FGM- Atrocious and very much existent!

“Um Atiyyat al-Ansariyyah said: A woman who used to perform circumcision in Medina.

The Prophet said to her: Do not cut too severely as that is better for a woman and more desirable for a husband."

Those who advocate Female Genital Mutilation from an Islamic perspective commonly quote the above Hadith to argue that it is required as part of the Sunnah or Tradition of the Prophet.

Although it is not prescribed in the Qur'an. The Qur’an states that god apparently created the clitoris for the sole purpose of generating pleasure. It has no other purpose. There is no instruction in the Qur’an or in any of the writings of the Prophet Mohammed which require that the clitoris be surgically modified. Thus god must approve of its presence. And so, it should not be removed or reduced in size or function. The Qur’an promotes the concept of a husband and wife giving each other pleasure during sexual intercourse.Behind circumcision lies the belief that, by removing parts of girl’s genitals organs, sexual desire is minimized. This permits a female who has reached the dangerous age of puberty and adolescence to protect her virginity and therefore her honor, with greater ease.

The girls are made of go through this at the age of 9-13 by their own mothers and aunts especially during their summer holidays as the wound requires a month or so to heal (as described by a 22 year old who recalls her painful days that made it impossible for her to urinate without tears in her eyes for the next month after the circumcision)

After all these years of talks about women empowerment and liberalization, these kind of barbaric acts of abuse and tolerance infuriate me. 90% of the women from the community are being circumcised. Not only under unhygienic conditions but also without any use of anesthesia.

The pain and discomfort the girls go through at such a tender age is beyond imagination . Sitting on my extremely comfortable bed with tea in one hand and newspaper in the other complaining about a minor headache makes me feel extremely ashamed of myself. Makes me wish i could take a significant step in eradicating such inhuman traditions under the name of religion carried out in various countries behind shut doors.

P.s working with Aseema i see little girls coming from really disturbed and poor families who are so eager to learn and educate themselves. It makes me extremely proud to be able to teach them something new and see how happy it makes them to KNOW!

P.p.s check Page 2 Hindustan Times dated 9th December 2011 for more.

The girl who made bloomers cool for me!

Oh, Lulu!
Little Lulu, Little Lulu, with freckles on her chin
Always in then now the trouble, the mostly how is in!
Using next neck time for the tale of your kind
Using Mom's lipstick for the letters you write!
Little Lulu, Little Lulu, there's know one like the smart
Cause a matter what you doing? You do it make your heart!
Shining girls are dancing where's the smile in your ride?
Well can be the forward do your neck's surprise
What a surprise!
Oh, the Mom is said I'm 30, is really after 10
Look's like Lulus and repairing in the game!
No, we why? (Why?)
It knows it trueloo
And you very hard to take Little Lulu
We love you
Just the same-the-same!
Little Lulu, we love you
Loo... just... the... same!
Luluuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!!!

P.s: I remember how i danced and jumped and smiled every time i watched this show. Oh how i loved this show!

P.p.s: I miss My childhood, more importantly because i miss wearing bloomers..

Horn Ok Please!?

I am Back in Mumbai for my internship and since that consumes only 5 hours of my day I have got myself involved in as many things I could. Which means that I have excessive amount of travelling involved throughout the day, and a little too much time on my hand to observe, write, read and enjoy music these days.

So on my one hour long journey to Vashi for my Spanish Class, as I sat in the AC bus reading Steve Job’s Biography (which I find really interesting By the way), I looked out of the large glass windows to see a truck emitting huge amount of Carbon Monoxide which made me wonder how long do we really have in this world, considering the mess we are creating.

However what diverted my attention was the color of the truck and how it was decorated to look like some royal carriage. But no! This post isn’t about my routine, Global warming, the beauty of the ordinary truck or any of that. This is about my childhood fascination of looking at the back of a truck and reading aloud 3 simple words – HORN OK PLEASE!

At the Age of 12 I got really sick of the grammatically wrong phrase and no correct answer by any grown up as to why it is used throughout the country when it is well…so WRONG!

I wanted to find out the greater purpose for using it, and I searched everywhere till I found the answer!

So did you know- the term bears its roots in the Second World War where the trucks were run on kerosene engines. Kerosene, being highly unstable in nature, would cause the trucks to explode at the slightest accident. Hence a warning would be painted on the back saying "horn Please, On Kerosene". Gradually this became a norm and is still seen on most trucks even today.

Fascinating, isn't it? Did you ever wonder why it is used? or simply believed that is was not so wrong after repeatedly reading it for all these years? We never pay attention to minute and insignificant details in things, do we? but the realization and knowledge about the same is almost always delightful.

P.s: I can now speak almost-fluent-Spanish. However my tenses are really messed up there too. which does not make me even half as sad as compared to how much it makes me happy to know a whole new language and go about blabbering it.

*tuned into* You and I Both- jason mraz.

Panchagani

Yeah so my title is pretty basic this time. I didn't for the first time even for a single moment while writing this post have a thought in my mind that i have to be awesome. Or i have to make sense. Or i have to sound brilliant. The reason being that this post is about my 3 days at Asia Plateau , Panchagani.

So this happened way back in september. My college which i regard both awesome and annoying at the very same moment has a tradition. Every year the first year batch goes to asia plateau in the very first semester to spend 4 days of detoxication. Where from nicotine to mobile phone , from late nights to non veg and pratically everything a “SIMCian” considers essential is prohibitted.

Asia plateu is a training and conference centre that runs character development sessions throughout the year and like many other various organisations conducts pretty much the same drill inorder to help you find your inner peace. So no it was not the training or the sessions that made this trip so special. Now i wont say that the programme was absolutely futile and made no sense to me. It taught me to believe my belief and stick to that belief that every person has a past and the experiences from that very past make him/ her what they are. In personal group sessions people discussed their issues and experiences that made almost each and everyone present there cry. So the programme definitely created some impact on each one’s life.

However coming to the real reason for this trip to be so important and meaningful for me was the Time and Ambience that it provided me.Since the last 3 years i have been living a hectic and monotonous life. I had little time to sing, to smile, to look at the stars and smell the air. This was the perfect opportunity to do all of that. I sang , i walked , i looked everywhere, i saw the stars , i smelt the air and in what seems years i spent the longest hour of my life with myself alone surrounded by wind and trees and flowers. Despite having over 250 people around me i spent the quietest time in years.

On my return i still had issues to deal with and people to answer, i still had no time to rest and lots of things to do , i did not do everything or maybe nothing that i planned when i was there. But the experience lives within me now and forever. The smell of the air and the clear stary night still makes me feel at peace whenever i think about it. And for that i am grateful.

P.S: The experience was an essential part of my life and had to find a place on my blog. The trip was followed by the best two months of my life.

P.P.S : that is the cutest snap from Panchangi. I was as usual extremely sick during my four days there. Thus the horrible hair and the face and the general me. However like always i make pratik look adorable.

*tuned into* like a rolling stone - Bob dylan.

And the Moral of the Story Is…..

After so many years of believing that Women are the ones who always compromise , Band Baja Baraat changed my belief.(oh yes I watched the film for the first time today after more than a year of its release)

Now i know that 99% of the people did believe that this film is a Rom-Com and that he loved her and thus didn’t let her go and get married to someone else and she loved him back and thus chose him over the other “corrrrrect” guy. But that’s considering that 99% of our public our emotional fools.

No, seriously the entire second part of the film screams out and tells us that this is more of a “How-To-Save-A-Failing-Business” film rather than a romantic comedy. And the end is about how and why men are better at business than women (who are so fucking stupid and emotional) but of course people don’t understand that.

So now you know the real purpose of the film.

Note: I am pretty jobless. and this is the outcome of being jobless. But in my defense at least i am writing..

P.s: I Love the film. I love the colors. I love the songs. I love the larger theme and the “Moral” of the story too.

P.p.s: Ranvir Singh is so fucking hot and imperfect (oh I have a thing for imperfect guys)! *eyelashes*

When Life surprises you at every step...

Yeah it’s been a while. Or is it wrong to say “a while”. It’s been a long long long time. For someone like me who thought writing was therapeutic and couldn't do without it I have been off the blogosphere for more than 2 months now.

And no I was not exactly whiling away my time. I was experiencing the most astonishing 6 months of my life. ‘A year and life is unbelievable different’ is what my status update read a few days back on facebook. But exactly a year back life ran pretty parallel to now. A lot of similar things were happening only I wasn’t as dumbstruck by it then as I am now.

My decision to shift to Pune has probably been my life's both worst and best decisions at the same time. And I love how I can never figure out which one of it, it really is. Life is absolutely messy right now; it is surprising me a little too much. I feel almost trippy which obviously makes me feel great.

So my first term at SIMC has come to an end and I am back home for my internship and have plenty of time to think. The last one month back in Pune was ultra awesome and now I am having a hard time being back home and coming to terms with the fact that I have to be here and do this for the next one month or more.

I have experienced so much in the last 6 months. They have been truly amazing. Made some great friends. Strengthened some old friendships. Lost a few people. Got a few back. Learnt more history. Found out more about literature. Watched more movies. Read more books. Got tones of nicotine into my blood and gave up on it eventually. Missed a lot of lectures. Met with a really scary accident. Hurt myself pretty bad. Regretted a lot. Loved a lot. And had a lot of fun really.

So now that I am back I hope to post my experiences from the last 6 months on my blog one by one.

And soon.

Wish me luck.

P.S: Cold Play is going to be in Dubai next month and I can’t see any ray of hope of me being there at that time. *sob sob*

P.P.S: Pune is my second favorite city right now.

*tuned into* Paradise- Coldplay

Making no real point-on love,relationships and romance!

So agreed a huge part of me is a chick flick person, my most favorite films are the romantic ones. i love , love stories. even the one's as dumb as i hate love stories.

of course i am a full time romantic always looking around for love.

but relationships , well they FREAK me out.

why? because i believe in love!

and relationship's never much match up to those standards. which is where my love and in love theory comes into being.

so the theory states "you may love lots of people in your lifetime , but you fall "in" love with just one"

deep huh?

yeah it is. i have learnt this after being in more than 5 full time relationships(it is quite like i a job) and many more complicated one's which i never even wanted to start!

no i am definitely not bragging, i wish i had one really really really meaningful one instead. (or maybe not , considering how much each relationship has taught me)

"something meaningful existed in all of these relationship's, so what was missing?"

is the thought from where this entire post came into existence!

after a lot of thought i came to no conclusion or no definite answer, but yeah i did get a rough idea, the issue was not about what was lagging, it was about how i never really fell in love.

people come to us. they become important , we think we can't live without them , we imagine ourselves with them and after sometime they are no more that important. we no more need them. someone else takes their place. and life moves on.

we miss them , smile when we think about them,maybe a tear or two, feel jealous of the person who is with them now, but we never want to go back to it (atleast i have never wanted to go back to anyone of them)

vaishnavi always tells me how i am being a bitch and cant decide on that one person , but its not what i cant do , its what i don't want to do.

i don't want to bet i am going to spend the rest of my life with anyone i am with right now. because i am not in love with anyone.

no one makes me feel on top of the world irrespective of what they do for me, no one makes the wind blow and no one rings bells (though a lot of butterflies have made a permanent place in my stomach and start to fly frantically at the sight of a lot many guys) , no one makes me wish for them when i pray, no one kisses me to make my leg toss up , no one knows without me telling and etc etc.

maybe the issue is that i take love stories too seriously,but i believe that i will find a person(or more than one) who will make me feel like that.

not that i regret being with anyone i have , but i have definitely understood that now or not even in the near future is love going to come knocking my door. i am not prepared for it , and i cant imagine losing it!

P.S but what i do look forward to is a good long vacation, which i doubt is going to be possible in the next three years of SIMC. however we are going to panchagani for a week from college , sounds interesting huh?! Not really..