Don’t worship me! With love, from Ganga

“I am the Ganga. The purest female deity that you worship. My long stretched arms, the rivers and tributaries, that flow through the landmass of this wide stretched country, feed the starved; They relish the fresh crops and vegetables that grow along my fertile banks, quench their thirst with my water, and satiate their spiritual cravings with my purity. A woman true to herself, ‘chanchal‘ at heart, I flow freely throughout my country. My tresses, pure water, colourless, odourless, and without form, I cannot be contained anywhere for long.”

Every Indian woman, is like the Ganga. True to our mythological facts, Ganga, a naughty yet naive girl, was so ‘chanchal‘ she couldn’t be trapped for long in Lord Shiva’s tresses! “I am the mother, the sister, the wife and the daughter, who lives in the same country. I am the mother who gives birth, nurses the newborn, and the child in his formative years. I am the mother who sacrifices things that she has yearned for, very happily for her family.” As we pray to goddesses more than three times a year, in each part of the country, we also kill many unborn girls! Such is the extent of irony, that India has recorded one the maximum cases of female foeticide in the world!

Most of the Indians, who bathe in holy rivers to wash their sins, who pamper the Gods by sacrificing animals and flowers to them, treat women, in the most disrespecting ways one could imagine. “I am the same mother, the one they worship, the ‘shakti‘ they are in awe of, the most powerful form, yet the most vulnerable one. I am the one, who is dumped with all the garbage in the world. I am the one on who watches men throw their body wastes on me, while they giggle. I am the same entity, who is considered so pure, that my countrymen from far and wide, come to bathe in my waters, for salvation.” The mother, who is the epitome of love, is pampered at most, when she is about to give birth to her child. How quickly she gains respect, in the eyes of her in laws, husband, and all those who would have opposed her before. And how short is their memory of the pain and penance the mother goes through while giving birth to her child. Lauded by all for giving birth to a new life, the mother is soon shunned by everyone for every mistake her child commits.

” I am eulogised by all of my countrymen. Parts of me is collected in small bottles, and sprinkled in millions of houses across my country. But strange is the mindset of these people who try their best, to malign me, to make me dirty, to pollute me in more ways than one, without thinking much of the tarnish on my form, on the image of their mother. They refer to me as the purest form of woman, mother, purity, sanctity all rolled into one. And have built  innumerable factories, along my banks are filling me with poison everyday. All efforts to put sense into them is going down the drains; and so is my purity.”

The same people bathe in my holy waters on an auspicious day to wash their sins and become pure! What an irony!

The Indian man respects and almost worships his own mother, yet such is the situation the the same man might just go and rape another woman, who is someone else’s wife/mother/daughter/sister. We have managed to not only physically pollute the holiest river, but also reach incidence of the highest number of attempted rapes in 2014!

“So, I appeal to all my countrymen, to stop eulogising me, donot worship me, have mercy on me and let me live freely. Like a lady, ever giving, simple and pure. For heavens sake I donot wish to be worshipped and dragged into dirt and mud by your shallow judgements. Let me be and let me live! I am appealing to all, to not pollute my pure and sacred waters. Treat me with love, and care as you would treat your own daughter. Pray, do not spit venom in the form of pollutants.”

Worshipped in concept, and abused and tortured in reality. The woman is so very important. Then why all this humiliation. The Nirbhaya kaand being repeated as you read this piece. How long will this continue to happen? It is the need of the hour to once again bow down and pay respect to the mother, the sister, the companion, the friend- the woman in our lives. It is again important to remember, Mother Teresa, Razia Sultan, Rani Of Jhansi, Sister Nivedita and the like with immense respect and to salute the common lady that we find in every home.

“I shall be happy to serve my countrymen, as ever giving and caring as a woman could be, with my waters and fish, the crops and vegetables. So let me be happy and flow with the same purity that I had before men polluted me.”

Every time we disrespect a woman, criticise her free flowing, pure nature and creativity, we shamefully take another step towards reaching a new height of hypocrisy.