Learn From The Past, Live The Present and Have An Open Mind to Face Tomorrow
Violence Against Women is one of the worst crimes and pandemic that exists in our society. Violence exists because we choose to live with it, we choose to allow women to be treated badly.
Please watch my video below on my views on Violence Against Women and what you can do to put an end to this torture that continues to be inflicted against women.
We are Human and want to be Appreciated and made to feel wanted no matter what role each of us play in our daily lives.
When you hear these two words,”You Matter” think about the feeling you go through, –
It Changes your mood, Changes your heart and mind and many times gives you a big boost to help you achieve what u set out to do. It Changes Lives and it can Change the World.
Nothing else can quite substitute a few well-chosen, well-timed, sincere words of praise. They’re absolutely free but worth a fortune. As long as they are delivered in the right way. Many feel it is about the Ego but it is more to do with something more human,. We are created for significance and this is of utmost importance in a community, in an organization, in our day to day life.
Pls watch this Video where I have shared my thoughts on the importance of being appreciated.
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Mr. Kapil Sibal,
Freedom of speech and expression is a natural right guaranteed under the Article 19 (1) (a) of the Constitution of India. Freedom of speech and expression implies the right to express one’s thoughts and ideas freely via any medium, such as gestures, signs, verbal communication, print media, radio or television.
The Supreme Court has broadened the scope of the right to freedom of speech and expression. It has held that the government has NO Monopoly over the electronic media.
Mr. Kapil Sibal, in the interest to protect the Nehru-Gandhi family and the Congress, you have led yourself out-of-bounds by intervening with the basic rights given to the citizens of India in the Freedom of Speech, by the Constitution, when you recently asked that content on Twitter, Facebook & Google be pre-screened.
As a minister who supposedly has been appointed to deliver your duties to the country, have you forgotten that changing the Constitution per your whim & fancy is not part of that duty!
On the internet, through Tweets, Facebook, there is a democratic discussion on what the political parties do or what they don’t do? After all isn’t democracy By the people, For the people and Of the people. Who are you to Stop this?
Mr.Sibal, if you are that concerned about vulgarity shouldn’t your Government be concerned about the daily Dowry Deaths, 90 innocent people dying from a fire because someone decided to flout every rule, about the increasing violence against women, about Female feticide, about the rampant corruption existing in every walk of life, about the distrust that your Government has created by taking a U-turn on FDI.
Or you consider free & frank discussion re: deaths, violence & other forms of mishaps caused by the act of some corrupt official vulgar because they are too candid for you to digest ?
Have you as a minister looked at where the Economic Development of Our country is going? We seemed to be mired in political tussle on a daily basis at the cost of economic growth & development.
Surely you seemed extra concerned on the power of the Internet. Only one with guilt would be worried about the Impact of the conversations on Twitter, Facebook & other social media.
We Indians have always been proud of and boasted about our freedom of speech which is missing in dictatorship countries like China. Recently, when Pakistan tried to impose ban on some words to be used in SMS, I laughed at the thought little realizing that our minister would also sneakily find ways and means to censor and control content on the Internet.
Why don’t you endeavor to instill the good practices of countries like China and Pakistan rather than adopt the not favored practices of censorship.
Mr. Sibal, remember that the more you curtail and the more you hide, you will only be opening the doors of revolution and protest.
Do not be a hurdle to a true democratic process and don’t intervene in the rights granted by Our Constitution.
From A Citizen Of India
“Crude classifications and false generalizations are the curse of organized life.” George Bernard Shaw
At bottom every man knows well enough that he is a unique being, only once on this earth; and by no extraordinary chance will such a marvelously picturesque piece of diversity in unity as he is, ever be put together a second time. – Friedrich Nietzsche
And Yet we very often tend to make generalized statements. By making sweeping statements, the truly important things in life-love, beauty, and one’s own uniqueness are constantly being overlooked.
Nature never repeats herself, and the possibilities of one human soul will never be found in another. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
“Bloom where you are Planted” but has the adage now become “Survive where you are Stuck”.
Do we see life more as a culvert of survival or as a garden with significant possibilities for growth and blossoming? Life is a gift to us, which we need to cultivate, nurture, grow, spread kindness and love.
We should always cherish and encourage love, unity, service, generosity, justice and peace in whichever form and shape we can find and weed out all forms of evil, injustice, exploitation, insensitivity and cruelty.
Our greed and selfishness has not only fractured relationships with our family, friends and mankind, but we have severed our ties with Mother Earth. We abuse, torture and exploit Earth and Mother Nature. We must work to fulfil both, ourselves as well as our environment but at the same time care for our environment and not continue to harm Mother Nature but restore her pristine beauty.
“Life is not a bed of roses.” Even if it were, remember that roses bloom with thorns. So let’s sow seeds of life and tackle the hurdles that come our way.
10 STEPS T0 NOURISH AND ENJOY LIFE
1. Smile 
An inexpensive way to cheer yourself and others. Make someone’s day and your own by smiling,
2. A kind word or deed– something as simple as Thank you for clearing my trash on a daily basis to the person who clears your garbage daily will make that person’s day. An example of a kind deed could be to help some one on the road if you see them carrying a huge load.
3. Apology – An apology is a proof that you have conquered your ego; it clears your heart and makes you realise that it is human to err. It also means that you value your relationships more than your ego. Would you rather be remembered for your kindness or about winning an argument.
4. Breadth of life – 
Every breadth you take and the fact that you wake up each new day is a blessing in itself. Every morning is a symbol of rebirth of life.
5. Food – 
The fact that you are able to eat a bare minimum of two meals a day in itself is something to be thankful about.
6. Friends –
Be thankful of the friends you can rely on and call on at any time. What would we do without them. Don;t take them for granted
7. Family– Your parents, your siblings, your spouse and the support they give you to be who you are on a daily basis.
8. Happiness – Happiness is a state of mind on a day to day basis. Words have an immense influence on the receiver and the speaker. Choose your words diligently and let anger not douse them.
9. Attitude – Attitude to anything in life makes a huge difference. We all have hurdles in life but the attitude we have towards each of these will dictate every moment of our day and life. Make it a good one and you will enrich your life and those around you. Having the right positive attitude is something that we need to remind ourselves consciously especially when we are having a challenging day.
10. Passion – 
Each of us have our own passion and activities that we engage ourselves passionately in. I’m very passionate about hikes about helping some one in need. While many of us may not be able to engage ourselves in what we are passionate about each and every moment, it is crucial we make time for things we love. Go where you want to go and follow your intitution. Don’t restrict yourself by the boundaries created by others.
All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. Ralph Waldo Emerson.
As we draw close to the Violence Against Women Awareness Month (VAWAM), we have heard many heart rendering real life stories and experiences and some of the women have been able to come out of the situation and others have been able to arrive at a reconciliation with their partners after an open communication and dialiogue with their partner and his family members. But, there are many a case both in rural and urban India where we still face dowry deaths and killing in the name of so called Honor.
We have also had Eve Teasing & Street Harassment incidents which have resulted in the death of a boy who fought against these elements of violence.
While it is imperative that we use the existing legislations and have the authorities and police play their role in safeguarding the life of a woman and give her the adequate protection, it is important that mindsets are changed among women and men re: treatment of women, treatment of a girl child, saying no to child marriage and child birth and also saying No to Dowry.
I thought I should put together some points together as to how we as a society we can help reduce the Violence Against Women, By no means is this list suppsoed to be exhaustive but I hope it serves as an overall guide.
1. Never be a silent spectator to any incidents of abuse or violence against women. A silent spectator is as good as the oppressor. Bottomline Nip it in The Bud.
2. Assess the situation and call for help so that you and the victim’s life is not in danger, Call for help from a friend or authorities. But in the fearof protecting your life do not run away from the situation and turn abound eye.
3. Volunteer to raise awareness re: Violence Against Women. There are various organizations like Bell Bajao, Prajnya which are organizations that are involved in these Efforts already. They need help and like volunteers in promoting the cause to reduce Violence Against Women.
4. Blogging in India is done by almost everybody.- use blogs, Tweets& Facebook pages to publish information which can help women in situations of violence.
5. Make a note of these Organizations in Various Parts of India whose help you could use to help someone faving domestic violence or any other form of violence
I. 4 Bangalore, #India, Helplines & Support for Women in India facing dowry threats & other violence. Link.
II. #Chennai #India listing of helplines for women in need by @prajnya Link
III. In India, call 1091 for help with Domestic Violence -Women’s Helpline taking care of women & Bell_Bajao & Link
IV. Additional resources for help
V. Complaints can be made if you see people giving or taking or asking dowry –Link
6. A Women facing domestic abuse and violence should make herself aware abou her Legal Rights – this link thanks to Bell_Bajao – Link
7. If the authorities are not taking interest in filing an FIR or prosecuting an oppressor.. start a petition and get support. Get the help of Twitter & Facebook to get more signatories.
8. It is just not women who can stop violence but the participation of men is essential. Men can stop violence, Men listen to men and men can help survivors. I paste here a link again thanks to Bell Bajao. Link
9. Our education curriculum needs to stress the importance of women and what behavior by men are considered violence. Several times Boys who witness violence while growing up are the most common perpetrator’of violence against women later on in life.
10. Have more number of ladies special compartments in trains and also frequent bus services in remote location which are prone to eve teasing and street harassment.
11. Seek the help of legal counsellers, NGOs and it is imperative that family & society also do not reject a woman who has been raped.
A link to one of the NGOs in Delhi for example thanks to Bell Bajao. Link
12. Use forums like kitty parties or Book clubs, cooking classes to raise awareness re: violence against women.
Violence Against Women can only reduce if each of us work towards stopping women being abused & disrespected. The preference of boys over girls mindset has to change in our society & this is only possible through awareness sessions, implementation of penalties for various forms of violence.
Sexual & emotional are not even considered violence, but they are and we need to make an appeal so that these are considered violence. Research shows physical & verbal abuse are only considered violence. Pls read Link
You, I, Us are responsible to ensure that women are treated with respect & not abused.
VAWAWARENESS
“A Woman Brought you into this World, so you have no right to disrespect one.” -Tupac Shakur
Headlines in the daily paper has bride burning, suicide from domestic violence, acid violence, women being beaten up black & blue, gang raped & violence in the most brutal form & shape- mental & physical !
In India there is a crime against women in every three minutes, one rape every twenty nine minutes and one recorded case of dowry death in every seventy seven minutes. Cases of cruelty meted out by husbands and in laws are seen in every nine minutes. Patriarchal terrorism where one partner uses economic and social power to maintain control over another human is very common in India and other Asian countries due to the subservient status of women.
(Source :Domestic Violence in India Statistics)
Forms of Violence Against Women and Girls
1. The most common causes for women being abused and battered include dissatisfaction with the initial dowry resulting in continued exploitation of women for more, not cooking properly or on time, going out of home without telling her husband or in-laws, suspicion of extra marital affairs – The Tandoor Murder Case of Naina Sahni in New Delhi in the year 1995 in an example of such a suspicion (Naina Sahni), infertility or giving birth to girls rather than boys. In today’s world where the women works, some of the factors leading to abuse could be the women earning more than her husband, outrageous sexual abuse at work, eve teasing and street harassment.
2. Violence against young widows has also been on the rise in India. Many times the women are cursed for their husband’s death and are deprived of proper food and clothing. They are not allowed or encouraged for remarriage in most of the homes, and this is true even today in many rural areas.
3. Female foeticide and female infanticide continues to be a rising concern and is on the rise in India. In fact to quote Rita Bannerji of 50millionmissing Girls, from (50millionmissing)
“This is the message that India’s, just released, 2011 census data sends out.
The data reveals that in the age group 0-6 years, the gender ratio is 914 girls to 1000 boys. Which means, for every 1000 boys, there are at least about 60-70 girls under the age of 6 years who were killed before or within 6 years after birth.
This is the lowest gender ratio recorded since India’s Independence in 1947.”
“A 2011 report on a study conducted jointly by the Indian Council of Medical Research and the Harvard School of Public Health confirmed that girls under 5 years in India were dying at an abnormally high rate because they were being subject to inhumane violence at home by their families. The study observed that girls were 21% more likely than boys to die before their 5th birthday because of violence. And infant girls, who were one year and younger were 50% more likely to die because of violence than boys that age. The head researcher commented, “Shockingly this violence does not pose a threat to your life if you are lucky enough to be born a boy.””
For the full article refer Link
What Happens to the Victim and the Oppressor
Many times the oppressor gets away with crimes like rape, dowry deaths & other forms of violence against women due to their connections or when the survivor or the victim is asked for witnesses for the rape or other forms of violence. Delayed and or denied justice, harassment by police, social taboo and lack of support from the system are the main reasons most cases go unreported and marital rape is still not considered a crime in India.
Below are some recent examples of pressure from parents on girls to continue with the marriage no matter if she is being physically and mentally abused, Government apathy to the Issue of Rape, & general lack of support from the system, literate and educated girls who consent to their parents giving dowry and continue to stay on in an abusive marriage inspite of being beaten black and blue and finally at the cost of her life.
2. Doctor Murders Wife in Delhi Drives 1000km with body to dump it in Ganga. (Link 1, Link 2, Link 3)
3. Kavita Krishnan : Women Struggling Against Rape in India
WHY?
WHAT DO WE DO?
We live in the twenty-first century and yet we see and tolerate violence and yet the so-called educated and literate bear violence and pay a price of their life. Are we going to be silent and join the oppressors.
High time we engage in this cause to stop Violence Against Women which include spreading the message asking girl’s parents not to engage in giving dowry for their girl’s marriage, stop forcing a woman to stay in an abusive relationship, accept a rape survivor as part of our society and encourage her to share her story so it lessens her burden, stop the preference given to boys over girls as part of our day-to-day living.
HOW
Bottomline – Violence Prevails because we allow it to. Speak up. Stop the Silence. Each of our effort counts and let this rage of violence end once and for all. 
Corruption
Image Source
[http://indiacurrentaffairs.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/corruption_india.jpg]
This is an old letter but was well written and shows that each of us can make our valid contribution to the change we seek to achieve. A lot of the points are still relevant inspite of Anna Hazare’s win.
Shiv Visvanathan’s open letter to the PM
Source :Shiv Visvanathan, IBNLive Specials, Updated Aug 16, 2011 at 12:54pm IST
Dear Mr Prime Minister,
I am writing this to you as I always assumed, you were a decent man. I was waiting for your speech on August 15th, hoping you would somehow say something meaningful on corruption that would redeem your long silence.
Your speech was disappointing. What you said was inane and trite, while you held on to the tenet the corruption cannot be fought with hunger strikes. I think you did more to insult the Indian independence movement which fought through reason, fought through faith, fought through the reasonableness of the fast and the hunger strike. Hunger strikes do not threaten you. They only ask you to look deeper within your self. Gandhi fasted so that a society and the government could literally come back to its senses.
You, seen as a very timid man, Mr Prime Minister, you call on us to follow proper procedure. You seem to think politics is only a bit of table manners which does not allow people to object to what is allegedly served as food on the table. I think you are wrong Mr. Prime Minister and wrong in more ways than one. When you stood at Lal Qila, this time, one realized your goodness was not enough, because your goodness hides the arrogance and incompetence of your colleagues.
Think of Anna Hazare, Mr Prime Minister. He is another mild man like you and today he stands for the ideals the Congress has forgotten. Let me list them out- the dreams of honesty and idealism, the diligence that politics demands and the intelligence that morality requires.
For the young, Hazare represents the national movement today. He is a reminder of what the nation could have been. You are reminder of what the nation has become, a goodness that became timid as it fell prey to power. The sadness Mr Prime Minister is you should have protested. Mentioning tamely that you do not mind being under the scrutiny of the Lok Pal is not enough. Such coyness would be dismissed by your colleagues who know it is not meant for you but for Prime Ministers in waiting. You can still create history by joining Hazare.
One does not have to ask permission to fast. We do not need it. History and ethics do not ask permission from the inanity of politicians. Step down from power to be powerful again Mr Prime Minister. Join Hazare. Walk with the people. Dispense with blue turbaned technocrats and your conniving colleagues. They are forgettable anyway. Hazare has a sense of the lived past. He is showing the possibility of a cleaner future.
I am telling you all this Mr Prime Minister because someone must tell you that you have let down a generation that believed in you. Long years ago James Otis, the American politician, said, “No taxation without representation.” Another great American, whose writings Gandhi thrived on talked of The Duty of Civil Disobedience. It is out of Thoreau’s ideas that Gandhi wove his ideas of Satyagraha. Now Mr Prime Minister it is time to tell you “Representation without responsibility is corruption, Legislation without accountability is a farce.”
You and the Congress have perpetuated this situation. It is time you accept that a legislator who breaks the law or connive so that others break it, cannot be above the law. He no longer represents the people. Corruption is an act of legislative betrayal. It hollows out the act of representation and destroys democracy.
Anna Hazare and his team will go on fast, the battle of JP Park will begin. Hazare’s team has asked you and your government for permission for space. They have tried to dialogue with you and your cabinet colleagues. Mr Prime Minister, the role of dynasties is over and it is time that you recognize that no Prime Minister can be above the law.
I admit Hazare is a difficult man. I think there are many who feel he is overheating legislation by speeding it up. By prefabricating legislation you might actually be dis-institutionalizing the very processes you want to sustain. Maybe this is the point and it is a valid one. It is the kind of argument Aruna Roy and others might have made. But what deflates your view is your move to deny Hazare and the people the right to protest at Jantar Mantar.
To treat truth as a law and order problem is unforgivable Mr Prime Minister, to think that Section 144 can control the fight against corruption is the final irony of law, to use law against those fighting the lawless is the final sign of an empty regime. Arresting Hazare shows the emptiness of your colleagues. Forget 2G and 3G and all the other scams you slept through. When the ABC of democracy is taught, you and the Congress will appear anti- democratic and cowardly about your responsibility. Timidity becomes unforgivable at this moment in history.
As a citizen, I must protest, as a teacher and an academic I must state that you have violated the rules of dialogue and the norms of protest. I must accept that civil disobedience becomes the only alternative.
I wish there was a virtual Jantar Mantar and I am sure there soon will be. So at this virtual monument I, as a citizen, protest against your unlawful use of Section 144. It is not Hazare’s battle. It is now the dream of every Indian to fight corruption and fight it with a courage and commitment your politics lacks. Not all of us will be in Delhi tomorrow but now at this virtual Jantar Mantar, this network as sacred space, let us openly say it is time to defy you and your regime. Corruption has to be fought and fought truthfully. You, Mr Prime Minister, have forgotten the difference between being correct and being true and even if you did, you seem to prefer the first.
Think of the symbolic contrast between morning and evening of Independence Day. At the Red Fort one saw the dull rituals of a tired state being enacted inanely. At Rajghat, a Khadi clad man sits waiting quietly in an act of prayer, silent in reflection as if waiting for a message from the Mahatma himself. The point is Mr Prime Minister that it is not your twenty two point riders that he has to answer. It is his questions about freedom that you must respond to. What according to the Government is freedom? Is election merely the increased circulation of corruption every five years.
There are moments when protest is a form of duty. When citizens realize that a government has abdicated its responsibility. So at this new Jantar Mantar I light my candle and send my SMS message of protest against a regime that denies the dream of the future. Civil disobedience is my right and now my duty. You give me no alternative, Mr Prime Minister. In arresting Hazare, you have made a mockery of democracy.
As a citizen who believes in the rule of law, as a democrat who believes in the necessity of governance and as an Indian who recognizes what history means, I stand by Hazare and what he fights for.
Regards,
Shiv Visvanathan
This is an email I received from a friend of mine. I loved the message and thought I should share..
If those who owe us nothing gave us nothing, how poor we would be. ~Antonio Porchia
I was sitting at the bar of a local restaurant having lunch and taking a break from the daily grind, sitting there thinking about how tough I had it lately and how I was sick of what I was doing. I own a landscape company and never felt I made a difference in people’s lives.
As I sat there feeling sorry for myself, a pretty girl who looked about 25 walked in and sat down in a booth waiting for her friend. It didn’t take long before I saw she was trying to stay hidden in a way from other people’s gazes and my heart sank. You could see her hair was falling out and, at such a young age, she was receiving chemo.
I sat there watching her trying to remain composed and she was having a tough time of it. I ached for her, imagining what it must be like to go through this and yet I know some of her pain. You see I buried my wife, the love of my life just a few short years ago and watched her slowly fade away. I needed to get a message of hope to this girl but how? What could I do?
Then it hit me! I called over her waitress and explained that I wanted to buy the girl and her friend’s lunch but I also told her you can’t tell her it was me, it had to remain anonymous. In doing so, I handed her a note to give to the girl when she told her that her tab was paid.
The note read as follows: Someone today thought you were beautiful, someone today thought your smile glowed with excitement, someone today thought your eyes lit up the world, someone today cared and wanted you to know this. Enjoy the rest of your day, pretty young lady”.
About 15 minutes later the young girl asked for her check and I watched as she was told it was paid for. She asked why? Who? What for? The waitress simply handed her the note and informed her that the gentleman who did it left, as to keep me anonymous.
I watched as she slowly read the note. Her eyes teared up, for only a moment, and then came the smile! A huge, beautiful, hopeful smile! She lit up the room and then sat up straight, not caring who saw her. Her friend also beamed, not for what was done but because her friend was feeling beautiful again.
It’s not how we look or what we have, it’s not our houses or how many cars we have, nor is it how much money we can earn. No, it isn’t. You see it’s all about how much we care and what we do, even if it’s making someone feel pretty only for a moment.
Yes, lunch cost only a few dollars but you see the wonderful part, the magic was free.
Make a difference today in just one life; it’s free.
To know what is right and not to do it is the worst cowardice.” – Confucius”
This story of Zarghuna Kargar speaks of her courage & will to do what she believed in inspite of the odds she faced. Read on …
My arranged marriage disaster
Zarghuna Kargar and her family fled the Taliban to live in the UK, but an arranged marriage was still expected. Susanna Rustin hears how she escaped three years of misery
It was while recording a story about the impossibility of divorce for women in Afghanistan that Zarghuna Kargar decided she must find the strength to end her own arranged marriage. Brought up in Kabul and then Pakistan after her family fled from the Taliban, she was engaged at 16 to a distant relative she had never met and married in London after her family claimed asylum in Britain.
Trained by the BBC World Service’s charitable arm in Pakistan, in London she became the presenter of Afghan Woman’s Hour, a weekly magazine programme modelled on Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour that highlighted the terrible position of women in Afghan society. The show was a huge hit and was praised for its frank treatment of subjects including domestic violence and homosexuality.
But though her own family was educated and liberal, and her parents moved to the west partly for the benefit of their five daughters, an arranged marriage was expected and Zarghuna accepted that.
“I did have a lot of arguments with my parents during the engagement but it was something I had to do,” she says. “I had to either be a good Afghan girl, who accepted whatever decision was made for me, or be a bad girl and leave. Breaking an engagement was a big thing and I got scared. So I decided, I’m a good Afghan girl, I’m going to do it the Afghan way. And we got married. The whole time it was a horrible feeling.”
Now Zarghuna, who is 28 and known as Zari because some British people find the guttural “gh” sound difficult, has written about her miserable three-year marriage in her first book. Dear Zari is a heart-wrenching anthology of the personal stories broadcast on Afghan Woman’s Hour. It includes appalling stories of abuse – of girls given away as household slaves to settle family feuds, of widows shunned, of wives blamed for giving birth to daughters.
Interwoven are intimate details of the author’s life, including her wedding night. “God, please make sure I bleed; that’s the only wish I have. I don’t want money or a big house to live in – I just want this blood,” was Kargar’s prayer on the day of her marriage. Submitting to her husband, Javed, whom she did not like and hardly knew, and shaking uncontrollably, she spent the night weeping uncontrollably because the wished-for “proof” of her virginity did not materialise.
“As a result, my married life had begun with my husband failing to trust me,” she writes. “Whenever he spoke unkindly to me after that, I thought it was because he didn’t believe I’d been a virgin on my wedding night.”
Unlike many of the Afghan marriages she describes, Kargar’s relationship was not violent. She and Javed did not even argue that much, she says, because they were not that involved. “It was my destiny, but it wasn’t a good feeling. He was about 25 – a young man – but when I met him it didn’t really work for me in a girl way, or a woman way. I just didn’t have any feelings and I think it was the same from his side. We were just put together by two families.”
Kargar says that she tried to embrace her role as a wife, but they barely talked – she thinks partly because Javed envied her career. She hoped if he got a good job, the situation might improve, but instead she got lonelier and more convinced that their marriage was a disaster.
Her career flourished, as Afghan Woman’s Hour achieved audience figures in the millions. But as her life became increasingly unhappy, Kargar found herself moved by the harrowing first-person stories featured on the programme to look again at her life. “I felt that discussing these kinds of women, their stories and the way they talked, and what they wanted, empowered me. I was feeling a kind of hypocrisy inside me because the experts I invited on the programme were giving all this advice, but I was not making decisions in my own life.”
It was the story of Anesa, a woman married to a gay husband who moved his lover into the family home, that finally gave her the push she needed. For four years, Anesa said, she lived with her children, her husband and his lover. The lover was the favourite, while her sons were beaten and often went hungry. Yet she was unable to leave. Though Anesa’s husband’s homosexuality was frowned on by Afghan society, and his children victimised as a result, if she divorced him she would lose them. She often thought about killing herself.
In the office, Kargar and her World Service colleagues discussed divorce and the insurmountable problems facing women in Afghanistan who wished to leave their husbands. “And I was thinking, actually I have choice. I was educated, I had a good job and no children. I was capable of doing it and I had the support of the legal system.”
In 2006, aged 24, and having lost all hope and respect for the relationship, she asked her husband to leave. At first he was angry, and tried with her parents to make her change her mind. But she stood her ground, and in the end the divorce papers came from him. He has since remarried.
Last year, the funding for Afghan Woman’s Hour was cut, and Kargar transferred to the Afghan news service. The programme was not without its critics, as the money came from Foreign Office counter-terror funds, but Kargar is passionately proud of its role in promoting women’s rights and freedoms.
When she arrived in the UK as an 18-year-old in August 2001, the September 11 attacks were still a month off. Ten years on, she supports the presence of foreign troops in Afghanistan and fears a return to even greater chaos. Her father, who was a government official during the Soviet invasion, and later worked as a writer on the World Service’s Afghan soap opera, New Home New Life, now teaches Pashtun to British soldiers.
But while she was inspired by the young revolutionaries in Tahrir Square in Cairo, she is made uncomfortable by the celebrations in the west of the death of Osama bin Laden.
She kept her divorce secret from colleagues for two years after it happened, and is still working through her feelings about what happened, wiping away tears when she recalls her wedding. “I was just very upset, and very angry with everything. When they talked about the decorations, I said ‘Just take the chairs from the kitchen! I don’t care!’ And I really didn’t care. It was very difficult.”
Her family hopes that she will remarry one day, and she says that although two of her sisters’ arranged marriages have worked out well, her parents have decisively broken with the custom. She sees them every week and has forgiven them for her earlier unhappiness. They are proud of her book, she says – though she has been warned against publishing pictures of her relatives, including childhood photographs.
As a teenager in Peshawar, Pakistan, where women were more restricted than in 1980s Kabul, and she first became used to covering her head with a scarf, Kargar had no romantic or sexual experiences of any kind. “I was a very dull teenager, very quiet and isolated from boys,” she says. “We were a girls family [five sisters, one brother] and in our culture, love stories are not really good stories to hear, so maybe those things had an effect. I didn’t even understand that these feelings existed; I never even had a crush. It was weird.”
What is disturbing in the book, and must surely be for many women in reality, is the way that such complete ignorance – even on her wedding night, in London, Zarghuna had no idea what to expect in the bedroom – is suddenly shocked out of them, as they are expected instantaneously to turn into adult women. One girl known to her family in Pakistan and mentioned in the book, offered in a marriage exchange at 11, died in childbirth after the book went to press – aged 13.
Now, with such innocence firmly behind her, Zarghuna is determined to make her own choices. She says the moment of her greatest strength was the decision not to have children with her husband when everyone around her encouraged it.
“I want to be a mother with somebody I love, and not just for the sake of my own happiness. I want to give proper happiness to my kid with a loving daddy if I can. But if that doesn’t happen, then I’m happy the way I am.”
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media 2011
Courtesy of ‘Yahoo! Lifestyle UK’
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