Let's not pat ourselves on our backs please

As I grieve the brutal death of a young woman, I say to my friends everywhere: do not go by the media reports alone. 

I have brothers who are fighting this rot. I have friends, men, who are cutting away at these horrors. I have a son who understands; nephews who fight these wars, real and virtual.

I also have sisters and sisters-in-law, friends who march everyday in their own lives pushing back at the patriarchal barriers that seek to hold us back. And the us is universal, not just in the land far away.

This country has had no woman leader so far to live long and tell her story. That too is a shame. Some countries have had women leaders just because they were the daughters of powerful men. That too is a concern.

When there is a school shooting, let us not pat ourselves on the back and say " That would never happen here. Look at those people, we do it so much better".

When horrendous crimes against women are committed, let's not smirk and ask: "What do you think of this? Is this cultural, this subjugation of women? We'd never let it happen here. We're better than those people".

Instead of pointing fingers at those who do it worse, let us look at how we can do it better, together.

Women are not belongings, neither are sons. Your children are not your children said Gibran. Living with respect and with a will to fight for what is right is the only way.

Watch out for thoughts such as "those people, these people". Watch out for what you say to your children, as they are already citizens in a global village. They cannot afford to inhabit the narrow walls of this generation. They have to soar and reach over chasms. They have to understand and work collaboratively, with heart.

Watch out for what you say in public and in private, for it is so easy to congratulate oneself at the 'excellent' human rights record.

Watch for what you say at dinner parties and staff rooms. For those in your midst who stay silent are not voiceless.

They grieve, they too have lost and they will find ways to stand strong. They too are 'those people'. Just as you are.

Let us not forget these facts about what many call nation building, others call colonisation:

• The men came first, the men stayed. They pillaged, they stole, they cheated, they took away what was not theirs to take. And to this day they deny.
• The men asked for the women to be brought over and they called them by a glamourous name: The daughters of the king, to be shipped here to make alliances with the lonely men and to set up home and give birth.
• Further South, where the tobacco and the cotton grew, arms were bereft of babies birthed, as they were considered to be goods to be bought, sold and exploited.
• And women were receptacles of ambition, anger, baser instincts and brutality to walk quickly when there was work to be done and to slowly as their time came, to snuff out their pain so that they created wealth soundlessly.

Let's think also about

• The little girls (and boys) in school hallways seen as deficient as they are not 'like us'


• The little girls with the "Next Mrs. ___" t-shirts celebrating the success of a young musician


• The daughters in gaudy make-up and tiaras with their little hips jutting out for another picture


• The sporty sons who see the young female fans fawning over them and their friends


• The young girls who fawn over young sports stars, diluting all that their foremothers fought for thanks to the images of prosperity portrayed by media.


• The homeless girls in the streets of cities everywhere,


• Those on First Nations reserves,


• Those in basements in the True North Strong and Free with its arms-wide-open immigration policies structured thus to create a sub-class of shift work and subservience to the ruling classes known by how well they have subjugated all those who came before them, with them and after them.


• The unaccounted-for women lost in our North American cities brutalised for their choice of work, itself a market created by patriarchy that no one cries for or even remembers because they are considered to be the detritus of society.

Beware 'the danger of the single story'. Adichie has a lot to say about that. Google it.

Shyam Benegal's 'Mandi' says it all. You don't understand what I just said,I know. That is why I said it. It is not my responsibility alone to learn about the world, your world.

Learn about things beyond the borders of your town, your city, your coffee shop and your hockey rink clique: Google it.

Learn something today. And if you don't know enough, learn to stay silent until you know more.

Do not malign, do not spew venom. Let the grief finds its peace.

We're all accountable for the world we live in.

Let's talk.