I was a life..!!

     The fad of celebrating any and every theme, germane or extraneous has had practically every day marked as some occasion or on the other deserving a remembrance, for example Valentines day, friendship day, teacher's day etc or some times a weak in adherence to the importance of socially relevant issues. The World Anti-Tobacco Day and such other events which highlight the social malaise that afflict the society are commendable affairs when celebrated gives one a distinct feeling that these commemorative services are but perfunctory as compared to,say Valentines day, where the gala jollities are a novelty.

     Let us for example take and observe the"Girl-Child Week" between 24th to 30th January of this year. The need of commemorative a week in a year for some worthwhile cause is in itself an indicator of the fact that the matter under consideration is a burning issue which calls for urgent redressing. the red-tapism involved should not be seen as a mere formality, a token of pseudo-appreciation that will have a gamut of wasteful exercises that means to showcase the plight or condition of women in the country in general. However, we are merely rhetoric and never serious about the quarrelsome or contentious issues being taken to a logical end.

    The cultural norms that encourage a marked preference for male issue over female children is quite unsettling and so disturbed. It is indeed a strange custom in our country that parents rejoice at the birth of a son ; whereas the arrival of a daughter is considered as forerunner or a signal of everything that is omnious, a curse and a liability for all purposes! As is bearing the yoke of a female identity in life was not enough! With science transending new frontiers, techniques that could determine the sex of the child at its feotal stage , an unrestarined surge in the throttling of the yet unborn girl-child in the womb itself was set in motion by devious minds!

    Broaching the topic of medical termination of pregnancy, I once happen to come across an article that sought to berate scientific methods and attempts to determine the sex of the child in the womb. The wide availability and the affordable economics of sonography and the ultrasound imaging procedure set in motion a vicious circle of births and deaths that became more of a mans prerogative or privilege then a gift from the Almighty!

    The abortion of female feotuses has shown a steady spiraling trend in the past few decades. Destroying the girl child in the womb itself is a crime against humanity. Let us view this crime as a transgression against the mother-to-be whose lives are snubbed out in the very receptacle of conception and gestation responsible for birth of many. The wide spread discrimination against women makes one doubt the sanity of the term 'Emancipation of the weaker sex'.

     I have a very interesting argument here, If the female gender was non-existent; if the Almighty have never thought it was appropriate to fashion man's better half, what would his divine creation amount to? The world would have come to an unceremonious end as simple as that- a bit of lady's logic that could not have sounded more appropriate in the present context.

   One just cannot ignore the pinnacles of success attained by women world over in all walks of life. Few years back such scenario was unimaginable!Yet we are as complacent as ever cold shouldering the responsibilities of  ridding the society of this destructive application. Clearly seen as being against the spirit of gender justice, terminating pregnancies or otherwise to prevent the birth of female children will always cast imputations at our collective conscience.

   The seriousness of this inhuman folly has not escaped anyone. Let us sincerely hope that a general awareness rather than a token symbolism will open our eyes towards the catastrophe we are heading for a notional calamity for that matter.The government should urgntly treat the disproportionate male-female ratio prevelent in the country witha afair amount of trepidation. If on one hand, gender exploitation is a matter of consternation, the issue of gender imbalance is an all consuming affair!

   No one would after all deny that the newborn's wail, a mirthful announcement that 'I'm Alive'; is more calming and reassuring to the conscience than a mutilated embryonic development in the mother's womb reminding the parents that 'I was a Life' once!!