It's fiction time!

I admit I haven’t been blogging enough. What a shame! My hands itch everyday for blogging and I invest precious time contemplating on unwanted issues—yet another of my all-time favourite pastimes.

So, I decided to give myself a break and write fiction :o)

Sometimes, weaving a story is easy. But to end it is what makes it a tad difficult. This time I have tried to be more graphic in describing details. Perhaps I need to get back at reading some erotica. My ability in the same seems to suffer drastically.

There’s no real beginning or end to this one. I guess I was too inspired by Virginia Woolf’s stream of consciousness, though I must confess I ain’t no modernist. Nor do I aspire to be one. Peace!

By the way, this piece was written almost five weeks ago. Until I remembered where I had hidden it in my cluttered folder. So, it might be outdated for some.

Comments/feedback/criticism is always welcome.

___________________________________________________________________________

The rain doesn't help

By DR

One look at us that rainy night would have cleared any lunatic’s doubts regarding how far I have stretched it now. Maybe I was desperate. May be it happened coz deep down the line I knew this was my only chance.


My only chance. To see him. To meet him. To spend time with him. To touch him and let him touch me. To hug him and be hugged back.

Picture courtesy Google Images

The rain didn’t help. The chill, which was running down my spine every time I neared him, didn’t either. Neither did the enormity of his presence so near me.


As I inched closer, I felt warmer. As his arms surrounded me, I felt safer. As I lay my head on his shoulder, I felt lighter. The more I could hear his heart beat, the more I could feel mine. As I apologized, I wasn’t apologizing for this. I was apologizing for the fact that I can never have any of these the way I wanted it. Coz they are not, and would never be, meant for me.


As the vehicle moved towards my destination, I prayed it would never stop. I prayed it would get lost in the darkness of the night. I prayed there would be traffic on the way. Anything to delay this. I didn’t want it to end. And the fact that my destination was nearing was not going to make that happen.


I never wanted that embrace to leave me. I never wanted that touch to go. I never wanted those hands to leave me. My hands, my face.


And yet they did. And it was so final that even tears refused to make their presence felt on the face of its finality.


When we reached, I knew the time had come. I knew I had to bid him goodbye. When he hugged me back, I felt I had lost everything. Almost everything in life. He hugged me so tight I was ready to die. It wouldn’t even have mattered coz I had achieved what I thought I never deserved or was even entitled to.


I never let him go. It was getting late. He had to head back home. He had to leave. It was more final than anything.


That night, for the first time, I realized how difficult it must have been for him. 

To be in love with someone, and for so long. And here he was, with me—the woman he is not in love with; the woman he could never love. To break free of her claustrophobic obsession. To break free of her tight embrace—so tight she would have never let go had his safety not occurred her little left sense. To break free of a woman so stupid to actually give him the advantage. And willingly so.


I can still sense that hug. And when I need it, I can even re-live those fifteen seconds of warmth again. But will that quench my thirst? Yes. The rain doesn't help.

___________________________________________________________________________

Of baby girls and their disappearance

The Census 2011 report has confirmed that India is growing by leaps and bounds. Second only to China in terms of head count, India is officially home to 1.21 billion people, an increase of 181 million with a growth rate of 17.64 percent, since 2001. However, a closer examination of those figures shows that the male-female ratio for children (0-6 years) born in that decade is the worst since independence. For every 1,000 boys, there are only 914, a decline of 1.4 percent from the 2001 census figures (927 girls per 1000 boys). For a country that aims to become a superpower by 2020, these figures are alarming indeed.

While the country’s cultural and largely patriarchal mindset is being unanimously blamed for this decline, one look at the sex ratio in different parts of the country will shed any illusions that the problem is rooted solely in rural India. Punjab and Haryana, notoriously famous for a strictly male-oriented society, have recorded an improved sex ratio since 2001 census. Even so, the two districts in India with the worst sex ratio—Mahendragarh and Jhajjar—are, paradoxically, both in Haryana. 

Picture courtesy Google Images

Compare this with Mumbai—the commercial capital of the country that is known to bask in its affluence and extravaganza. There are 838 females per 1000 males in Maharashtra’s capital city. Even nearby cities and districts like Pune, Thane and Aurangabad do not have a very healthy sex ratio, suggestive of prenatal sex centers that are involved in illegal activities like sex determination of the child during pregnancy. Middle class and affluent families, wrongly assumed to be liberal and open-minded owing to their economically stable social status, are among the worst offenders, as is visibly evident from the declining sex ratio.   

The insistence on having a male child, who shall continue the family’s name and become an heir, has proved to be a major hindrance to the birth and survival of girls. In a time span of ten years, instead of promoting and encouraging women’s liberation and emancipation, India is killing girl children even before they are born.

On the brighter side, a high sex ratio has been witnessed in backward tribal districts of Gadchiroli (975), Nandurbar (972), Gondiya (996), Ratnagiri (1,123) and Sindhudurg (1,037). Interestingly, all these districts are also located in the state of Maharashtra. Perhaps tribal culture is not as patriarchal and male-dominated in its mindset as the others. However, whatever may be the cause, the urban sector is performing no better than its rural counterpart when it comes to sex ratio in a country as large and diverse as India.  

India’s declining sex ratio should serve as wake-up call for society, in general. Our stubborn determination to promote and encourage the birth of a male child casts the female child as a burden, not a blessing.

Taslima Nasreen, writer and feminist, once Tweeted on the status of women in our country: “If they survive foeticide, they don't survive honour killing. If they survive honour killing, they don't survive dowry death." The life of a girl in our country seems to resemble an everyday battle. If such trends continue in 21^st century India, basking in the glory of an envious economic growth, the day is not far off when Indian men will be lucky to find a woman to marry. The country must let go of its archaic mindset. The clock is ticking. We cannot let girls become endangered.