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Doing Our Bit Meenakshi Jha Meenakshi is working as a research engineer in Sydney Australia. Born in a Tamil speaking family, she spent most of her childhood in beautiful cities of Jaipur, Udaipur & Gwalior. Her school and college years were spent in the big bad city of Bombay. A die-hard optimist and believer in living life to the fullest, she takes pleasure in the journey of self-discovery and strives to express the inner truth. She is a mother of a ten years old son.

Despite making advances in different fields of knowledge by leaps and bounds, as a society, we still have a long way to go when it comes to improving the women's status in the society. Democratic system and enshrining of the constitutional rights providing women an equal status to men are yet to have impact on lives of so many women who continue to be exploited under various circumstances and by various exploiters.

It is true that achieving emancipation of all women in a society is a Herculean task. However, it is also true that every woman is more or less emancipated than the other. We could easily make use of this reality in contributing to liberation of many women. How? Well, if all those women who are more aware, with more conviction and more emancipated helped the less emancipated women with whom they happen to interact and with whose lives their lives intersect, indeed, a lot can be achieved. Sum total of such incremental changes brought about through personal interactions can make a difference of significance equal to and possibly even more than that made by various organizations and institutions working for the welfare and upliftment of women. In other words if each of us did our bit, the bits can add up to quite a big slice.

What would 'doing our bit' entail? Simply remembering and being conscious of the fact that everything each of us does and says makes a difference one way or the other. Whether or not we are conscious of it, the fact is that each of us is influenced by words and actions of people with whom we interact. Conversely, we also influence others around us by what we say and do. For example when you stand up for your rights at your workplace, your action makes a difference not only to you but also to any other person around you who has less conviction than you have, who has not yet found the courage to stand up for herself. You may not be a heroic figure, yet, your action does serve as an example for others to follow giving them a little bit more courage and conviction than they previously had. This happens irrespective of how much success you may or may not achieve through your action.

I have been influenced and continue to be influenced by words and actions of many women with whose life paths mine intersect. Most of these women who, at different phases of my life, have served to me as role models of liberated women, often led pretty ordinary lives as school teacher or housewife or doctor or professor. One example that comes to my mind is that of one of my senior colleagues when I had freshly taken over my appointment as a lecturer of an engineering college. Watching her assert and standing up for the rights of staff and women students with the management in a meeting with utmost grace, poise, and cheerfulness made a lasting impact on me. Form her actions and words that day I learnt a valuable lesson that one doesn't need to be aggressive in order to be assertive.

Similarly, actions and words that are seemingly small and minor also carry the power to influence. Whether they are words we choose in responding to a chauvinistic remark made during a casual conversation between friends and family or a remark that we make on hearing a recount of a woman friend's woes. The words spoken at such times and actions taken on such occasions could be viewed as opportunities either to learn (listening to others) or pass on our own learning (to those who are listening). These words do not have to be in the form of advice but merely in the form of our personal views and opinions expressed at the time.

In the hurly burly of busy lives that many of us lead, we often tend to forget the significance and power of our own actions and words. When that happens, we become indifferent and our actions and words become apathetic often doing more harm to our own tribe than we can imagine. And then we wonder why the status of women is yet to improve.

I am reminded of a sher (couplet) by a well-known Urdu poet Ahmad Faraz that goes -

shikvaa-e-zulmat-e-shab se tau kahiiN behtar hai
apnay hissay kee koyee shamaa jalaatay jaatay

Loosely translated the couplet means -
Rather than complain of the darkness of exploitation
let each of us keep our own candle light burning.

Doing our bit through our actions and words is a way of keeping that candle light burning in the hope that many such candle lights together would wipe out the darkness in our corner of the world!!!!!

Untill we connect again .....

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