The International Women’s Day was observed on March 8 this year. Just as dust is settling on the celebrations, and the gung ho is just about dying down, let me narrate a true incident.

It is my daily routine to wait for my wife in my car after my day’s work in the ICU is done, to go back home together with her. She is anesthetist in the hospital I work in. The duration of waiting is directly proportional to the length of the operating list on a given day.

As I was waiting for her the other evening, a young girl, almost as young, and miniscule as my younger daughter drew up to the rolled down window of my car to tell me she was going home. She worked as Hospital Assistant, the moniker for an attender working in my hospital.

It was late into the dusk, and it was already dark. On enquiring, she said it takes a bus ride and a ferry to reach home.

I placatingly commented that once she got off at the ferry landing, she could walk hand-in-hand romantically with her husband who would be waiting there for her to the safety of their home.

She retorted that she would be happier had he given up his drinking ways and drunken violence on her, than have him accompany her home in the dark from the ferry. By the time she told me she spends close to half her menial salary to forcibly ‘finance’ his drinking habit, which adds to her struggle to finance her child’s studies and other expenses, she was in tears.        

As she disappeared into the dark, the odds the little girl was up against at a tender age disturbed me. She was too young to be struggling with a heavy cross of marriage to an alcoholic on her frail shoulder. At a tender age when she ought to be pursuing a degree to secure a better job, or enjoying life care-freely with friends and colleagues, she was forced to work to help make both ends meet at home, and take care of a child. Both by putting up with her husband’s drunken physical abuse concomitantly.

As I type the grim story of an unfortunate young girl, I realize that she is not the first one, nor will she be the last to go through the all too-familiar sordid saga. Of young girls forced into marriage with men (read beasts) of dubious character, given to alcohol and substance abuse, and forced into premature motherhood, when they ought to be pursuing higher education and vocation they are passionate about.

The following data released by the National Crime Records Bureau in 2022 lend credence to the odds women are up against in this country. The year 2022 had 4, 45,256 cases of crime against women recorded in India, which translates to 53 FIRs every hour. A breakup of these crimes reads as; cruelty by the husband or his relatives (31.4%), kidnapping and abduction (19.2%), assault with intent to outrage modesty (18.7%), and rape (7.1%). Delhi had the highest crime rate, surpassing the national average, followed by Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, West Bengal, and Madhya Pradesh. The unsightly and disturbing statistics reflect the longsuffering Indian women go through. Odds stacked against women add to divorce rates, suicides, broken families, and antisocials broken families churn out.

 Medieval hangovers like extreme patriarchal practices, religious orthodoxy and indoctrination have women ‘accept fate’. The woman’s tendency to accept odds as ‘fate’, further forces them into subjugation, unreasonable restrictions and have them resigning themselves to misogynistic practices like genital mutilation, medieval dress codes, sacrificing education and other instruments of progress in favor of male siblings.

Governments must reverse these trends that have women tagged ‘second-grade’, ‘weaker sex’ and with other defeating adjectives.

International Women’s Day has the social media over-enthusiastically exchange videos, messages and stories of and from prominent women. The print and visual media dedicate quires of paper and valuable prime time doing the same.

These exercises are but vain and wasteful as common women in society are concerned. Women to whom ‘International Women’s Day is just another day of sweat, tears and blood.

Kneejerk actions by vote-hungry political parties like nominating Sudha Murthy to the Rajya Sabha, when the president of India is herself a woman, and reducing the cost of a LPG cylinder do not make the load women are forced to bear lighter even by a fraction of a milligram. These political chicaneries make fools out of women, to whom the International Women’s Day is but an inconsequential sham, and a hollow humbug.

International Women’s Day will come to fruition and serve its purpose if, and only when women are able to walk with honor and dignity, with their head held high, far removed from fear,indiscrimination,abuse, and playing second fiddle to the other gender.