Editor’s Note: Durga Puja celebrates women and her power to conquer it all. On this occasion here’s a wonderful article about the girl child by our member Moumita1. Share your thoughts with us here.
Dear Aamir Khan,
How did you do it? How did you get this idea of a television series such as Satyamev Jayate? I always knew that you thought different, but this is different with a big D! In the era of celebrities using star power to promote brands, products, games shows and cricket, you decided to promote social awareness, and how!!
Tackling the issue of female foeticide, on national television, has made you probably a bigger star than you already are, but to millions of moms of girl children, you are a hero. I cried and cried when I heard the lady who had undergone six forced abortions in eight years, and yet gave birth to a daughter whom she is raising now as a single parent, or that terribly courageous lady who got her face bitten off by her husband for producing daughters; or the lady doctor whose mother-in-law, a retired college professor, had kicked her newborn baby girl down a flight of stairs. Can human beings, educated, learned, wealthy, and so-called intellectual people behave like that? My mother in me had cried for every single girl child that did not get born, the educated human being shivered with fear at the face of the society I am a part of.
Your programme punched me in the guts, and left me bleeding, hurt and angry. I am a mother of a single girl child, and today, I am feeling blessed, because my family never did what others did to their daughters-in-law; and hurt, because our society treats moms of girl children so shabbily. And my anger, at the social acceptance of a crime this big, knows no bounds.
I come from a part of the country, where we withhold our lives for five days to celebrate the power of Shakti, in our Durga Puja. May be because Ma Durga is not only a Goddess to us, she is our family, and during the puja we feel that our mom has come home, to her house, with her children, does that give us the strength to face the fact that women are equal to men in every way? Is because of this fact, that statistics of female foeticide did not leave my state bloodied, as it did to around half of Indian states? I don’t know, but it sure feels good that West Bengal is not coloured in red from unborn girls’ deaths.
For all those moms of girl children, you missed something if you haven’t watched this television series premiere, and for those of you had, I am sure your eyes were wet too, just like mine.
And for you Aamir, I pledge my Sunday mornings, till the time you want us to, my text messages, my writing power and anything else you’d like me to help you with. And if I ever meet you, I wish I can tell you Thank You. Your show changed something today, and its called perception, of me and millions of others. We are with you, dear Aamir Khan, so go ahead, may your tribe prosper.
