A girl

‘It’s a co-ed college’, she justified.
‘So girls, you must dress decently. You can’t even imagine how bad these days are for girls’, our head of the department told us today. The sad part is that she’s a woman too.

Time and again we’ve had discussions about what rape actually is and how and why our society is responsible, if not for the act, but at least for the aftermaths.

But how can a literate, educated woman point a finger on the girls and how it’s their fault that they get raped?! I was literally fighting back tears and not screaming and shouting back. Does she know? Does she know what rape is? What a heinous and barbarous act it is and that the persons committing rape are not humans but absolute devils. Does she know how many girls don’t even confess about being victims of rape because of the fear of being labelled and judged and tagged? Because we have been instilling this feeling of superiority in every boy’s mind ever since they can remember.

‘You can’t walk home alone, beta’, ‘you can’t go shopping alone’, you can’t do this, can’t do that because God was generous enough to provide you with that precious Y chromosome which makes your brother so much more greater. 

Because you are a girl.

Because its your fault. Because you wear short clothes. Because you don’t dress ‘decently’. Because you were walking home alone late at night. Because i am a girl.
Sorry, I am a girl.

But sorry, I won’t follow your rules. I will wear whatever I want, because its my body. I will walk home alone, any time of the day, any time of the night, because this is my country too.  I will go partying to my heart’s content, because I am young too.

Because I am a human being too, and I refuse to be treated like the weaker, or the so called ‘fairer’, section of the society.

How ironic is our worship of Goddess Durga, while millions of girls are being denied the basic rights.