The self imposed glass ceiling:
I read in the papers the first thing when I woke up was that Women’s day had finally arrived. Phew! I was getting sick of the ads anyway, good riddance to that. And all the “Happy Women’s day” messages. Not that I personally had anything against the celebration of the day – I am a woman and proud of my womanhood. But it is this newfound frenzy of commercializing just about everything under the sun, from Valentine’s Day to Divali to Heart’s day and now this, where every single commercial from a kitchen appliance to cosmetic gets linked to March 8th, which baffles me. “This women’s day, take some worries off her shoulder – gift her a LG kitchen set, now 30% off” – hello? Meaning – that it goes without saying your wife is going to cook every single day of the rest of her godforsaken life, just throw in something fancy just so that you keep our cash registers ringing and still do something symbolic so that you aren’t left out of this pseudo women’s liberalization thingy. Whatever that is. How is it not possible that one sees through the gimmick? I mean they do it every single time. For every single occasion. Does it work? If it does, I am amazed.

I flipped further, and I realized that it was not the ads alone that had a mention of the special occasion that today was supposed to be. There were reams of text dedicated to today. The television spoke of one activist or the other hosting an event for this day. There were short messages on the telly from fancy celebrities like Aishwarya Rai and Sonia Gandhi about hold your breath – women exploitation and liberalization – duh! Exploitation my foot, besides being big terms they use to sound impressive, do Rai or Mrs. Gandhi even know the meaning of those terms. It was the shallowest thing I had heard in the day.
Then there was the other extreme, of showing the deprived women, the neglect of our times, the brave hearts that made it big despite being women. There was going to be a week celebrating the “Entrepreneurial spirit of the women”, announced by Ms Sheila Dixit. My city even hosted a big event at the City Glass House, some event by the cheesy title of “Sakhi” to which my mum, thanks to her writer’s status got an invite. And since I was in town this weekend, I drove her to it and had to sit through all the honors.

So what’s the point I am making. I have been around for a good 24 years of my life, and not a single time have I felt I am anything different unless reminded – by things such as this. Discrimination – the ugly term that means anything from prejudice to showing preferred judgment or bias – has been a part of civilization as long as memory goes back, from racial, to sexual to just about anything. Nations and generations have faced its stigma. Religion, our biggest divide and the greatest unifier ever, has been the greatest discriminant, the cause of many of history’s worst tragedies. The Blacks around the world are still to stop facing it. Asians face it, so do many others. It makes me think, that perhaps the fundamental reason for discrimination is the power to discriminate – we all do it, all the time, here, in our own country – look at what is happening to North Indians in Maharashtra, or for that matter, to Biharis and UPites in Punjab or Delhi or the North East, or to Muslims the world over, especially in the West. Is it fear alone, is it insecurity alone? No, it is something more deep rooted, something more innate and inseparable to us – mankind will never let go the capacity to wield power, if granted. It is a high few other things can give him, none at all if he tastes that power. And this instinct doesn’t come to men alone, it is universal. It only happens that men have experienced it longer, this power, the authority and so the desire.

Which is why women have, over centuries, felt the need to manifest their individuality over that of men. Because the oppression has left them with a complex they cannot come out of. Maybe what my gender has achieved today is commendable. Maybe it is worthy of mention, laudable. But why single out this discrimination alone. Why by we, ‘the fairer sex’, mentioning it again and again, don’t want to jettison the baggage and carry it around. We don’t hear anyone else do it. It is we, by reminding ourselves that we have to commend our genders, who are unwilling to make the equation truly equal. Why celebrate feminism, why not individualism. Why not the spirit of womanhood as an ongoing process. Why does any achievement by a woman have to be fixated on the fact that she is a woman? She is an achiever. Period. Leave it at that. Let it be. Why do the smallest of things a woman does become worthy of mention hinging solely on the fact that she is a woman. We don’t hear men commemorate every damn thing they do as a tribute to their manhood. True. They haven’t faced the kind of societal bias, the hurdles a women has. But by mentioning all of it, we weaken our own cause. No strength is ever great if it needs a seal of approval to hide its own insecurity. And no cause then is truly great. Such as this. Sometimes silence is the greatest standing ovation. And all we need.