A never dreamt of dream, come true!!

I know this is quite a weird title, but this thing that happened to me was too good to be true! I never dreamt that I would be lucky enough to experience it and it was indeed as good as a dream and as awesome as a dream come true!


Ever waited desperately for your results to come? Probably not. Coz you might think I'm talking about the school ones! But no, I'm not talking about that! Neither am I talking about the results of a job interview, nor about a college entrance exam! May be I should just come to the point..XD


Okay, so I applied for this student exchange program sometime around October and I was cent percent sure of not getting through.. It's tough now, I live in a country with the largest population of adolescents! All of them trying to get through and only 28 of them would be selected! And who was I competing with anyway? The intelligent South Indians! The ambitious Mumbaikars! The smart Delhiites! And the toppers of Ahmedabad! I didn't hope to get through but I still finished my form with honest answers and sent it!


After that, it all happened so quick I didn't realize till I reached Delhi for my national orientation.. The mail with "Congratulations, You have been selected..", the local interview, the tele interview, the round of medical certificates, reading mails on time, replying and booking tickets and knowing others who were equally lucky... OMG! There I was sitting with my Chapter Head, wondering if I should apply or not and the next moment, I land in Hotel Mapple Emerald, Delhi with 27 other students from all over India..


Then started the round of orientations and lectures and dos and don'ts! We had a wonderful time in Delhi, getting to know each other and sharing our happiness on being selected! It was great! All of us had talked to each other on Internet, but when we finally met, it was even better!


It wasn't long before we landed in our host country. And the first thing I felt was.... Cold! Yes, cold! After all, it was December and I was not in India, but all the way across the globe, in the island country; JAPAN!


Japan, the land of the rising sun, the land of bullet trains, the land of Tokyo drift, the land of chopsticks, the land of Sushi, the land of earthquakes... And for me, a land where a I had landed with 686 teenagers from Planet Earth! It was a totally new world, that had new friends, new experiences, new lessons, new learning, new family, new climate and new food! We were on a roller coaster ride called Kizuna*, that went up and down but all in all gave us happy memories for a lifetime! I would skip going into the details of my 10 days in Japan for now.. That would be described in my next post!


For now, Akshi Shah has checked in Hotel Narita View with students from India, Myanmar, New Zealand and is unsuccessfully trying to eat her Obento** with chopsticks! ;)




*Kizuna : Japanese word, meaning bond. Also the name of the exchange program.

**Obento :   Japanese meal, is served in a box.

Real men, don’t rape!

The following post is actually an article written by me which has been published in the weekly edition (Rajkot Plus) of TOI. Hope you like it. :)

Just a few days after the news of one of the cruelest sexual assaults had evoked anger in every Indian’s heart, the Chairperson of one of the State’s Women Commission stated that women “are equally responsible” for the crimes against them! At times when we need to talk about the safety of women, we find people who believe women are responsible for the treatment they get. There are a few narrow-minded, rigid people supporting this statement; only a few!

They say it is the way she talks, they way she dresses, the way she behaves and the way she lives her life that provokes men. They say it is her ways that result in her destruction! But, is it actually not the narrow mindset, the lust, the undying hunger inside those inhuman creatures that results in the crimes against women?! Why would a girl go out of her house with the thought of inviting her own destruction?! No, it is not the women, it is not the way she talks, dresses behaves or lives that provoke men, it is the thirst inside those perpetrators, the thirst that gets thirstier every time it is fulfilled, that leads to crimes and disasters like the one in Delhi!

And it is not just strangers that do this to a girl; statistics say that in 40% of the rape cases registered in 2011, the perpetrator was either a parent, relative or a neighbour! Most of the rape cases are not even filed. This is due to a lot of reasons, the girl worried of embarrassing the family, the girl is afraid of confronting the police, who might make the situation worse for her, etc. And she is not wrong! When she is asked to show physical signs of sexual assault, to describe the incident in detail and to “Take money and shut up!”, what else would she do? A girl, who has already been raped, is raped all over again, verbally.

In our male dominated society, parents teach their daughters not to stay out late, be careful with the opposite sex and not to keep their shirts tight and skirts short. They aren’t wrong. But, what they forget to teach is to fight back, to be able to self-protect, to be bold and not to tolerate even a little bit of sexual harassment! What else do they forget to teach? Well, they forget to teach their sons to respect women, to help her maintain her dignity and to see a woman as a woman, and not as a sex machine!

Talking to one of my male friends another day, I got very angry about the increasing rate of rapes in our country and ended up shouting at him and blaming his whole kind! At the end of our conversation, he simply said: “Real men, don’t rape”!! That is when I realised that blaming all the men would just be stereotyping. There are good men around us. But then, being a girl, the incident in Delhi affected me more than him.

In the last few weeks, I witnessed and took part in the candle marches and peace rallies in our country. I pondered more about the actual reason behind everything that is happening around us, and I reached to the conclusion that it is the deep-rooted discrimination between girls and boys that lead to such crimes. If a girl is qualified in self-protection and is brave enough to stop the vulgar behavior from the initial level, i.e. eve teasing or whistling, no men would dare to harass her.

              

For us, the need of the hour is to change! It is time for the mindset of people to change. It is time to make a woman feel safe and secure, be it inside the house or outside. It is time to change our rigid practices. It is time to stop blaming the government and the police, because somewhere, somehow, we all are responsible for what happens in our own society. And it is time for MEN to fight for the rights of WOMEN!! Because after all, it’s a woman who creates a man!