Years ago, the only load on our memory was to store birthdays and anniversaries apart from any other special event / incident of life! Just when we were trying to a decent job with this, we have been bombarded with many more such days: Father’s day, Mother’s day, Friend’s day, Valentine’s Day, Doctor’s day, et al… Just went by another such day ‘Women’s day’ – March 8th!
Coining each as a special day surely seems to be someone’s trick to have fun @ our cost! Doesn’t it? You end up forcefully celebrating, or being reproached for not remembering and so on. No, I have nothing against these celebrations! Why would I? But I do believe every coin has two sides to it…
Looking at the brighter side, intent could have been to see if humans would take efforts to make that special person feel special on the special day at least! Good thought, for sure & if the intent is met, hats off!
But isn’t it equally important to see the other side of this? Two questions that spring up:
a) Are women important only on a single day, the Women’s day?
b) When talking about an equal society why not a Men’s day too?
If am questioning the need to celebrate women hood, it’s mainly because what we see / hear / read happening around us on the remaining 364 days! What more proof do we need than today’s headlines ‘Delhi Univ girl shot dead on Women’s Day’??? Do note the fact that this happened @ a busy junction in our Capital & in the day light, 10 am!
Is that just one of the news we hear about mishandling of women? If I start citing examples even from the latest past, my blog would run into pages… how about Aruna Shanbaug who has been lying in a vegetative state for 37 years; since being beaten and sexually assaulted by a co-worker at a Mumbai hospital?!? Today she is fighting a case of euthanasia!
A minute would be worth to think ‘If we want to put up a bright face just for this one day, while in parallel, in the same time-space another woman is going through a torture?’
Rather than being put on a gold platter for a single day, while on the rest the treatment would vary based on moods/expectations met etc, how about being treated as an equal through the year? Just giving us the basic respect that’s due for any living being on the earth! Leave aside, the next step of going beyond and recognizing our efforts!
While at this, another thought that springs up is ‘why not men’s day?’ – After all, we are fighting tooth and nail for women to be at par with men! Aren’t we? So, why this exclusive treatment for women and not men? We all know that neither all men are trouble makers nor all women are peace lovers!
In a nutshell, what we yearn for is for each one of us to accept & face the simple truth that each ‘living being’ is special and deserves same respect throughout their span, irrespective of the gender!
We can continue to coin each of the 365 days as a special day but all in vain if we don’t understand & implement ‘live & let live’ for the same special people in the remainder of the days.