundle of joy. And yet, I know that this won’t be the last instance such indignity is meted out.

I’m watching her right now – her body lies ravaged and eaten with injuries that will live with her for life. A large red hole dominates her tiny face and she shakes every now-and-then with a gut wrenching shiver. She must feel the raw pain that fate seems to have doled out to her.

My mum is crying but she’s happy to see the baby respond. “She must grow up into a successful role model as an example for the world – she’s fighting to live and I hope she survives”. I don’t agree.

If the text messages being sent to the news channel are any indication, the out-pouring of wrath is only just starting. But will anyone have the gumption to adopt this tiny fighter? I think not. And the government won’t do any fat good either.

I want so much to feel her tiny hands – to hold her just once and apologize for what, as a society, we’ve done to her. And because there seems little hope for her, I hope she finds deliverance.

Jo ab keeye ho data, aisa na keejo, Agley janam mein mohey bitiya na keejo.

~ by alternativefrock on September 27, 2008.