TOO MANY QUESTIONS

Gender discrimination makes women a pretty vulnerable species and it’s always comes natural to be concerned with women issues.

In one day, I encountered two women, directly and indirectly. I have no intention of passing judgment on them. I just met them and found them to be beautiful and strong in their own way, weak too, and subject to the duality of this world too.

One I found sleeping on a seat of a local passenger train.I will speak about her today.She was sleeping there completely in disregard to the world around her and without any female consciousness. She had her back to the rest of the people and it was difficult to guess her age that way. Only her hard and soiled feet told in a way that she was either elderly or had had a very hard life. It also told that she was alone and without any expectation of kindness of charity from the masculine world. That she was not delicate or had any illusion of good mannerism of middle class or upper middle class women who would, not even in their wildest imagination, could think of sleeping in broad day light, in a passenger train with the risk of many men and women observing her with disdain.

People wondered what woman was this, but not for long , and started discussing politics and how fickle and evanescent people's opinion was.One of the passengers was trying to explain why the opinion of the majority was a big factor in determining the eligibility of a particular leader when the girl got up from her slumber. She stretched herself to shake off the inertia and sat upright gathering her knees together as one would sit up on bed and jumped into the discussion uninvited.
-Can anyone present here tell me what economic development means?
She asked, looking at the young men who were discussing politics.Nobody had a reply.
Because chat room gossip usually has never any substance or seriousness in it. She unfolded her legs and sat up, upright, and started to explain at length what economic development meant in reality and how the present government was fooling people in the name of Industrial development. Her knowledge of facts and figures put the boys into inconvenience and they kept siting through the exposition sheepishly. I had gathered by then, using my little experience that she must be working for some NGO. On being asked she promptly replied that she was part of a socio-religious group and no NGO. Presently she was going to a religious function. She added proudly that she has also been awarded for her contributions and efforts. Only this line sounded harsh to my years because I don't quite digest bragging and boasting, especially by people who appear to be doing something good. Nobody knows, she might have been brainwashed by some individual or group to do the kind of work she was engaged in, it might too have been her own calling.But she was different in her courage, her crude intellect and the way she stood by the philosophy she believed in. She was a beautiful girl,turn hard owing to the way of life she followed. She could have chosen to marry, have the safety, security and the comfort of a home life, without having to work outside too, but she didn't choose that. And, she had no pretenses at all. She told what she thought to be true. She was able to give us complexes us and I really envied her.