Open Letter 9

Dear Society,

How are you doing? I am doing great with words, notes and beats and hope you are having a blissful time too. I once heard, “It doesn’t matter how one lives in times of peace. All that matters, is, how one copes in times of crisis”. For a bibliophile like me, if they close all my doors to the outer world, I open a book and escape into another world. As for you, I guess you are having fun watching the most advanced species in the world running for cover away from a micro-organism.

We may be smiling confident of getting over this crisis but these are tough times and we have to face them with a brave heart. We no longer get our meals at bed unless we do our dishwashing on time. We no longer get to walkout of petty trifles by grabbing a pair of goggles and bike keys. We got to stay through it and fight out way back to our rooms. We no longer have our coffee conversations with colleagues, kitty parties, yoga, meditation, walkers club meetings and thanks to lockdown, no boring Bhajans and Darshans. Oh, how we long for those unending hours of window shopping and back breaking fun rides at amusement parks. You can still see a smile on my face but deep inside I am aching for a full course at my favourite food joint.

Dear society, until last week, I kept thinking I am fighting a tough battle and still putting a brave countenance. However, it was only three days ago that I understood that my fight doesn’t even deserve recognition. Mine were just desires emanating out of a devil’s workshop and they would surmise as soon as my mind started working on something concrete. The real battle is being fought by those victims locked up in the same cage as their abusers. Home, is no doubt, now the safe haven for all humans irrespective of their caste, creed, race, religion and region. But not for one gender.

While you and I were busy with our petty issues, not every family is concerned about things as unimportant as a restaurant cooked delicacy or a long ride. There are women out there shedding silent tears praying for freedom from harassment. I hope you have by now realised what I am pointing at. Domestic violence, indeed.

Our newspapers are full with stats and figures mentioning the steep inclination of the graph representing domestic violence. Self-help groups and police helplines are doing their best to offer virtual help and counselling but these cases seem less interested to die down just like the virus that is making headlines each and every day for the past one month and above.

Dear society, in times like these, where the world is decentralised into multiple micro level units called families, how can a social evil like domestic violence spread its wing? With all the individual units moving away from one another, life within a family should be filled with love and compassion. Coordination at optimum level is most expected to survive this crisis and within a family, this coordination should exist without bounds. We are not supposed to panic, but when we try to face the reality, these are times of life and death and when death is almost at our next door, how can we fight within our four walls and harass our only other partner to share the burden with?

Unlike other times, I am quite depressed on reading those reports and I must tell you I feel lost and heartbroken to know that come what may our women get to suffer more than everybody else under the same roof.

Dear society, apart from your gossip collection and social media mockery of men at dishwashing, please try to give this issue a fraction of your attention. Majority of our women spend a lifetime within the four walls of their homes. Now that we are all forced to intrude their space and stay put in their territories let us not boss them over to satisfy our silly desires. When on roads, we always had their support from home. Now that we are all home, let us support them with a gentle smile and a hand at work.

Because tomorrow, our children should learn to support us in times of need and they should learn to respect their partners be it during peace or crisis.

Thank you for being the ardent listener as you have always been,

Yours sincerely,

An Expecting Mother.