Just to take my mind away from the young woman hanging on to life  in Delhi, I am posting this image of Skittles - a proud and beautiful mother. Her littlest one, will be mine soon...I have named her Gong Li! Merry X'Mas.... stay positive. Believe in life...

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                                The rape of  Delhi…

I refuse to pack chilly powder in my hand bag each time I step out of the house. I will not advise my daughters to master martial arts or acquire cans of pepper spray - ‘just in case’. I will encourage them to wear what they want, when they want. And I certainly won’t be looking over my shoulder constantly when I leave home. This is no way to live. This is no way to deal with a crisis. We are making an even bigger mess of an already horrific reality by running scared. By hiding. By diving for cover. The streets, stations, subways, buses, autos, trains, over bridges, cabs belong to women as much as they do to men. We should reclaim what is rightfully ours, without being browbeaten into scampering away in fright. Why retreat at this stage? If anything, the moment to go ahead and change the rules of this dastardly game is now. If we weaken our resolve and move even an inch from the position taken, we’ll have surrendered a basic right. The right to freedom. The right to safety. Worst of all, we will be passing on a nasty message to our daughters and their daughters that all men are potential rapists – it’s only about opportunity.

It takes one incident to galvanise people. Nobody can predict which that incident could be. Why this particular rape? Newspapers carry worse reports involving equally brutal acts of violence against women on a daily basis. Often, there are as many as six blood curdling stories on the same day, each one as grisly as what happened to the brave 23- year- old  girl in Delhi earlier this week. Yet, it was this gruesome rape that   has outraged and shaken up India. One can only hope this case won’t become another played up tragedy that goes nowhere once something ‘more important’ hits the headlines. But what can be more important than the lives of our women? Or am I asking a stupid question? We know the answer. A female foetus is not safe even in a mother’s womb. And we are discussing the safety of women who are ‘allowed to live’.  But this is not the time to feel martyred. There is no room for self pity. This is the time to demand real change. And by that, I don’t mean the death penalty. Ironically, it is other hardened criminals locked up with the accused in Tihar jail, who have decided to teach the beasts a lesson that goes beyond beatings. Reports say, one of them was made to eat his own excreta. Humiliation can’t get any worse.

But that is not a ‘solution’. It is merely a reaction. The solution lies in our hands. And those hands need not reach for chilly powder. If we adopt defensive strategies to ‘protect’ ourselves, we are admitting weakness and anticipating defeat.How many women in scary circumstances will have the physical strength and the presence of mind to reach for those chilies ? The onus of staying safe was never on us. Let’s not foolishly take it on ourselves at this critical stage and let the real culprits off the hook. And those culprits aren’t  the rapists. Criminals take their cues from society at large. A society that condones and looks the other way when politicians rape, loot, kidnap and murder with impunity, is a society that is inviting trouble from the lumpen. Men like the Delhi rapists who must have believed they’d get away with the crime – just like all those netas whizzing around the Capital,followed by a convoy of security cars to ‘protect’ them. It is this blatant abuse of power that we need to put up a fight against. Until that changes, our women will remain soft targets.  Sheila Dixit, the Chief Minister of  Delhi has displayed very little real concern. The top cop has been shockingly blasé, resorting to platitudes and excuses to cover up his force’s lapses.Through all this, an extraordinarily courageous woman continues to fight for her life and let the world know she wants to live. It’s a poignant war cry from what could soon become her death bed. Yes. The situation is grim. And this is a national emergency which must be recognized as one. No woman in India should ever be told to arm herself with chilly powder. No woman should even feel the need to do so. This is what the fight is about. Get real, Sheila Dixit.Women must be able to take safety for granted. Just like men do.  For, when Delhi gets raped, India gets raped.