The idea of POWER

At this point of time, when I say violence, we visualize a women being tortured at some place in this world, and who holds the figure of the 23 year old girl who died in Delhi recently because she was raped. I have seen a lot of posts in facebook and twiter where people ask for different solutions.

I see this as a problem of thought, a problem of how power is perceived. Especially by men, power is perceived in a physical sense. The power is defined as the authority or control over someone else. But power is the ability to resolve, that most of the Indian women of my generation and my mother's generation live as an example of.

Women today don't need a strange men to come and abuse them, things start very locally. I know guys who have hit their girlfriends because he doesn't want her to have any male friend. Sorry, I would perceive possessiveness differently. I have heard of men, who have left their wives for other women and the society blames it on the lady.

This is a problem in the genes, in the society. The idea that male is more powerful of the two sexes comes from the thought that "if I hold her hand very strongly, she won't be able to move". Though a lot of us are protesting, call ourselves educated, live in a city, and think we are advanced in the way we think. I am afraid we are wrong. The ability to park the car in the first attempt, the ability to hold on to the cricket bat, the ability to stay at office without thinking about home, the ability to come back home late night without anyone's company, the ability to get married late, and a lots more is very wrongly perceived as power by men.

During school, my exam would finish at 12:30, I would be home by 1:15 and by then my home phone would have already received 2 calls from my mother, who is at work, asking how I did the exam (even though she knows how I would have) and still sticking to the work schedule at office, that is power. Recently she got her right hand fractured, but still she runs the home single handedly (quite literally), that is power. I know lady friends of mine, who have got married a little early in their life, have a career, manage family awesomely, unlike men who wait for a stable income and all random trips with friends. That is power.

Oh yes they do break down a lot (even at movies where an elephant named Ramu dies). If shouting FUUUU*K and banging something on the floor is to men, crying is to women, to vent their anger, pressure and frustration.

By the way things are going, the vision of the great Tamil Poet Bharathiyaar's for women is definitely blurred, but what he perceived about power is real.

The ability to stand up against what one feels wrong is power, the ability to balance and bring harmony is power, the ability to grow another human being inside one is power, the ability to see what their sons have become is power, the ability to raise a true man is POWER.  That is why in Sanskrit, Shakti is rightly named as 'to be able'.