second consecutive day in the JNU library...

well well... i am sitting on the computer adjacent to the one i had hijacked yesterday...
but there is something else that drives me to write this now...
i can see the same neem tree where the little bird sat yesterday, and the same sun trying to cast shadows...
but the tree reminded me of something else today...
a train of thought had followed when i looked at it. they worship the need tree somewhere in this country. i guess, it's not the neem, but the banyan or the peepul..i was confused when the thought really occured, but this fact took me to the day when i had seen the story of the world's origin in a serial called Jai Ma Vaishno Devi.
Not that i am an ardent fan of the serial, but the actress who plays the goddess if BEAUTIFUL! Anyways, coming back to the scene when the goddess is looking for someone to start the world with, in short do 'shrishti rachna' and decides do so with the man created out of the 'tama gun' in herself after the men created out of 'sat gun' and 'raj gun' refused to indulge in procreative activities with their 'mother', I realised discrimination against women had begun much before life became so difficult for an ordinary woman in this world.
Shakti surrendered all her powers to the man she created, 'Shiva'. Shiva became 'ardhanarishwar'. I do not know if it actually happened. I do not hold any authority over these topics. i don't know if she actually did it, or made to do it by the man who told this story for the first time. but the story of the Goddess who had to surrender all her powers before wanting to start a family to a man she herself created seemed like 'oh i have heard that before!' doesn't that happen to women all over the world?
i know, i might be talking of a past. 'come on, women are empowered today', 'they are educated' they know what's good for them, 'they rate their career as their priority' etc etc. but this happens to a rare community of those women who have been lucky enough to get education and understand what Bouvoire said a long time back, 'one is not born a woman, one is made a woman'.
Even today, as a survey done by my friend Imran from the center of Law and Governance will tell you, women face discrimination. harrassment is another truth many happily, unfortunately and deliberately ignore. market places, colleges, cinemas, etc have stories of women being discriminated against on the basis of gender, caste, region etc. I believe i heard a saying once, 'if you have sinned for 7 incarnations, you are born a woman, and if you have sinned for 14, you are born a women of the lower caste'. My heart weeps to say that there are many generations in this country and many in the world who have taken this seriously, whether they have heard it or not, and indulged in centuries of oppression of a class that if free, could have made much better of the world than it is today.