Thursday 20 September 2012

Gave Birth To HIS Baby


Let me start with a tale.
Kamla Devi was pregnant, everybody was happy. After nine months of expectations the fortunate day came when her water broke; a baby was going to be delivered! They rushed to the nearest government hospital, excited! But the hospital asked for money, which her family did not have, they had to go elsewhere. No hospital was agreeing to accommodate her, she searched for five days. She searched for 5 days with a dead foetus in her stomach. Her third baby died. She got pregnant again soon after that. This time during delivery, she died.

India has just recognised “Reproduction Rights” as a legal right and is the first country to do so. It recognises the basic right of all couples and individuals to decide freely and responsibly the number, spacing and timing of their children and to have the information and means to do so, and the right to attain the highest standard of sexual and reproductive health. It also includes the right of all to make decisions concerning reproduction free of discrimination, coercion and violence as expressed in human rights documents. In the exercise of this right, they should take into account the needs of their living and future children and their responsibilities towards the community. The citizens of countries other than India might be confounded- “If they don’t decide, then who does? The Godfather?” Well no, the husbands mostly. In a typical Indian family, the husband earns while the wife does household chores. So of course, only the husband can decide the matters of the house, amount of children THEY want, the money and facilities SHE should get, her behaviour in front of others, her number of breaths…

Saturday 8 September 2012

You’re Gay And You Don’t Know It.

I attended this conference on gay people by Nivedita Menon, Pramada Menon, Gautam Bhan (prominent activists, took the initiative of decriminalization of sex between homosexuals under 377) as a part of my law studies. The first thing that this name brought to my mind was hours of cribbing about gay rights and equality. I guess others in my batch shared the same instinct, because as soon as the word of going to the conference broke out, everybody started thinking of excuses to give for missing it. “I am Homophobic” was my personal favourite. I anyways followed the crowd and attended the conference, and it blew my mind. Their main argument was not how gays are discriminated against, their argument was how the simple identity of being gay overshadowed rest every identity. So if a person says “I am a lecturer at Harvard, CEO at Apple, oh and by the way, I am gay” subconsciously the way you will categorize him is not as “teacher at Harvard” or “CEO at apple” but as “a gay.”