For all my life I have been hearing people say, "You're a girl!". Be it a place where they need us to be courageous, or a place where they want us to be a coward, it always ends up being realized that I am a GIRL. Don't I know that already? Why does one need to add it in the last of conversations when they are incapable of answering, when they are helpless to provide us with an alternative, or when they have just no reason on earth to satisfy an equation- then goes the lines in the silence, in small brackets, "You have to adjust, you have to compromise, you have to understand or you have to sacrifice for you are a girl!"

It's disheartening to see how unequally things are distributed between two equal parts of the vehicle called society. But it's not the story of one middle-class family, it's indeed reflected in all sections of society, which constitute India as a whole. The perception of one man affects the perception of a family in particular and the society in general. Those who cannot respect their wives/ mothers/ sisters or girl-friends, can never respect women in their workplaces too. Similarly those who do not respect women outside homes, can you expect them to respect women inside homes? So it all starts from one's first citadel of learning- home. I beg my apology to abuse the culture that prevails in our society; that goes on discriminating between girls and boys right from the childhood. Its an irony to find how educated and sensible class of our society including men and women, believes in this ideology. It is so strongly instilled in our hearts from the day we are born, that we don't even realize a countless number of times when we make a girl fall prey of this discrimination or when we ourselves get caught into this. I don't think that I need to cite here the examples of hundreds of cases of sexual assaults, domestic violence, child-labor etc that are reported in various daily newspapers and thousands of those cases which remain unreported.

At first, we start taking this unjust society for granted or accept this gap as a universal truth like sun's existence. Sometimes it feels bad, when we get no answer for a boy's preference over a girl's, at different stages of our lives. But we still do not raise voice for we are taught to believe and follow blindly. We don't like to go against what is being followed by from centuries. We don't want to break customs for the sake of belief that we are girls and hence we are not supposed to do so. We carry the respect and dignity of the families in which we are born and do so for the families where we are born to marry into.  


I really wonder that today science, arts and technology have so much changed the way of living, modernity and fashion have become so integral parts of our lives, but the mindset of people has not changed a bit. We must be able to speak for and against social drama when we feel it necessary. Girls and their families should be strong enough to protest against unjust behaviors done with them. And this confidence can come only when you stop believing in old social customs and rituals. For eg. a girl is not a burden to her family and in-laws are no Lords to rule over your psyche. We should also understand that the direction of a flowing river cannot be changed by one man or woman alone. We need to come up in unity if we want to do something of this level. We must understand the need of this change. First we have to realize that it's in the benefit of every man and woman if we get a just and righteous society for living, only then we can focus on other motives and save the time that is getting lost in this chaos. We must not wait for a new government after every five years in hope of bringing upon change in our country. I still want it to hear people say, "You are a girl!"- only with little proud and honor!