Patriarchy, yes. Let's name it and then work for change

A young woman is brutally killed. Social networking sites and media around the world buzz with the outrage, the marches, the vigils, the grief. Interviews are aired, opinions shared, statistics bared.

And I wonder about many things:

• How did I get by as a young woman in India?
• How will my daughter get by as a young woman in a distant city?
• How does my niece come home at 10 pm by local train, aglow as she is in the new relationship she has formalised recently?
• What about my daughter's name sake who lived in our building, only child, raised to be a fearless achiever by her mother and supported tacitly by her proud and silent father.
• The little girls in school hallways, 
• The  little girls in my siblings arms and my heart,
• 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 had subjugated all those who came before them, with them and after them.

You bet I am angry, I am confused and I am writing.

Let's begin with patriarchy, yes. Let's name it and then work for change. The men came first, the men stayed. 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 goods to be sold and exploited. And women were receptacles of ambition, anger, baser instincts and brutality to walk slowly as their time came, to snuff out their pain so that they created soundlessly.

Then the girls lured into the home of a man who to this day is incarcerated in this country. And those 14 lovely girls who died nameless while their murderer's name is in many minds.

Nirbhaya they called her. And Damini after a film based on a similar theme. And they say that she apologised to her mother before she died. What for? I want to know. For dying perhaps says a sister. That too was not her fault, I retort. And my grieving sister concedes that point. I did not want to win that round you know, yet I do with my fierce anger.

And the niece, recently engaged, posts pictures and emails many more. All I can think of is " I hope they treat you well, kid".

I see her mother bending low to pay respects to the young man as is traditionally done in some mindsets. I can sense she is hoping that they they will treat her daughter well. Although she was the prime perpetrator of the instigation against her only brother's new wife. She was the first born daughter whose words were gold. They were the words thrown at the young women and she was the sister cited when they imagined the horrors the new bride would heap upon them. So they did what they knew, they heaped upon her indignities after indignities before she even knew what was going on. Yet today, she is afraid for her daughter, and praying at shrines. I know.

And I wonder, who will bow to the girl? Who will honour her? Will the mother and father who raised this young man let him honour her? Or will they taunt him and make him hard hearted and neglectful? Initially, he will start playing to that game to keep the peace and over time, it will become a habit. If they continue to live inthe shadow of the patriarchal banyan tree that does not allow anything to grow under it, such is its shade. It only puts down roots from its branches and grows stronger.

If a banyan tree has to grow, a strong hand has to loosen that sapling from under that suffocating shade and relocate it elsewhere. Game, set and match in favour of nuclear families, folks. Away from the Ji's and the forced kem cho's.

Photographs ina beautifully emroidered wedding album are torn, shifted around, technically doctored to mirror the desires of an old man who has not yet given up his role as The Father. While he has not filfilled any roles of that job and is a titular head, all who are in contact with him feed the monster of patriarchy even with the suffix Ji to his fatherhood title.

And I wonder about this little girl off to be married who couldn't even say her name when I first met her, two decades ago.  Is there a Patriarchal figure in her marital home too who will ruin her wedding album moving pictures, tearing some, throwing some out based on who he likes and does not. Is there a Mother in that home who is so drawn in by her own journey that she vacillates between celebrating this new daughter and crushing her spirit lest she have freedoms she and her daughters never had, for fear that she 'steal away' the son: once again the male figure her only emblem to show.

How do I know this? This is my story. My wedding album is a mutilated relic of the marauding hands of a man who thought he could make a difference. He has failed, miserably and lives out his days on the crumbs of pity cast his way. I don't even bother. Moving on is the way forward. One forgives, forgetting is impossible. And if I forget, how will I warn my daughters?

I was born from Shakti, my Teeamma told me. I never forgot that image of the eight-armed goddess that she took me to look up to.

And I am here praying and writing and honouring all women and those men who stand strong.

Patriarchy it is folks. What are we going to do about it?

Let's talk.