Sunday, May 13, 2007

Be A Rebel!!!

Heights of Desperation- Standing in front of the locked gates of the theatre with 2 crows and 3 dogs and many eechas at 10am in the morning for 11:30 show!!!

More Desperation-The security knows you are standing there but he wont open the gate!As far as you are concerned he is THE most important man on earth till u get the tickets. (10:30 am 4 guys have joined the kakas)

Tolerance Test-30 guys are staring at you cause you and your friend are the only gals giving them company. (11:00am)

Victory-His Highness Security finally feels sympathy for the 2 lovely lonely girls standing there!(11:05)

Advantage Woman-The gate opens and we enter.Only US!!heheh a thousand enviable stares!! I'm loving it!!

The Finale-We get the tickets first! yipppeeeee....(11:15)

It is indeed a pleasure to watch guys having a marathon race towards the ticket counter while you are happily counting the tickets which u get through the ladies queue.
Where else do we get such advantages???Buses,theatres, railway stations,that's it? ya that's it!!!

Well I cant imagine how I would be able to explain such advantages to my 5yr old niece, who keeps saying "I want to be a boy"from the day she started to talking.Give her the best clothes on earth she would prefer her brother s torn jeans any day!Headstrong ha?After all she is MY niece!!!:)

Nor can I imagine myself listing out such advantages to an illiterate human being in UP(Bihar,AP) who is all set to kill his third new born girl(yeah the word is female infanticide).His dadas, pardadas have done this so why cant he ??Why blame him for his genetic disorder, when u have literate parents doing the same, knowing that "women bring life to this world".So what could stop them from committing such heinous crime.Yes you
could tell them that times have changed, woman are no more a financial burden for the family, they have made a mark in every other industry,they are equal to men to in all aspects etc etc etc.............Hello??would they listen???A remarkable change in the attitude towards woman has been taking place in the last 30yrs but rate of crimes towards women doesn't seem to be in any way diminishing??

"Puratchigal edhum seyyaamal Pennukku nanmai vilaiyadhu
Kannagi silaithaan ingundu Seethaikku thaniyaai silayedhu"

for those who haven't figured out which language that is....Its Tamil!

for those who haven't figured out what it means...the meaning goes like this(my translation aint that gud)

You have the statue erected for Kannagi,(who according to epics burnt the city of Madhurai and rebelled against the king who had captured and punished her husband for a crime he hadn't done), but you would never find a statute erected for Sita alone(wife of Rama who meekly obeyed her husband when she had to go through the agnipareeksha)
The conclusion,A woman can get her due rights(or privileges or justice) only if she creates a revolution.So when Kannagi burnt the city of Madhurai, there she created a revolution and hence she is respected till date.Not that Sita is less respected, she is the embodiment of tolerance,but still no statues "exclusively" for her, depicting her tolerance!

You fight, you rebel, and finally you get justice!

Now for those who have figured out the meaning without my "not so apt" translation, should know that these lines are not from "Thirukkural", "Bhagavad gita", "Manu Smriti"...

Believe it or not, its from the most popular Tamil song of 90s, "urvasi urvasi take it easy urvasi"!! well some lyrics this tapori song has!!!
Even a tapori song speaks of such truth!

lets see the other side of the story....

Everyone knows the story of Sita, cause starting from your grand mom, your mom and then the school lessons teach us the tolerance of Sita, but how many of us know the story of Kannagi, one in a million, why??Because she expressed her anger and she rebelled!Rebellious women have been respected but somehow their stories have never been appreciated(that's what i feel),u would prefer your mother,wife and your daughter to be a Sita and never a Kannagi,a Jhansi ki rani or Joan of arc.Well that may be the reason why 90% women who are victims of harassment never complain, just tolerate.

I would just complete this post now and move on with my daily routine.I talk, mourn,sympathise and move on.Same is the case with the so called "social activists" who appear on TV shows and chat on and on about women empowerment and always end up blaming men for everything and keep saying that they are not feminists.Well I believe we(women) are equally responsible for the state we are in.When the show is over, the discussion is done! And nothing concrete happens.OK I would be wrong if i say all social activists are like this,yes there are people who are doing some good work but very few.But whatever it is unless we don't act,nothing is gonna change!

I hate preaching!But that's what you end up doing whenever you take up a social issue.Maybe i should end it right here and do something useful for the victims of such injustice.But I badly want to say this to the women out there, who have been tolerating harassment or at least know people who are doing the same,

Stop that "sarvam saha"crap!And be a rebel!

Hail Kannagi!!

Wednesday, May 2, 2007

We came,We ate,We enjoyed!!!

"hey who brought the knife?"
sree "damn man! we forgot it!"
we forgot that this time also.This happens every other time we celebrate a bday.And like all the times its Fathu's scale that comes to the rescue.........

That u see above is the yummy cake we ordered for anu on her bday!the pic was taken before we set our hands on the cake, or else u would have seen a pic with 10 pairs of hands and nothing of the cake.yeah 9 pairs of hands cause we are a gang of 10 food-o-maniac gals namely sree,unni,fathu,rammu,kichu,radhu,anu,shilpa,bindi and of course me gayu:) once upon a time i used to hate people calling me that, now im kinda ok with it.....

Well most people who know us in the college would only say "We lived to eat" cause any fest in college any bday any celebration first thing that would come to our mind would be FOOD, that is also the reason why you would always find us in the "good for nothing" canteen of ours!
You would have seen animals fighting for food, well the sight of us eating our lunch (after the first hour of course, hell!who eats lunch during the lunch break) is WORSE....even if we are in different parts of our college if we hear the sound of any of the gang members lunch box opening in 5 seconds u would find 10 pairs of hands fighting for it as if we have never seen food!!!! Tribals would have better table manners!We scream and shriek for the last piece of chapathi and thats how we eat.Even if we have had a 9course meal there would be either sree or unni saying "enikku vishakunu"(feeling hungry)the way revathy says in kilukkam(a malayalam movie).it would be remarkable to note that sree and unni are as skinny as ash in dhoom2 so plzz dnt
misunderstand that we are a set of obese kids who have been put to diet by our families!!!

Other than eating, which is still our primary activity and something that totally binds us together,like all other gangs, our secondary activity is gossiping and chit chat (people who thought gossiping is done by low minds-get lost !)if you dont find us in the canteen u will find us in our favourite spot "the car" you would find us sitting on any random car parked near the college gate.we crack silly jokes,good jokes,and extremely good jokes(very rarely) and go laughing laughing and laughing.one person who gets really annoyed with this is our favourite man in the campus "the watchman-Mr.kikikiki" one day he got so annoyed with our laughs, that he came and asked "ithientha aale kaliyakuvanno"(are u teasing me),"collegil varunnathu padikkananu kikikiki ennu parannu chirikanalla ketallo"(u cum to college 4 studying not to go laughin kikikiki)after which we truly go kikikikii whenever we see this 4ft 8inch human being!

In exactly one month time we would be in the third year, things happen so fast, we had just started enjoying the college and here already we are on to the last year in college.Of course we would make the most of it and try to make it better and memorable than the second year which we thoroughly enjoyed by confusing the canteen sister who would always get confused whenever we order cause when one person goes we need 5 cutlets 3 coffee someone would say ayyoo i dnt want cutlet make it vayakka appam, on the other side another would go ayyoo coffee venda tea, finally when she gets us what we want she would be totally confused about the amount we should pay and that would normally give us additional profits.now i guess she has delegated the task of serving us to the new young sister (who seems to be good at maths!!!), then of course irritating teachers cause we would always line up in the staffroom asking permission for dance,skit,song,mime to be performed for next to next month some programme and thereby bunking classes with attendance!!!then of course irritating the class with our not so noisy discussions.

Its always great to be a part of a gang, no matter how much differences of opinions you have.College life has been really amazing for me thanks to this gang.you laugh together, get in trouble together and at times cry together.On the whole its a great feeling and i am sure many of you would agree with me!