THANK GOD I AM NOT A WOMAN FROM THE LANDS OF BOKO HARAM OR ISIS, I AM NOT SOLD IN OPEN MARKETS,  PASSED FROM ONE MAN TO THE OTHER, REPEATEDLY RAPED AT 12, SUBJECTED TO BEAR CHILDREN AT 14 TO CONTINUE THE SAVAGE IDEOLOGY OF CREATING A MUSLIM STATE!

“They have already killed my body. They are now killing my soul.” That’s how the 17-year-old Yazidi girl held captive by the ISIS terrorists spoke to an Italian journalist from one of the prisons in Iraq. Pretty that she was, she could have been signed off for a role in Hollywood. Instead, she was a sex slave to men who in the name of religion are plundering women in the 21^st century under the very glare of the Western media.

She is Mayat, the voice of hundreds of girls from the ISIS and Boko Haram states of Iraq, Syria or Nigeria. Subjected to brutal sexual attacks from different men daily, she still speaks. Probably that’s the resilience of a woman.

Sexual violence on women has always been a favourite tool of torture by the victors since time immemorial. Be it the plundering Huns or the Mughals in India or even the educated erudite British force on women freedom fighters, we have always been subjected to savagery in times of war. But its unthinkable and beyond our imagination that in the 21^st century women in certain nations ravaged by civil wars can still be subjected to inhuman torture, sold at markets in the open, kidnapped, raped, forced to bear kids at a tender age of 11-12, subjected to sexual slavery and passed on from one man to the other.

Last week, Nigeria marked the first anniversary since more than 200 girls were abducted from a secondary school in Chibok by Boko Haram militants. Nigeria's new president, Muhammadu Buhari, now says he doesn’t know if they would ever be found. Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau claimed responsibility for the kidnap of the girls. A report has found that the terror group has kidnapped at least 2,000 women and girls since 2014 and they have pledged to impregnate these girls fresh into their teens so that as many as children they bear, they can herd them into believing the ideology of an Islamic State. That’s how the world will be taken over by their ideology!

 

Hats off to their ideologies. Wonder if they were born from the womb of a woman! Only last week a BBC documentary aired real life tales of young girls herded into a small hut. Most of them were pregnant, many falling victim to the HIV virus as their rapists infected them. They looked like those pregnant cows tethered to posts in village meadows. At least the cows are fed and taken care of by their owners, these girls don’t even get two square meals. They look tired, defeated, lost. Yes, lost in the game of life even before it had started to flower.

The plight of these young African girls are similar to the Yazidi girls held by their ISIS captors in a secret prison in Mosul, Iraq. As Mayat went on to describe the three “rooms of horror” in the house, where she and her fellow victims are taken several times a day and raped, I asked myself : ‘Do we still live in pre-historic times?’ I would have better born an animal than a woman in such parts of the world.

Mayat was first forced to call her parents, who had somehow made it to safety in Kurdistan. She said her captors made her place the call “to hurt us even more. They told us to describe in detail to our parents what they are doing. Part of me would like to die immediately, to sink beneath the ground and stay there. But another part that still hopes to be saved, and to be able to hug my parents once more.”

“They treat us like slaves. We are always ‘given’ to different men…they threaten us and beat us if we try to resist. Often I wish they would beat me so hard I will die. But they are cowards even in this. None of them have the courage to end our suffering.”

A few women and girls have managed to escape, reporting that those who agree to convert to Islam are being sold to Islamic State fighters for as little as $25. Those that do not face never-ending rape, are subjected to beatings and death. Some of the young girls are so traumatized that they have stopped speaking, while others have tried to commit suicide.

Yet, the fight for territory continues, remains of old civilisations razed to the grounds, destroyed by the terrorists, but who hears the cries of those young captive girls behind prisons and closed doors who are dying day in and day out? Will the Western World do anything for them, or will it only react if their own women are assaulted ever?

ELEVEN-YEAR-OLD PRIYADARSHINI'S TRIBUTE TO HER 'MANLY MOTHER' ON MOTHER'S DAY

(AWE-INSPIRING LETTER OF A YOUNG GIRL WHOSE DAD IS HER MOM)

A SHORT ESSAY ON MY MANLY MOTHER ON MOTHER'S DAY

Hi, I am Priyadarshini Dasgupta, 11.11 years old, studying in class 7, section A, Roll No 28, at DPS Newtown, Kolkata. Today, I have been given the opportunity to write about my DAMS who's my Mother too.
My Mother's a Manly Person who has a strange relationship with his alarm clock which never ceases to croak at 5 am round the year. My Manly Mother has a very FLAT HAIRY CHEST unlike other Mothers' & to make it flatter, he unnecessarily goes to the Gym to waste an hour there & is quite appreciated by some people there who do not have flatter chests & whom I don't like hovering around him.
" FAST" is the only word which my Manly Mother uses in the morning once he's back from the gym. " Eat Fast", " Drink your Milk Fast", " Bathe Fast"» Potty Fast" & even makes me Run Fast to catch the school bus., My Manly Mother has learnt to cook only one dish from his Mother, KD, to give me for my lunch box & it's called Sandwiches, hence, my friends tell me that I have a SANDWICH MOM at home.
My Manly Mother talks well but in the mornings & in particular with me, his dialogues are like " TRAGIC B/W MOVIE HEROINE " which are like:-
1. I like to keep it very quiet in the mornings.
2. You are trying my patience.
3. I am not listening.
4. Time out
5. It's time you come out of Ape Mode or else you'll land up in a jungle or zoo for the rest of your life.
6. If you cheat, i'll never play with you.
Like many Adult Women as seen in the Television Series & Movies, my Manly Mother also has a list of Boyfriends & they occupy a special place in his heart. They are :- 1. Mr Davidoff 2. Mr Ken Follett 3. Mr Eric Clapton & in particular one Mr Bose whose Headphones stand in my way whenever I wish to tell my Manly Mother something about his Grumbling Mother, KD, which he doesn't wish to hear. My Manly Mother is very GOOD IN BED &. He doesn't need an occasion to SLEEP. It's called POWER NAP & most of my demands are fulfilled when he's in a mood to HUG THE BED & I come in his way.
I love to go out with my Manly Mother & we go out with an Agenda which he calls BUDGET. Everything in my life is BUDGETED FOR including ICE CREAM & CHOCOLATE which I hate at times. My Manly Mother insists that we belong to Lower Threshold of a Special Class called Middle Class, I don't understand the Logic but I don't ask him why.
But, I Love my Manly Mother as deep down he's very quiet, lonely & sad. I feel for him because he has to give me all his spare time & buy me good things & that's why he doesn't have time nor Money to go out with any GIRLFRIEND. I am saving from my pocket money to GIVE HIM A LOAN FOR A COFFEE DATE IF HE FINDS A GIRLFRIEND.
I feel so proud when my Manly Mother stands out amongst all other Mothers' during PTM as he doesn't need to impress anyone or ask for attention. My teachers are very impressed with him & some show extra attention which makes me jealous.
The best part about my Manly Mother which I really really love is he still Adores my ACTUAL MOTHER " SUD"& never stops to say good about her to me. THAT'S. WHAT MAKES HIM A VERY SPECIAL MUM.
I shall end writing now as I seem to have crossed my word limit of 1000 words for this short essay but I would like to thank all the elders who have voted in favour of me to write this essay about my DAMS & allow to be posted on FB & I have two more requests. 1. Please vote again for me to write about DAMS on Father's Day &
2. Kindly let DAMS know about the spelling & punctuation errors in this essay so that I take a note of it.
Thank you
Your loving
Priyadarshini ( Mithi)

TAGORE’S WOMEN: BEYOND KADAMBARI, MRINALINI, CHARULATA, BIMALA…

(OUR OBSESSION WITH TAGORE’S PERSONAL LIFE ROBS US OF HIS LESSER KNOWN FEMALE CHARACTERS)

Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay had been my all-time favourite feminist author in school and college. His depiction of the resilience and victory of a woman in the face of a society that tries every time and by every means to dominate and annihilate her, be it Annada didi, Abhaya or Rajlakshmi and many more, had always given me confidence and encouragement. But this was till I came upon Sadharon Meye, by Rabindranath Tagore, where he challenges Sarat Babu mockingly to actually elevate an ordinary Bengali girl to the utopic arena and standards of Sarat Chandra’s women. Along with Tagore I too realised Sarat Babu’s women were mostly heroines, Tagore’s women on the contrary were the real life ones, defeated, battered, failed; Instances where they couldn’t stand up against the social customs and at times those who did, turn victims of the social diktats or succumb to the pressures of a family that had no respect for their women.  

  Probably it was easier for Rabindranath to depict the pain, travails and failed wishes of a woman in its true light because he himself was a father who had to bow down to the social customs like dowry when marrying off his daughters, even shedding tears when the daughter has a failed marriage and is tortured by her husband and in-laws. Yes, he too at a point was a helpless father, and though he had to accept the social customs and follow them when marrying off his daughters, he never spared his pen from protesting against them. For him it seemed life and literature went hand in hand.

Our obsession with Tagore’s relationship with numerous women who came his way however stops us from exploring all the Sadharon Meye (ordinary women) of his short stories and novels. We love to stick to a few, those that were made into films and dissect his life as if it was our own. I have stumbled upon at least a dozen of his female characters who even through their deaths have mocked the society that had always and even today push their women out of the mainstream and force them to die. Literally they kill them.

Kusum, the young widow of Ghater Katha (The Autobiography of a Bathing Ghat) is ridiculed by neighbours and relatives as she meets a sanyasi (hermit) regularly who had come to stay in her village. As we know ‘people talk.’ So did Kusum’s society. They stamped upon her the tag of a fallen widow as she met an unknown man, be he a hermit, even in the late hours of night. But little did that society know that the hermit was in reality Kusum’s husband who had left the family after marriage and Kusum was termed a widow as the husband was nowhere to be found and hence assumed dead. Kusum reminds me of Annada didi who had fled with her own husband, even though the society thought she fled with a snake charmer. But Tagore’s Kusum serves. She serves the hermit daily as she would have done to her husband, and when the society pushes her with ridicule to the brink of her existence, she commits suicide, she doesn’t run away with the hermit, she sacrifices. Yet, she is not a coward, she mocks the society that didn’t understand and failed to recognise the love between a man and a woman, between a so-called widow and a hermit, who in reality is the husband. Kusum was battered twice, once when her husband after marriage leaves her to embrace the life of a hermit (not her fault that she was abandoned) and next when the society makes her leave her husband who returns to her.

While Nirupama of Dena Paona (give and take) reminds me of Tagore himself, where the father is barred from meeting his daughter, let alone take her home, because he had failed to pay the dowry to the in-laws who happened to be rich zamindars. And when the father sells off his house and deprives his family just to pay off the dowry and save his daughter from further agony at the in-laws place, it is Nirupama who stands up against her father’s wishes and forces him to go back home with the money. Nirupama knew if her in-laws got to know that she did not allow her father to pay off her dowry, she will be further tortured, yet she stood ground. That was her silent protest. “Ami ki kebol ekta taka r tholi, tomar meyer ki kono maryada nei” (Am I just a bagful of money? Don’t I have any respect), she asks her father. Yet when she dies due to a long fever, and complete negligence on part of the in-laws (they didn’t even call the doctor), the zamindar performs Nirupama’s last rites with great pomp and show. A woman who was given no love or respect when she was alive, and who through her silent death met an end was garlanded on her pyre. And the in-laws promptly found another wife for their son with an assurance of a bigger dowry. Again through death Nirupama ridicules this society and Tagore’s pen becomes mightier than a sword.

And those famous words from Jibito O Mrito “Kadambini moriya  proman korilo je shey morey nai’ (where Kadambini had to prove that she was not a ghost by literally drowning herself and finally dying). Tagore’s lines stating Kadambini had neither any place in this world, or in the other world, she is trapped between the two worlds and has nowhere to go. Isn’t that a challenge that we all women face? We belong nowhere. We tend to lose our identity struggling to perform the role of a doting mother, a responsible daughter, a perfect bride or an ever-smiling docile daughter-in-law and of course the sexy girlfriend. Just like Kadambini, we too are trapped in a net laid by the society’s expectations from a woman. Yet the woman is the second class citizen, she has to suffer, else she has to die to prove she was alive once. Tagore’s women bring out that desperation, their agony, distress, sufferings. And where the humans fail to understand the women, animals at least show friendships, like in Subha, the protagonist  is a deaf and mute girl. She is married off and when the husband realises she cannot speak, he marries again. Subha is left nowhere. While in her village she could communicate with her animal friends who seemed to understand her, played with her, gave her solace. But once taken away from her animal friends into the ‘man’s world’, she is trapped.

Or Dakshayani of Taraprasanner Kirti is loved by her husband and she adores her husband and is proud that he is learned though he earns nothing. But even a woman who is proud of a poor yet learned husband feels guilty when she keeps on producing daughters instead of sons. Many modern women married to rich households still can be compared to Dakshayani. I have heard of designer babies where the sex of the child is altered, I have witnessed women going through repeated pregnancies for a son despite knowing her health can be at stake, I know of a woman who even asked me why I am not going for another child as ‘Ek ladka se kya hotha hai? Aur ek do ladka nahin hone se kya faida!” (One son means nothing, you  should try and produce atleast two more sons) Wish she could say produce a daughter.

Yes we are all trapped just like Tagore’s women were and even after more than a hundred years after he created his women, they are still relevant, and we shall probably find a Nirupama, a Dakshayani, a Kadambini amongst us. The exploitation of a woman is timeless, ageless and knows no boundary. She can rise up against the atrocities like Sarat Chandra’s heroines, and many do so, but how many?