I cried at several pages when I read Khaled Hosseini’s “A thousand splendid suns” and for many days after, I kept reliving the pain of the two women Mariam and Laila. Especially giving birth without anyone to support and no hospital to speak of …. I was horrified and felt helpless that I could do nothing sitting just a few hundred miles away in India. They may have been fictional characters, but am sure they depict parts of many lives in Afghanistan.
Then on Saturday, Krishnan pointed me to the article in Business Standard weekend “ILL treatment”, written by urban researcher Tripta Chandola. A woman was having a miscarriage standing in queue at the Safdarjung hospital and no doc was treating her because her next of kin, her husband was not willing to donate blood !! This is in the capital city of the seventh largest country in the world and which has a history of 10000 years and boasts of having won its freedom non-violently.
For the news article click here : http://www.business-standard.com/content/news/htm/2012/03/10032012/news1003201202919444931.htm
I live in the same city and I am also to blame for what is happening because I don’t have the ability to fight the “system”. But something needs to be done soon …. Not fixing what’s wrong is condoning it.
That is indeed shameful.. In a culture on one hand the woman form is revered as the “devi” roop and then there are incidents like these which are in total contrast where the woman is not even provided the dignity of a living being – much like Mariam and Laila..
My heart ached as I read 1000 Splendid Suns, but in the end the true grit of these women succeeded.. I hope the same for the 1000’s of splendid women across the world who suffer indignities of the likes mentioned here.
I have read in history and other books that ‘those years’ when the Kings ruled, the Kings used to disguise as a commoner and made regular visits across their Kingdom to see for themselves the quality of governance, implementation of various programs and their delivery and effectiveness etc leading to corrective measures wherever required.
Now with all the latest tools, techniques and technologies available, why can’t our rulers understand the challenges the common man faces and solve them?
We cannot blame anymore the population of India and its complexities as the reason for our inability to solve them.