Is Delhi Safe For Women?

Is Delhi safe for women is a question doing the rounds these day. News channels, newspapers, social networking sites, drawing room conversations. It's all over.

I am from Delhi, I am a woman and I think Delhi is as safe for women as any other place in India or around the world. Is there any one place in the world where you can say a woman is safe? I think not!

Now please don't think that I am saying it's safe.....that's not the point of this post. I'm just wanting to tell you how, being a woman, I decide what risks I take and what I don't in order to live my life.

For a woman, in India, there is no place 100% safe. There are loads of statistics of incest, rape in marriage, dowry deaths, harassment at work.....I could go on but you've got the picture. It all depends on what a man around you is thinking or feeling.

Being a woman, I'v had to take a conscious decision about what I do or not do in order to make myself feel safe. Yes I drive around late at night, yes I wear clothes which might be termed as "provocative", yes I party, and I do all that NOT because I think I'm safe.....I do it because I do not want to live my life in a restricted way.

Sure I get nervous, sure I feel like slapping a guy who looks at me the wrong way but what is the option? Cover myself, stay home, live a life which is "safe" and boring. I think not. Instead I put my faith in God, keep my eyes and ears open, be very very alert and try to live my life to the fullest. Because it's not about Delhi or Mumbai or Bangalore......it can happen anywhere because men in our country think brute force is the one and only weapon they have to dominate women and prove they're superior.

Disclaimer : My aim is not to offend any man who reads this post. I have a ton of really wonderful friends who are men, who are perfect gentlemen, who reinforce my faith in men and give me the courage to live life on my own terms :)

Saying It With Silence

As I was going through some old emails, I came across this and thought I'd share it on the blog. I don't remember the source but whoever wrote it said it beautifully. It's really long but worth a read. Enjoy :)

There was this very beautiful line that I read in Orhan Pamuk’s novel, ‘My Name Is Red’. He wrote about a blind man watching the snowfall and smiling to himself. That line stayed with me for a long, long time. How could a blind man watch the snow?

I pondered. I know that when the sight is taken away, the other senses become sharper. The blind man must have felt the cold air around him with the tiny snowflakes brushing his cheek; he must have caught a puffy, wet ball in his hand and had felt it melt in his palms. But did he hear the snow falling?

Somehow I believe that he actually listened to the snowfall, more than he felt it. He must have listened to the silence of the falling snow. He listened, because he was silent inside, in his own wonderful and special way.

Often silence makes people uncomfortable, accustomed as they are to the noise and commotion of the world, but silence is all about coming home to ourselves.

When we sit in silence we relax and slip into an exquisite nothingness. We look within and drop our opinionated mind and learn to feel everything around us more deeply.

When the incessant chatter of the mind stops and we let the quietness around submerge us, something sacred is born within. Nietzsche said that our greatest experiences are our quietest moments.

Needless to say, it is only in silence that we are capable of listening. Like that blind man watching the snowfall and smiling to himself, we learn to listen more when we are silent.

Silence is the basic ingredient for entering into our intuitive mind and to resist the cacophony of meaningless noises outside.

It is interesting to note how Silent and Listen have same letters but are arranged differently.

We humans have a tendency to talk more and listen less; much of it is because we have forgotten the art of waiting and allowing ourselves to grow silent within.

Nature has no trouble in remembering this art. Nature thrives on silence. We never hear the footsteps of moon when it appears on the sky. We don’t hear a loud bang when the sun comes out and the stars burst open in the sky. Their arrival is always wrapped in a glorious silence. Look how the tree knows it! It remains bare, beautiful and still; waiting for the new leaves, knowing that the old has gone and the new will soon be coming. The tree waits in silence.

Just like tree, when we are silent and waiting, something beautiful inside us keeps on growing and it is this stillness and silence that gives birth to creativity.

Often it happens that when we wait in silence, life rushes back to fill those crevices in our souls. There are times when silence becomes the most potent way of communication and is more effective than words. We all have at least one memory when we have faced that eloquent silence of our elders such as parents or teachers when we have felt a cold fear at the bristling silence of their fury. When their silence had scared us more than angry words. When just one quiet look had had us behaving better than a harsh reprimand or scolding.

Lovers all over the world are said to communicate with silence. Understand each other’s silence. The famous telepathy between two people who have strong feelings for each other happens in a compelling silence.

In a business world the salesmen are taught the art of persuasive silence. After he has urged the potential client to buy some product and the customer is contemplating quietly over what the salesman has described, the well trained salesman remains absolutely silent during this important hiatus. Often he gains his sale by using this important tool.

Undeniably, silence needs a special kind of power and authority of mind and saying it with silence needs a certain ‘command of language’. To say nothing is often more difficult than expressing the anger, love and betrayal with words.

However, being silent with a natural and calm stillness within is like a spiritual reflex. Analyze it too much or think too much about it and it degenerates itself into something superficial and edgy. If we become self-conscious about silence then we begin to work against it. We rush to fill it with inane talks and nervous gestures, and the silence loses its value.

But we can certainly develop this powerful way of communicating by practicing a calm mind. By realizing that between stimulus and response, there is a space and in that space is our power to choose our response because in our response lies our growth and our freedom. That “space” is silence.

The French mathematician Blaise Pascal said “All man’s miseries derive from not being able to sit quiet in a room alone.”

As these beautiful lyrics of the song ‘Sounds of silence’ by Simon and Garfunkel say:

“People talking without speaking,

People hearing without listening,

People writing songs that voices never share

And no one dared

Disturb the sound of silence.

Hear my words that I might teach you;

Take my arms that I might reach you.

But my words like silent raindrops fell,

And echoed

In the wells of silence.”

Each time when I feel that I just cannot take another step forward in life, I seek refuge in silence. And sure enough I get recharged with fresh dose of faith, hope and confidence. 

The Generation Divide

I've recently been thinking a lot about the generation divide that exists between parents and children. You can trace it back to history and am sure going into the future, it will continue for generations to come.

Parents know what's best for you or think they do. Children struggling to be free, relishing their newly acquired freedom. Endless struggle which carries on till they themselves become parents and then go right ahead and repeat all that they found frustrating about their parents. With every generation situations change, issues change but what remains unchanged is the fight....control verses freedom. On and on and on.

Growing up, my sister and I've had endless fights with the family over the amount of control and say they could have over our lives. Even today, though am all grown up, Mom and I are constantly at loggerheads. Most times I have trouble getting her take on things which restrict my life and these days, that's when my sister steps in. She's mother to a 5 year old and has now started understanding Mom's point of view, to the extent of advocating it to me. I see the signs of the next generation tug of war in the making, as her son grows older. The same issues of freedom verses control even though she is more modern in her outlook than Mom.

In a country like India where the core values are still conservative, the protective instinct very strong, I don't really see this divide between generations ending anytime soon......rather it's a vicious circle!