This is the first time I have given voice to a topic that has been close to my heart since I left home for college, and spent time in the close company of the opposite sex.
I realise with bitter clarity one reason for me to have taken so long to get to this point: for almost a decade I had been all bluster and no essence. For the first half of my life I was content to do laps in my shallow end of the pool, since I didn't know any better. I spent the next ten years or so seething. First quietly, then in fits of words, like an overloaded washing machine leaking its excess. Now, I am tired. Or rather, my body is tired and is dragging my mind along with it. Hence the action.
My first learning is that a bulk of my limitations or restrictions are self inflicted. As an impressionable teenager, I had looked at other women - older women, younger women, more popular women, successful women - and decided to be a little like all of them. My shackles were in my mind, into which I allowed just about anyone whose words fell into my over sensitive ears. In all that cacophony, I lost contact with who I really was. Now, the only rules that matter are the ones that I make.
My second learning is a practical one - for better or for worse, we live in a society where men hold more power. It is natural that they will do things the way they know. If women had been in power, maybe men would be blogging about their rights, too. I want to focus on navigating this tide, rather than trying to turn it in my favour. Of course, if a few people get sensitized along the way, great. Otherwise, they will be made more than aware simply by watching me stand up for myself.
My last learning is that preaching to the world is a waste of time. Everyone has emails to check, families to feed and FB to update. I have my little world, which is in as much in my control as it could possibly be. I need to effect the change in this microcosm. Then I can blog about it and send it to a few people who matter to me. Maybe they will do something in their worlds, maybe not. Either way, change will happen in its own time.
As a disclaimer, I am just writing about what I know. I don't want to get into an argument of "buts" on how I am privileged to be where I am, since lakhs of girls get killed in their mother's wombs, lakhs get married off as mere children and millions continue to suffer a plight that is the definition of subjugation. All of that is true. What I think is also true. To me.