I am stunned. I am a woman. No not stunned by a fact like that, but by the international women's day ho hum. One advertisement after another, must programmes are being sponsored not by the diamond or gold or luxury product companies, but by companies that make sanitary pads. Seriously, I am a woman, on woman's day the sight of a sanitary pad for myself is the last thing I want. I wonder how we as a species even got here.
I can't stop wondering about how half of the species accepts walking almost all their lives with diapers of one sort or another! Let me break the rules and tell you what they did not tell in the gender education class that gave free samples of the pads. It was in high school, just a regular day. All the girls from my class were asked to assemble in a room. There were rumors as always. Rumors said they were giving gifts only to girls. We were happy to be favored over the boys, and hoped we get some nice cakes. The meeting was a haze. I understood nothing, I know most understood nothing too. Some girls would stop speaking for a while. We all walked out with indifference and a small packet that did not have cake. Somewhere it was agreed upon by all girls to be hush about the contents. I had bought some of these for my mom and sister, but was ignorant about what it was. Well, the day ended. I don't think I was much educated. The application of the class came many months later. I did not even think about the class, looked at mom helplessly. For the first time in my life I had hoped to find an instruction manual, but had none but motherly advice to go on. It was not that the advice was bad, just that most of it never tallied. Some moms said play as much as you want, others asked to practice restrain. Some brands were supported while others no. No one said anything about so many things. And even today, it is a hush hush talk and even today I wish there was a manual.
I know like many many girls out there, when I had to sit through play time or was desperately hunting for a pad because I was not prepared, I wished I was a guy. No one is ever ashamed of asking for band aid or dettol, why are we made to feel ashamed of asking for a pad? Isn't being hurt not enough, why is shame taught with it?!
Most of the other times, I am perfectly content with my allotted gender. On those days I wonder what a terrible engineering fiasco this design is. It's unpredictable, messy, bloody, painful and a great source of anxiety. Inspired by the latest movie on Allan Turing, I must say this feels very much like ENIGMA. The operating principles just reset every month to factory settings. Almost like having customized your browser over a month and it crashes, every pointer, bookmark, app deleted. You just start over.
I have been wondering why sometimes women don't plainly state what they want. Why do words get muffled with emotions. As I am growing up, I realize among the million threads my mind is processing, it is very hard to decipher my own feelings. It's mixed with a cocktail of hormones who's stoichiometry changes every few days. Too little time to decipher things. It somehow is not such a problem at all. It makes one wiser, compassionate and a little more human where you on some days have more patience and on some lose your head with others. All in all it is an amazing joy ride, full of experiences.
In the absence of this chaos I think every moment would be boring. An utter lack of drama, passion, romance, music, good food and just so much less color. All conversations would be limited to facts and very few about dreams opinions and long arguments. This is perfect, just a little restricted because of pointless rules from society.
To be a women, I think, is to be so alive every minute that everything else comes to life because of her presence. For her the world is an ordered chaos, it has all the elements that make things interesting. There is a lot of mystery in her world, even for her. She is alive everyday with a new dream. Once she has that dream fixed, she will chase it with such fierce passion that it will make an epic saga, if you care to hear her. What she is not is just five days of a month. To advertise her limitation is a shame to the society that is expected to nurture her.
If you really want to celebrate womanhood, don't limit the symbol to pads with wings. Give her the wings to be herself, to ask what she needs, to be unashamed about herself. Simply let her be, simply let her free. Change the symbol of women's day to just wings, because she just needs freedom to be herself and that is enough.
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