The Missing Girl Child

I still remember the joy my sister brought to our household, my sister would be my maternal aunt’s daughter, but she is not my cousin but my very sister itself. I have always wanted a sister, ever since I can remember. I always wish I had an elder sister who would scold me and whom I could fight with and I wish I had a younger sister whom I could cajole and spoil. I know these dreams are meant to remain unfulfilled, there is only so much one can do, no replacement would ever be real thing would it? Then what I can do is a have a daughter whom I can spoil, with whom I can fight and whom I can scold. Someone that I can say is truly mine and who will always be daddy’s best girl. When I saw the woman in this video, who has murdered with her bare hands her several children on the eve of their birth, my heart was shaken. There was not a speck of remorse in her words, not a moment of self-doubt about her actions only the cold dignity of doing what she thought was right. What would have turned her into this ominous creature that stands defiantly in the face of modern society, a scar upon the face of civilization? To imagine those bleak hands wound around the neck of her own child who is still covered in blood and matter. The suppressed cries of the new born girl escaping from the otherwise strangled throat. The new born eyes vaguely making out the devil that her own mother has turned out to be, helpless and bewildered. For what has she done wrong to live the life of a may fly, to come and go and be forgotten in a heap of soil by the solitary fields.

Is being born a girl a crime, a mishap or one of the great misfortunes of the 21^st century? Why does a moment that would otherwise be a celebration of life turn into persistent gloom and prolonged misfortune? These are questions in the face of which the modern society shudders and lowers its head in shame. The so called pantheons of culture that we ourselves proclaim to be, has wittingly or unwittingly brought upon the women great misfortune and has subjected them to what can be called nothing other than slavery. They can no longer legally find if the child is a girl before being born and hence they can’t kill her before she is even born so they lurk around till the moment of birth to don the black cloak of doom and kill there very daughters in the most cruel of ways imaginable. Many a visions of heal are much less revolting and terrifying than the sight of father bashing his own daughter to death under the silence of her mother. Where happens in utopia this gruesome scene.
Every child has the right to be born and every child irrespective of gender be allowed the world. I have longed for a daughter all my life and when at the moment it happened to be a boy, would I kill him? Would I even think about harming him? Even in the face of my many a dreams being shattered would I for one moment think that this innocent life in my hands deserves not to live? How could I even think that, for in my hand lies the miracle of life? All I could ever do is to love him and all I could ever think is to be his hero. Come what may be to kill a child is revolting and killing on the basis of its gender may very well be like buying a first class non-refundable ticket to the bottom hell. We have the blunder of many a millennia to correct before us, we have to rectify the mistakes of several hundred generations which has caused, encouraged and supported this injustice. We have to with great patience and utmost dedication purify the society of its evils that has poisoned its very fabric. How this can be done is not for me to say for that we are well aware of. What we must ask ourselves is that whether we want it done? Whether the urgency is felt in our hearts and if so then the way is but a matter of taking.
This entry is a part of Franklin Templeton - The Idea Caravan