Silent Words

“ Thok Thok Sale lai ”, a group of young protesters with lathi in their hands yelled as I was driving my motorbike through Chabahil road to my office in Battisputali. I still remember what I underwent at the moment. My hand and legs were shaking. Though I reached my office unharmed, the yell of warning to me and the slogans of ‘patriotism’ resonated in my mind all through the day. Numbers of question have arisen in my mind since that event: ‘What is patriotism?’, ‘who are the patriots?’, ‘how is patriotism expressed?’, and so on.   To have pride in one’s country with an intense love of her and a zealous devotion to her interests is usually called patriotism. However, in the name of devotion and love, sometimes patriotism takes the form of fanaticism and jingoism which is wrong. (Is it necessary every time to take recourse to violence to express one’s patriotic feelings?) After the modern nation-states were born in the 1500s, patriotism has been a subject to debate. There have b...

Last week, I met one of my childhood friends. Speechless, we both stared at each other with tearful eyes. We had not met since she was married off by her parents when she was studying in class 8. Even then, she had cried so much and had asked for my help. But we both were helpless to do anything. Now, a mother of two, she had once dreamt of being a nurse. (Ironically, she is now nursing her husband and children.) In school, she used to tell me about how she would become a nurse, work in a hospital, earn money, and be a renowned person. But all her dreams shattered when she got married. Mired in poverty, she now looked much older than she really was. While the number of seminars and discussions on women’s empowerment is increasing, many innocent girls suffer the fate of my friend. Women’s empowerment requires removal of all obstacles to women’s participation in all spheres of public and private life. But by denying girls opportunities and compromising their development in areas such ...

"What is marriage?" my little cousin asked. I didn't know what to say. Even as I was crafting  answer in my mind, he fired another question: "why should one get married?" Now, I was starting to question myself: What exactly is marriage? Is marriage timeless, universal and natural? Can it have a sweeping definition? I flipped through many books on anthropology before I came upon  one definition: "a universal institution that involves a man and a woman living together, engaging in sexual activity, and cooperating economically". This definition, however did not take into account real practices in many parts of the world. For example, in many tribes in Ghana and Indonesia it is common for spouses to live separately. Moreover, I recently read in a newspaper that in parts of Zambia, those married couples who live together often do not eat together but instead have their meals among those of the same gender or age or gender group. In addition, among the Yor...

Last week, I was invited to a party at one of my relatives. But I was not told what that party was for. Must be someone’s birthday, I thought. I went through my personal diary in which I jot down the birthdays dates of my friends and relatives. But no one in that family was nearing a birthday. So, I went, without even bothering to buy a gift. Once there, it didn’t take me long to figure out the reason behind the party. My maternal auntie was pregnant. They had been married for seven years but were childless. Now, she was pregnant, and my uncle’s joys knew no bounds. When I heard the news tears came to my eyes. I remembered all years my uncle and aunt had to pass in pain, and not because they were childless. What hurt them most was the society’s perceived importance of motherhood for a married woman. The society had tagged my aunt as a ‘childless woman’. Perhaps unsurprisingly in our patriarchal society, none pointed a finger at my uncle. I found the hypocrisy of it all intolerable. ...