So the annual ritual of paying respect to women is over. March 8 is gone. But it should not be!!!

Well, I for one am not too much of a lover of these celebrated days. I think they eulogize what’s wrong or as in case of women’s day, remind us that we need to actually consider women as equals, pay them respect and so on…

I think they take away the sheen. Why?? Here’s why…

I and you and everyone else was born from a woman. That should be enough to hold women in higher esteem. I mean, who amongst men are ready to bear a child in their body for 9 months? Leave aside the after-birth shenanigans that all mothers must go through.

We all grow up and we always seek shelter with a woman. We love our sisters and protect them at all costs, we adore our female friends and secretly wish they would be with us. We look at couples and get jealous if the guy looks lousy. We would do anything to please the woman of our dreams and get her to be on our side. 

Yet, we also secretly harbour ill within us, within our society. We grow up and suddenly we want to show our power. And I am talking about all men, including yours truly.

We think somehow we are superior to a girl or a lady – mentally, physically etc. And it is manifested in the way we treat females – as objects of desire who are walking talking show-pieces. We look at them askance if they do some wrong, as if they must be perfect.

We want them to be pretty and fair and slim and tall, while ourselves being average, not so fair, fat and stout. We want to mate almost all of them and yet call them names even if we just see them walking or talking to a single guy!

And that’s the reason we have all sorts of crimes against women. And across the globe, not just in India. That’s why there is gender discrimination everywhere and that’s why our collective consciousness towards crimes against women is so low… And that’s why things don’t improve.

I mean, let’s grow up. We are not in some Before Christ era, where we are slaves to the traditional patriarchal society that we must look down upon the female sex.

Long gone are the days when women were meant to be at home and rear children and satisfy their man’s needs. Today, they are equal in all respects and in fact, in my reckoning, higher in some of them. They are beating men square in most fields.

And doing that while continuing to fulfill all those responsibilities that the society asks of them. A man cannot even think of doing a few of these things simultaneously!

My respect for women has gone up several notches in the past few years and still it sometimes leaves me dazed that my wife or mother or sisters accept me as I am and respect me without looking down upon my weaknesses.

It’s time I accept them as they are and respect them.

And its time we all did the same to all the women in our lives and all those whom we come across. Will make the world a better place to live in!!!