“The repercussion of being another nirbhaya”

The asifa case with the hashtag #justiceforasifa has been trending on various social media platforms . 

With the attention it has garnered over the past few days it is being labelled as “the next nirbhaya case”. Now lets go back to five years back to the nirbhaya case . What were the exact sequence of events in the nirbhaya case?  

Nirbhaya was gangraped by 6 men on the night of 29th december,2012. The way she was raped and killed received a lot of media backlash and upon pressure from media the accused were arrested. Out of that one died in police custody. The others are still in jail waiting for their time in prison to end and awaiting their turn of death sentence ,depending upon which comes first. However for even this verdict to receive a closure , it took five years ,yes five long years which almost seemed like a period of possible “justice delayed is justice denied”.  

The “so called juvenile” was sentenced to three years of imprisonment from the day of crime committed  and exonerated of all charges after this period. After this it was heard that the juvenile was radicalized in prison and went on to become an extremist.

Now lets come to this innocent eight year old girl called asifa . She was gang raped by four men for seven days .  She was sedated , held captive  for seven days and finally being murdered but only before being finally raped one more time to satisfy a “pervert’s ” lust.   

According to the reports the mastermind accused looped in his juvenile nephew as he was aware that “juveniles” do not get death sentence and have a lighter penalty Moreover the incident occurred way back in January, 2018 and took international media ,three months after the event to sensationalize the matter and bring it to the public attention and get to the present sequence of events as of today. 

 BUT the question remains WHY should there be another nirbhaya at all .Why are women always made the repositories of shame .Why whenever there are communal riots or any sort of disharmony  it is the women kind who have to bear the brunt. From asifa’s story the only thing we can hope and pray is for justice to be delivered  ,however it is upon us for the conversation to never end. 

Asifa’s story is not about hindu vs muslim. It is not about bjp vs congress . It is not about men vs women . It is about humanity against evil and at no cost should evil triumph over humanity. 

 

 

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How one man incited different levels of patriotism in men and women.

Hearing the news of Pakistani artists being threatened to quit India for the first time, sounded absurd .However at the same time feelings of patriotism soon overtook and it seemed understandable that they were facing such a wrath. There are widespread reports that Ae Dil Hai Mushkil’s release should be stalled owing to the presence of the the Pakistani actor, Fawad Khan . As one goes through the comments section of the intense debate over it ,it’s interesting to find men clamouring more over his exit from India.

So is it that Indian men are more patriotic as compared to women. Well, no one can give an answer to this.

Fawad Khan was destined to be a superstar of the subcontinent. He did not  enter India as “Karan Johar’s   mentee”. He came through the television series called “Zindagi Gulzar Hai “ on Zindagi channel.It  gavethe Indian audience a break from Ekta Kapoor’s overtly melodramatic TV serials.Instead of watching women  fighting over petty things  ,scheming and plotting and the lead actors helplesslessly getting embroiled it gave us a “REAL hero”. A hero not only in the way he looked but a hero in every sense.As “zaroon”he showed us that any man is a hero to its family as he would stand up for what he truly believes in and fight for his loved ones.

Unlike any other Ekta Kapoor serial Zindagi gulzar hai finished in 25 episodes.By then women were already swooning over him.During this time Zindagi started airing promos of “Behadd” .Behadd potrayed the story of a divorced man who stretched his hand to a single mother.By this time  he had convincingly potrayed his image as the “archetypal serious man” unlike his counterparts emphasizing roles of “playboy characters”.

Then as Fawad was coming into Bollywood (his debut film:Khoobsurat) Zindagi started airing promos of “Humsafar”.Humsafar seated his position as the most popular actor in Pakistan.As it seems when he entered Bollywood “HE WAS ALREADY A STAR”.WE MANAGED TO GET A STAR ACROSS THE BORDER”.

This uniqueness and exoticness was further propelled by the roles he did in Bollywood. In Khoobsurat, Fawad played a Rajasthani prince, a distant, inaccessible, hard-to-reach and hard-to-get man. In that film, neither did he dance nor did he stalk the heroine. He did not get naked and bare his entire torso. He was dignified, stoic, spartan, the ultimate ‘Complete Man’ Raymond suitings and shirtings could get. He was different than the “chichoda”hero they had been subject to years and in him they found their crush..

In the next “Kapoor and Sons” although he played a gay man yet he was not the effeminate gay stereotyped personality.He was above all a “humane”  filled with  flaws,insecurities like any of us.

This ‘humanness’ has been the key to Fawad’s popularity. But, somehow, when there has been a terrorist attack in India, the country that has given them stardom, fame and money beyond what Pakistan could possibly give, they are strangely silent. And this has not gone down well with ‘patriotic Indians’, both the polite kind and the kind to vilify any secular commentator on social media as a ‘Porkistani’ who needs to be deported.

Money is more important than religion or nationality in India, and when crores are at stake, power players will ensure that they will be back soon. Be that as it may, the question remains: After all this, will Indian men EVER warm up to Fawad Khan? Time will tell.

 

 

Tribute to Grandpapa

To write an eulogy for my grandfather has been a difficult task, not only because I am still in grief and trying to come to grips with reality but also because of my belief that my grandpa in the form of his beliefs, ideologies continues to live among st us in the form of my father and traits which we have inherited as well.

My grandfather had a very tough life with his father passing away when he was still a teenager. And to this day even with me as a granddaughter, he tried to insulate us from the harsh realities of life with which he was acquainted at a very early age. The most important thing that I have learnt from my grandfather is that if we have dreams, there is no possibility of that dream ever remaining unaccomplished.

My grandpa was in a persistent vegetable state for almost 17 days. To see him in that state for those days everyday was worse than getting my heart being broken into a million pieces and then getting stabbed again and again .During this time I have interacted with numerous people and the feedback I got from those people was to turn into an atheist. All the people said that as a religious family, god did not do the right thing for us. During this period I asked myself only one question” what is the definition of god”. God is that great human being who keeps you in front of his own wishes, wants and needs. Going by the definition, it seemed “god” had descended on earth for me. My grandfather is my god.

Although I had reasoned it out myself that “man is mortal”, yet in my hearts of hearts, I wanted him to live on. And I feel even my grandpa did not have any desire to leave. There is a saying that goes that everything has a scheme of working out things in your way. My grandpa had recovered after month long illness of cough and fever when he suddenly had a cardiac arrest. It rendered him with a full blown damage to his neurological system. I take it as an interpretation that my grandpa fought so hard with death , that the only way death could have taken him from us was by manipulating him to become unconscious.

My grandfather had a clinical death on 26^th February and a biological death on 14^th march,2016 yet I believe by what he had told me when my great grandmother had died that stars are merely openings of the light and blessings that our loved ones shower over us from the sky one they reach beyond eternity.