A candle march to the soul

“There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflectsit-Edith Wharton “

The light from candles cannot really help in enlightening a darkened life ruined by  inhuman and devilish acts of sick  minds of  society. Whether its New Delhi , Bihar, Jharkhand ,Mumbai or any other part of this country, every time  any such  unfortunate event takes place, everything starts to seem very much repetitive. Same  media hue and cry, public outbursts, political allegations and counter allegations, it all seems like a vicious circle.

Does one Candle march, few debates, strong support for stringent laws satisfy the factum of being responsible for the society and country?

If you ask me, my answer is ‘No’.  We all are habitual of seeing and believing in things as media shows it to us, but the reality is far from what it seems. As I see, there are various factors that actually participate in such pseudo collective societal sensitivity acts of ours.

Firstly media and news channels in their ever growing greed for TRP’s, instead of reporting and sympathetically supporting with the victim of such incident, sensationalize such incidences beyond proportions. Then comes the allegations and counter allegations by political parties which becomes the centre focus of media coverage. Once such a heinous act is sensationalized by media while the real cause takes a back seat, flash revolutions resulting into loss of public property by goons and grave inconvenience to fellow citizens is what follows. But it is not the end, while  social activists and NGO’s  cry for stringent laws. Any debate that I follow on such incidents, discussions are dominated by need for stringent laws, lack of policing, failure of government etc.

Following the recently evolved tradition, people do come on road, perhaps on weekends for candle marches, but when? When dreams of some innocent soul have already been destroyed, when someone’s daughter, fiancé, wife, sister had already been ravished.

They don’t need solidarity, they need our support, they don’t need our candle light marches, they need us to show light when they are standing alone at bus stops at night, when they travel alone for work, profession, studies or anything, when they feel helpless being alone, when we turn our ears deaf to someone’s lewd remark on them, they need us before becoming a victim of such an inhuman act.

 Does the conviction of any rape accused achieve the motive behind such Candle light marches? I don’t think so. But the real reason lies within us. Society encourages rapists when eve teasing is considered acceptable by passersby, when in our psyche females are still considered as an object, when want of male child dominates the society, when instead of a collective strengthening of society , we individually have started fearing of it.

Need of the hour is not a momentarily sympathy against such acts, it is not candle marches on roads but  lightning  candles within us, accept our responsibility of safety of fellow female citizens, clear our hearts and minds from the filth and hypocrisy. Once this is done, I am sure the light from candle light marches will actually enlighten this country.