Breathe to be Suffocated

When born, man grows up with­in his envi­ron­ment that affects him in numer­ous unin­ten­tion­al ways. His abil­i­ty to assume things devel­ops and he con­structs an end­less bridge with his inten­tions and emo­tions that unknow­ing­ly become the rea­son of his great fall. Let me fill you in with my inten­tion of writ­ing this all. The kind of envi­ron­ment we live in con­sti­tutes the most vital fac­tor in shap­ing the dan­gling soci­ety of ours. Our assump­tions are our fears that live with­in us, and our life con­sti­tutes the bridge with our death as the final great fall.
Breathe to be suf­fo­cat­ed
Smile to be vowed
Live to be buried alive
Respect to be dis­graced

All of this seems quite com­mon and con­tem­po­rary. It is some­thing that is part of us through­out our tra­di­tions or I would say – soci­ety. Sad but true that we are only liv­ing and feel­ing bet­ter by mak­ing oth­ers worse. Our self-cre­at­ed soci­ety is grow­ing with the aid of the pow­er of sup­press­ing the mild and fee­ble. The social, eco­nom­ic and ver­bal dis­crim­i­na­tion is open­ing the avenues to an end­less war of stan­dards and the major vic­tim of this dis­crim­i­na­tion is after all, women.
For my peo­ple have aban­doned me
Like migrat­ing birds they have gone
I am destroyed, bit­ter is my lament
Smoke lies with­in like a shroud.
Blood flows as the riv­er does
The lament­ing of women
Sad­ness abounds
I will be no more

It would be unjust to ignore this dilem­ma which is trend­ing the hearts of women more, day by day. This is a male-dom­i­nant soci­ety and so are its tra­di­tions. In the not very dis­tant past it was com­mon that Arabs buried girls alive. Nowa­days it is still the very same. There was a time in pre­vi­ous cen­turies when girls were con­sid­ered a sym­bol of dark­ness and depres­sion. With king­doms emerg­ing, heads of soci­eties, sol­diers, kings, and lead­ers were only men. But it was illog­i­cal to ignore women upfront, so a new tra­di­tion devel­oped, prob­a­bly among the Greeks that ear­li­er used to sup­press women. Late till the Egyp­tians came up and a female pharaoh was seen, the major­i­ty of thoughts did not appre­ci­ate gen­der equiv­a­lence. This how­ev­er, is dat­ing back with the his­to­ry of igno­rance. Peo­ple might have upgrad­ed their thoughts but the mind­set and val­ues in this soci­ety have actu­al­ly not changed.
The free­dom to live with one’s desires and to be able to choose with­out exter­nal pres­sures has nev­er been acknowl­edged for the women in soci­ety. I have sel­dom vis­it­ed a house where a boy is not pre­ferred over a girl. That is where the prob­lem begins.

This soci­ety which claims to pro­tect the del­i­ca­cy of women snatch­es their free­dom of expres­sion. Shrill voic­es, del­i­ca­cy, polite­ness, and shy­ness are words asso­ci­at­ed with women. They are not wrong, but one way or the oth­er they force women to be noth­ing but only these.
I have seen this hap­pen­ing in my own fam­i­ly where even edu­cat­ed women are not allowed to speak their hearts out. It all suit­ed the women of ear­ly times but not today.

A fam­i­ly with a girl holds the right to restrict her com­plete­ly. The only rea­son that I have come across is the fear of los­ing respect and dig­ni­ty, which forces par­ents to behave in this way.
This soci­ety has made dis­crim­i­na­tion so wide­spread that it deprives girls from their free­dom of expres­sion. Eyes are ready to fol­low a woman even before her shad­ow. When it comes to career selec­tion a girl is always a future doc­tor irre­spec­tive of her intel­li­gence and inter­est. When it comes to going out alone a girl is always feared to be fol­lowed. When it comes to expres­sion a girl is always her mother’s tongue. When it comes to deci­sion-mak­ing a girl is always her father’s deci­sion. When it is the time to choose a life-part­ner a girl is her par­ents’ agree­ment.
Has any­one seen these rules writ­ten any­where? Then why are they fol­lowed after all? We do not want to know why but we only praise our tra­di­tions.

Many prob­lems will become solved from the day on when boys will not be pre­ferred over girls. Until now, how­ev­er, a girl’s opin­ion is sel­dom tak­en into account even if she gets mar­ried.
When a woman starts to real­ize their restric­tions and base­less rela­tions, it breaks her com­plete­ly in the end. A woman in our soci­ety is dead before her death. The only thing she lives with is her pow­er to hope for the pos­si­bil­i­ty of her free­dom, but even­tu­al­ly she ends up lost with­in her­self.
The day we ignore all the cus­toms and live equal­ly, that day will be the vic­to­ry of women’s emo­tions over their assump­tions.
Live and let live!