Ripples of my Reflections

I think, therefore I write

Category: I OPINE (Page 1 of 15)

The “Brave Girls” book

July 15, 2023 /

My daughter generally needs more time to get over her fears. I have been worried sick & even lost sleep over how easily she scares. I believe this world needs courage, especially in women.(Maybe, I am extrapolating my experience and surroundings when growing up a lot more than I should, I don’t know)

A cousin gifted my daughter a book,Good night stories for rebel girls by Elena Favilli and Francesca Cavallo. My daughter was too young when she got the book to understand the stories. Out of curiosity, I started reading it and loved it. The nice portraits of the women and the stories of their lives and struggles taught me humility. They brought out the privileges that I took for granted and painted me a picture of how far women have come and how much more there is to cover.

When she was ready, I introduced the book to my daughter by reading it as her bedtime story and now it is her “Brave girls” story time every night before bed. I am still not sure about how much inspiration or influence she is deriving from the book. However, I feel that my wish to show her different times and lives, how it is possible to do anything and become anyone if she sets her mind to it, is fulfilled to some extent. I also feel she is processing and sometimes even absorbing some courage from these stories as she understands them to be accounts of real women who once lived or are still living.

The book has one page accounts about women from different time periods and recounts what each of them went through to do what was considered impossible at that time. Starting from Ada Lovelace, ranging through Amelia Earhart, Cleopatra, Florence Nightingale, Rani Lakshmi Bai, Grace Hopper and many more, the book talks of a hundred brilliant women who broke stereotypes and absurd rules to do what they wanted to do but were told otherwise and were discouraged in every possible way.

It’s been a huge inspiration to me to read about these women and think of the strength they possessed. I hope these stories inspire my daughter and many more girls out there to gather their strength, the strength that they have but are not aware of. I consider this an excellent gift to anyone but more so for 5 – 10 year old girls.

Here’s to strong women, may we know them, may we be them. may we raise them!

Until later 🙂

Sweet Karam Coffee

July 9, 2023 /

I watched the trailer for “Sweet Karam Coffee” and was immediately hooked. So when the show released, naturally I started watching it as soon as I could. The first two episodes in, I was completely taken over by the plot and the music. Over the
next episodes, I experienced something I am struggling to articulate.

I have always been the feminist raring to go even at the slightest chance of injustice. The reason has been my childhood conditioning. Sadly, I have never been able to do anything about it. The story of Kaveri closely resonated with me, having seen my mother go through the injustice of being taken for granted. All the time. It is a long-standing guilt that I am unable to do anything meaningful about it. But watching Kaveri’s character unfold in the show made me realise more than anything that any change can only come from the person themselves. No one else can help someone who is accepting of the situation, however bad it is. To bring out the voice, to stand up for themselves, to let the world know that it’s been a long time and that it’s enough! You can enable them to see why it is wrong and why they need to find their voice but that’s as far as you can go.

If Kaveri’s character taught me the futility of fighting someone else’s battles, Sundari’s character taught me that you are never too old to go after what you want or who you used to be. If that matters to you! She had treasured that wild side of her for so long without losing the essence of it. That is something! It’s a shame that she was not “allowed” to embrace who she truly was all those years both by her world and herself. In the end, I felt that the creators have tried too hard to avoid the cliche and place a plot twist with Sundari that it left me a bit confused. But after processing her story timeline and how things could have been back then, I could understand it better. Her steady character arc was mostly predictable for me yet I still enjoyed it very much as it is something of a fantasy, something I am yet to witness in my real life and people in it.

The Nivi character was a very familiar one for me, understandably. Having enjoyed most of the privileges she has, there’s nothing new. I just feel that she stands on the shoulders of giants to have those privileges. Even her problems are privileged problems when compared to what Kaveri and Sundari have gone through but significant, nevertheless, in order to keep progressing over generations.

If you see the three women as a linear representation of a single woman over the years, it could feel like we have come far. However, it is not fair to generalise and more importantly, even with the generalisation, it is not enough. There are still miles to go before we can sleep.

Sweet Karam Coffee – Tastefully flavoured, some teachable moments, does not disappoint.

Until later 🙂

He/Him/His

November 19, 2021 /

Happy international men’s day to all the men!

Today, I wrote a little something as a wish to all the men in my life.

The identity that bears a lot of expectations
Self-made and imposed, to be perfect and strong
Many times crucified and forced to justify with #NotAllMen

The identity that is pushed into shadows
Trying to stay balanced for true equality
Worries, tears, and fears that go unexpressed
Because the society expects it to be so

Know on this day, if not on others,
That #NotEveryone demands perfection
We don’t want you to shun your fears and tears
But we’d rather be a part of it
For this world is a place for everyone.
Happy international men’s day!

I admit that I didn’t know that there was a men’s day for a long time. But I stumbled upon it a couple of years ago and wondered the lack of hype around it. The answer was clear. Media heaps so much focus on women’s day and mother’s day but it is still catching up with regards to the opposite sex. And the reason being that there is easy attention in women’s day themes than those for men’s day.

So ever since I knew, I have made it a habit to acknowledge and wish the men I know. The responses would be mixed bag. Some would not know that such a dedicated day to men exists. Some would be astonished and feel that it is just for namesake. Some would joke about it. Some would thank me for it.

Every year on March 8 and November 19, I don’t do anything special but just remember to wish people accordingly. I don’t need these days personally but there might be someone out there who needs them. If only to stop and take a moment for themselves. If only to remember that their struggles don’t go unnoticed. If only to feel appreciated for a day – be it a man or a woman. Everyone has their weak and strong moments. There doesn’t need to be a gender label associated with it.

Until later 🙂

WhatsApp and Sexism – part 2

March 21, 2021 /

Read part 1 here.

I couldn’t quite cover the other side of the coin with my earlier post. So, penning down this sequel in an attempt to cover more vantage points.

So when I discussed how lack of social responsibility leads to a trend with WhatsApp forwards that portray men as victims of marriage at the hands of women, I also had a look at the other side. Are there no jokes about men? Of course, there are. In fact, I would argue, the same jokes that target women are the most insulting ones to men. They portray men to be weak dummies in a marriage, they show men as incapable of being independent, taking part in running a household, unable to cook… the list is endless. One counter-point to my earlier post was that men take such jokes lightly. Well, they shouldn’t. If I were a man, I would be terribly offended by this trend. Especially when the men are equally equipped with household, help out in parenting, do everything they can to pitch in. These jokes are totally unfair to them.

If we analyze the direction in which the scales tip when you see the statistics, even with generalization, there are a lot more jokes that target women than men. This, as I said earlier, is just how the meme/joke creation process. Whichever jokes go viral, their themes are the trendy ones. So if a certain theme is more prevalent, we only have ourselves to blame. So how do we achieve balance or equality? There are quite a few ways to go about it. The easier way would be to take everything lightly and make fun of both men and women equally. Or the longer route would be not to use social media as a platform to target any particular faction. Unbiased social media! Well, that’s the dream 🙂

Let’s also look at another way of taking things sportively than to blindly make fun of everyone. Let’s say, a husband makes fun that his wife can’t cook, straight to her face, and she gets back with an equally funny response about him being useless in the kitchen and the family enjoys a laugh. This scenario is less nefarious because it is a personal situation handled directly within the family. There is no stereotyping that all women cannot cook. There is no generalization that all men are useless. This is about a couple/family laughing together over a funny comment about themselves. They know what boundaries not to cross. However, when we take this scenario, share it on all social platforms, influence the audience who might or might not have an opinion about it, that becomes a meme. Slowly as the meme feeds on colored opinions and conditioned mindsets, the boundaries fade into non existence. And eventually it ends up offending some while others say it is not so bad.

Now, let’s go one step further and remove gender from the main premise. Even if a meme is just about how bad married life is, think about the message being conveyed. And if the number of times you listen to this message keeps growing exponentially over the years? It is easy enough to be influenced. After all, we live in the digital age. If we look at a particular brand’s advertisements often, we are tempted to choose it over others. How hard is it for teenagers or younger children to think that marriage as a concept is just a joke? How can we explain to them about the value or culture of marriage after feeding them years of bias? If we are fine with them taking this message in, then we shouldn’t be cribbing about how the culture of this country is going downhill because youngsters no longer want to get married, they prefer live-in relationships and the such.

Social media is bad enough with the privacy invasion, tracking users and their behavior, mining users’ data and selling it for profit. Throw bias and prejudice into the mix and you get one colorful cocktail. One that will make you feel on top of the cloud while actually robbing you of your personality, individuality, and credibility.

Until later 🙂

WhatsApp and Sexism

March 19, 2021 /

Of all the evils that WhatsApp represents, sexism is the one that I resent most often. Although I am not an active user, I am (unavoidably) a member of a lot of WhatsApp groups – Family groups, work groups, friends’ groups.. you get it. There is one thing that stands out as a common factor in all the groups, no matter what the group is or who the members are – the never-ending sexist jokes on women, marriage, and how men are victims of these two factors. I experience a lot of reactions to these jokes that range from ignoring them for the sake of keeping my peace to getting into arguments with people who forward these jokes.

Note how I emphasize on the action of forwarding these messages. It is typical of any social media user to think that forwarding/sharing/liking a message does not transfer any onus to them about the message. In my opinion, “Forwarded as received” is the most outrageous phrase that exhibits a total disregard for your friends, family, and other contacts. These memes or messages are created based on the responses they gather. The more they are forwarded, the more they are created. So there is an implicit responsibility in forwarding or liking these messages even if you don’t create them.

The ultimate defense when someone raises an issue, is always – It is just a joke, why are you being so sensitive?, be a sport, and the like. If the argument goes beyond a threshold, they turn it around on you and mention that perhaps you shouldn’t be on social media if you cannot take it lightly. They think they can escape with the lame I-just-forwarded-it excuse.

I am astounded by the fact that none of these people stop to think that they are actually showing their support or their preference for these messages by forwarding it. It is not about taking a joke. It is about taking a stand. As a set of generations who experienced the good, the bad, and the ugly of social media first-hand, is this the message we want to pass to our next generation? Let’s think for a minute – our kids read such information and consider this bias as normal. Our daughters will think that it is normal for them to be made out to be a joke. Our sons will think that it is not wrong to repeatedly make jokes at someone’s expense, even if the underlying message is not true. What hope is there for a better world if our kids see this as the reality? As a parent, wouldn’t you cringe inside if your son-in-law or someone in his family makes a joke out of your daughter? How can we expect younger generations to believe in the concept of marriage or take it seriously after we have repeatedly joked about it?

Do the men who forward such messages really have such women in their life ? Do the women who endorse these messages (apparently for fun) really behave this way and do they not wish the men in their lives were more attuned to their feelings? And then there are people who remain silent because the sender is either your boss, a close friend, or a family member. How can we aspire for equality when we groom our attitude with such daily doses of biased humor? How can we claim to be educated when our education isn’t helping us identify the stand we are taking? How can we claim to be sophisticated when it isn’t stopping us from endorsing a wrong message, however implicitly?

In the end, unlike most of us think, this doesn’t boil down to men vs. women. It boils down to people vs. prejudice. It boils down to taking responsibility for the information we share with our contacts who trusted us with their contact number and time. Do we have the guts to do that?

Until later 🙂

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