Not so care-free India
Anna' s entry:I have been writing about a lot of cool stuff in India, this entry, however, is different. India has some really big problems, and not just with the political, but every day life. Where to begin...
I have recently discovered an issue called "dowry death". Apparently, up till now there are numerous unpunished cases, when a wife is killed (a lot of times burnt) by her spouse if he does not receive enough dowry from a family. I am not making this up! The man keeps asking the wife's family for a lot of materialistic offerings, and sometimes if they do not comply, bad things happen to their daughter... My Indian lady friend explained to me, that even those who get caught and prosecuted, do not get more than 3 yeas in prison. Because the dowry death is not considered a homicide... Can you believe it??
The second issue that is challenging to deal with is over-population, and countless child beggars. Were were asked by locals to please not give beggars any money, because this promotes their status in society as beggars, and they will never try to escape it. In many occasions, children are exploited by parents, and it is parents that demand the money. A lot of kids have never been to school... We were told that if we want to help begging children, please do not give them or their parents any money. So, as hard as it is to ask them to go away, we do not encourage begging when it is forced upon us. We do share treats sometimes though with kids (and adults) that are not beggars. For instance, the other day we walking in Colaba (Mumbai neighborhood), and I saw a homeless lady tenderly touching the hair of a young boy laying next to her on the street. I returned back to her, and gave her a couple of chocolate cookies. She was not asking for anything, but I think she really appreciated the gesture - she gave me a big smile, and touched my hand gently. Or, in Mt. Abu, we saw a young girl playing on a street. She looked poor, but she seemed very independent and probably was even in school (education is her only chance). We came up to her father and asked his permission to share our fruits with her, he was OK with that. The girl was a little uneasy, but accepted our gesture. Over all, begging has been the most challenging part of the trip. Logic does not apply here...
During our past eight weeks of travel in India, we have met a lot of kind, caring, sincere individuals. But, we also encountered some very ugly scenes... Some of them we were just observers to, and some we (or at least I) encountered personally.
Recently, there were a lot of articles in local newspapers covering a topic about women being molested in crowds. It is a very frequent event. Let me tell you, I myself got " coincidentally touched" on my butt more than once when passing through the crowd. A lot of local Indian women have been complaining about constantly being exposed to it. The most frequent explanation I got was that the "molestation" is usually done by uneducated, ignorant men, usually having a poor family background, and usually from a village. Apparently, from an early age, boy and girls are separated in their schools, and boys grow up in an artificially closed in environment, hungry for a girl's attention, and not being to control themselves when an opportunity presents itself. I must say, we have witnessed a typical behavior of men with each other. A lot of times guys hold each other's hand, embrace each other, and sometimes sit in each other's lap. This has nothing to do with the homosexuality (they are all straight). Being deprived of a normal social exposure to girls, this is their way of getting some affection, from each other, and guys holding each other is the men's way of a non-sexual body contact. But, when it comes to groping and molesting women in crowds, that's a different story! I think this is an outrage! It is a violation of a woman's privacy! This is a treatment of a woman as an object, and I don't care what the background is! Come on - Indians invented the Kama Sutra, can't you just figure out other ways of expressing your sexual desires without groping women's butts in crowds?
India definitely has other major issues to be concerned about such as the violation of human rights, corruption, child labor, women abuse, over-population, and the list can go on. We personally have not encountred these issues, but they do exist. I truly believe that in education there lies a power of enlightenment, and hope. My suggestion for India would be to face the reality, stop spending time on sensationalizing a news about 1-lakh car (recent cheapest car in the world manufectured by Tata India), and spend more time on education of people, or it will be too late...
posted by Rob and Anna @ 3:00 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home