Who is a better fanatic?

Is your fanatism better than mine? If you can flog a teenager for alleged zina, I can burn alive a couple who tried to marry out of caste. If you can form laws to keep women in homes, I can chase young girls from pubs. If you can incarcerate a woman for ‘getting’ raped, I can rape a woman in her 60s for letting her son marry a girl from higher caste. If you wont allow a septuagenarian woman to accept bread from her nephew, I wont allow boys and girls celebrate a nonsense festival called valentine’s day. You are not gay enough to accept man loving a man, I am xenophobic.
While going through an article written by Dawn correspondent based in New Delhi, I realised that reality pinches and it pinches hard if it comes from the unexpected corners. I agree with the writer that social inequities are everywhere. I agree that Indians are no less barbaric when it comes to saving their honour (it is not honourable to kill daughters by the way) and protecting their customs but defending what the Taliban did to the 17-year-old girl in the not so far corners of your country is not justified.
What the author meant to say was that Indian media should mind their own ‘honour-killing’ and ‘non-pub culture’ business rather than creating brouhaha out of the whole issue of Chand Bibi been lashed by custodians of Islamic law in Swat. Instead of defending them by painting an Indian barbaric picture of the whole episode, it would have been better for the journalist to actually condemn the act objectively.
Bigotry has been a part of cultures of the world, almost all the cultures of the world. It is with time and development that these prejudices are overcome. Zealots are born out of insecurity, not by religion.

surviving

Man was born. He started living in groups. He learnt to cook and on the wheels of nature he drove his life into civilizations. He invented, he discovered, he transformed, he dreamt and he realized.
Today, man is alive. He lives by himself. The (glorious) thousand of years old civilizations does not infuse confidence in him which can make him dream again, realize again, discover again. The man was born, he lived. Now, he fights to survive. The man born thousand of years ago is lost in the fight to life.

in a new garb

Woman power is on the rise. Or shall I say the awaited revolution for the downtrodden women in India has finally arrived. Today we not only have two women chief ministers but our central government, too, operates from the helm of cotton sarees in 10, Janpath. Not to mention the facts and figures of independent women walking on ramps, working in call centers, heading the MNCs, running marathons, holding major posts in political parties, decorating Rashtrapati (or shrimati Rashtrapati Bhavan) and ousting Nanoes. Sorry, the last two do not come under the general category of women but fall in the dadi and didi ones and one only in each category. (Now, every dadi does not get a chance to live in the Rashtrapati Bhavan and only one in million didis has guts to awake the likes of Ratan Tata and force him to say bye to Nano dreams)!
Since ages women in India are treated little more than a piece of shit. The honour of being treated as totally a shit goes to untouchables who despite huge quotas and reservations continue to live the same, thanks to their better-off kins and friends. But that later.
We have worshipped female deities since times immemorial. We Indians know her as kali, durga, lakshmi, gauri and sita. Shiva’s ardhnareshwar avatar makes her indispensable for any man. Aryans allowed their women to study, work and choose their partner. But with time, as man gained modernity, he lost the love for half of humanity. And as I said earlier for ages Indian women have been treated little more than shit.
But now, I see the change. I see women soaring great heights in the skies which were thought to be the territory of man alone. I see them featuring on magazine covers as the businesswoman of the year. I see them as the heads of the states, as the visionaries of empires. I see those receiving awards, getting appreciation. I see them fighting for their rights, asking for their share. And now I also see her right to go against customs of marriage and live with the partner she likes.
But then I see the woman next door. I see the woman on the street, in the bars, at the subways, in the farms and she makes me think if really anything has changed.