Damn… A baby girl! Kill… Kill her..

It is in the last month I was startled by the news, Afreen, a girl infant, was brutally beaten to death by her father in Bagaluru. She might never have thought of a way that all her feminine marks, recognizing her as a girl, to get vanished away with a magic wand from her body. A barely three month old brain must not possess the knowledge that her father would think and plan on the way of taking her life.

Everyone were trying hard to think, or perhaps they were trying hard to wish, that her young father might be a madman or he might have got an addiction to intoxication, since they wanted to uphold the trust in maternal and paternal values… They wanted to live again in the strength of those values… But, when the truth unveiled with shocking realities, that he had acute hatred towards baby girls, he was practicing many cruel methods to eliminate her since her birth moment as he didn’t want a baby girl at all, no man could fathom the magnitude of that hatred other than fainting themselves with broken hearts away.

No one could help being painful when the scientific truth, that it male sperm determines the sexual characteristic of a new born, not being sufficiently comprehended and the girls and mothers have still been suffering even in this 21st century on account of paradoxically understanding the fact.

Is it so the maternity and the paternity of  girls are mistakes that can be occurred by carelessness? Or, are those the errors that should be corrected immediately? 20 years of statistics proclaim that the answer is affirmative. It counts that as many as 10 million  girls were eliminated in our great India during the last two decades. Hapless kids, wanted for nobody! Some of them are denied even their right to be born and the others got killed at the ages of below 5 years. It is estimated that the sex ratio of India is only 914 girls/1000 boys in accordance with the new census report. The female population has plunged below 900/1000 in at least 8 states. Though the period of last 50 years witnessed a reluctant attitude towards the birth of girls in the country, a massive decline is reported only during the last 20 years. Male population is expected to be advanced the female population by 25 millions in year 2020.

‘Decline in female population is indeed a bad thing. But I need boy kids only. You can have girls if you would like to’.
This is the concept everyone holds up in this regard.
‘Is it only one child you got? Is that even a girl? Pity! ’
Such sympathizers sincerely having their remark in such a way are only on increase nowadays. The customs we cultured people still practice in this 21st century are a type of persuading us to generously bless with hundred sons to a newly wedded bride. The realization, that the money, power, employment and affluent are occupied by the males and the world is always steered by the men, makes us practicing such customs. Consequently, avoiding the birth of a girl, that gifts us nothing else other than the burdens of unlimited expenses, becomes necessary. Killing her within 4 or 5 years becomes the good idea unless the foetus could successfully be destroyed at the womb.

‘The child will be indeed a boy if it is mine’. The face of a software engineer who firmly says such a blunder is still not fading out from my mind. His wife, also a software engineer, was frightened before getting in to the labor room.  If she happens to deliver not a boy…

‘Girls are equal to boys’. ‘No discrimination among children’. These government sponsored slogans are seen in news papers and TV channels. These advertisements are as deceitful as the anti-alcoholic note on a beverage bottle or as ridiculous as the statutory warning against the smoking on a cigarette packet. While the serious anti-feminine (therefore anti-human indeed) incidents are happening every day, the government’s ads can be observed only as mere jokes when it stays oblivious without taking any resistant measures or legal procedures in order to prevent such evil-deeds. The main reason for practicing such brutal abuses is that our society still gives importance to the literature, art, religions, media, politics, power, traditional customs and beliefs which propagate anti- feminine mindset again and again.

‘Mathrubhumi’, a Bollywood movie released in 2003, directed by Maneesh Jha, portrays the worst experiences of a village that was wiped its female population out absolutely. After nine years, the film persists painfully alive in the memory like a prophetic truth.
Apart from the International federation of film critic award in Venice film festival 2003, the film was honored with many awards from several internationally recognized film festivals including Florence Indian film festival, Thessaloniki film festival of Greece and Poland film festival. It was dubbed into French language along with five Indian languages Tamil, Telugu, Gujarati, Bhojpuri and Bengali. The film portrays a village, which gradually turns completely ‘femaleless’ as a consequence of killing its baby girls one by one. A village full of men with extreme libido wandering for a female mate. A rich father in the story purchases a woman named Kalkki from the outskirts of the village to make her wife for himself as well as for his five sons simultaneously. The youngest one is the only fellow having some human values and he is mercilessly killed by his brothers as he allegedly maintained a good relationship with Kalkki.  Kalkki gets mortgaged in several caste disputes and consequently being victimized of gang raps by many. Finally she gets shackled in a cattle shed. She is forced to sexually satisfy several men even in the shackle. When she gets pregnant and the people learned that the newborn would be a girl, they take weapons and fight each other to death. The movie might never fail to haunt the viewers as they got their heart burnt like a smoldering lump of coal-stone, on the concluding scene.

Everyone who would like to slaughter their daughters may obtain a quick entry to a single sexual world that treats fathers as mothers, brothers as sisters, husbands as wives and boys as girls. Mothers without breasts, wives without wombs, sisters with beards and daughters with mustaches may conquer the world. Who knows, perhaps, it may be from the last throbbing of many slaughtered girls’ lives, that their parents are going to construct another world.  Nevertheless Afreen, your fondly face is still burning the heart...
Independent translation of  Echmukkutty's Malayalam article published in Madhyamam
Picture from Google

The enchanting smoke curls

The puffing smoke's curly motion always offers me an enchanting feel of delight. It being weightless and completely independent though, could easily hallucinate even a powerful man into its magic circle. It dissolves in the air after flying a bit upwards as if it could challenge the gravitational theory of Newton.  It has been staying with me all along the life as an intimate friend to confront the crises of my life despite its shortest life like a moth. This friendship has been existing since my early childhood.

The smoke curls could talk with me in order to solace me in deep depressions and it could pat my heart with feather touches during the pleasurable occasions.  It would become my only mate when the sleep stays away from me in the nights due to disturbing thoughts of unbearable burdens.

On the years passing, this intimacy seems fading out as the body got weakened day by day. Limbs got leaned, ears blunted and one of the eyelids lowered near to close. Wife, who has highly been cautioned by the doctor, closed all the doors of reaching a single piece of cigarette to my hands. If I could have moved a bit from the cot I would have arranged myself something to take a puff.  But standing up from that cot itself turned only a dream since my body weakened to that extend.

'How can I withstand this travail? How lovely had I treated my wife and how fondly had I taken care of my children! How vital was I when I had come across to fulfill their desires. Yet, why they couldn’t understand my feelings? What the serious sin I committed for being punished through this agony'.

The more the days pass the faster uneasiness grows, and I am afraid I would die unless savoring a mouthful of smoke. I scrabbled everywhere around the bed, possibly a cigarette might have found. But no use at all. Despairingly, every single pieces have been taken away from my reach.

My scrabbling fingers touched the table drawer which contained only a paper that seems a document. Oh, it is my medical report. I didn’t see that so far. At least this is the time to go through it just to understand which ailment I have been suffering from and what the treatments I have been undergone.

 Curiously going through the shining letters of that smooth paper, it seemed the weight of my head is  increasing. A sharp pain began from a point of the brain likely stabbing a needle into it.  My body started fainting and the eyes began blurring.  The paper slipped down out of the fingers and slowly fell down to the cot.  The medical report says about a deadly disease I never imagined! What a terrible travail! Only by now I came to know that all my dear ones were hiding the seriousness of ruthless fate out of my knowledge so far!

My debut into the smoking was during my early childhood.  Non-smokers were considered as impotent and immature fellows those days. Odd customs of that time!  Gradually the habit started hugging me with its deceitful affection. An unbreakable addiction had developed by the time I grew mature.  But it was too late. I had never foreseen that this feather touching relationship would turn a squeezing iron fist that would lethally corrode my entire body and health.  I had thrown this habit away several times due to the disturbing advices from many well-wishers.  But, at any occasions, the smoke didn't let me stay alone more than a week maximum.

Now, the thought of upcoming deadly consequences startles me. The immediate victims of the disaster are teenager son, who didn't reach a position to take over the burdens yet, wife, an ocean of love who silently suffers everything and the hapless daughters, who still dream a married life.  I don't know how they will lead the life in my absence. Lord, you are only the refuge for them ahead.

'If there had any paternally respectable one in my childhood to caution me about this catastrophic end, surely I wouldn't have taken a single puff of tobacco at all!'

The summer rain grows stronger and stronger out-side. I felt all of my life dreams that I have been looking after for many years, turn curly smokes and the heavy downpour dissolves them and takes them away from me.
Picture from : midatlanticarthritis.wordpress.com