Festive Season

The idea for this post came to me around a week or two back when I was sitting around reading a news paper and happened to come across an article. The article was about the high festive moods prevailing in the city for some time now and how they’re going to be around till the end of the year with many more occasions lined up.

The thoughts that passed by my mind at that moment were that, with all the diversities and castisim around, you can never differentiate a Hindu from a Muslim or a Christian at times of festivals. Every caste, every religion, every individual breaks his mental barriers and participates in celebrations no matter it be Gokul Ashtami, Eid or Ganesh Chaturthi or any other Indian Festival. India being a land of multiple cultures, it would be safe to say that we have some or the other festival almost every week of the year.

I happened to read a tweet by a famous personality regarding the same. He said and I quote, “It’s only in India that Eid is immediately followed by Ganesh Chaturthi (or Diwali) and everyone is seen participating alike in them.” It gave me a really good feeling about our country that even after being divided so much by some extremists, we aren’t divided. We are still all Indians!

But what I actually wrote this post for was to bring to your notice or rather discuss the not so good side of this topic. I know you must all have raised eyebrows at this point, thinking that I have gone crazy. But no, I’m not hinting at our unity being bad but what I’m hinting at is a much more serious and social issue. It is often seen that people celebrating festivals are always in high spirits (some rather literally). And those some are often seen losing their minds and performing acts that put each one of us to shame.

I don’t have any substantial records but I would not be wrong in saying that the amount of eve teasers and law violators increase considerably in such times. I have often seen people acting like actual desperate hooligans on the streets. Driving rash, passing lewd comments, taking advantage by forcefully feeling a female, throwing colors and water balloons at normal people, etc are just some of the acts I actually witnessed.  There could be so many more such cases and incidents. I personally know of people who are scared of going out doors at such times fearing that they might fall prey to such evil. Very recently I read another article where an 18 year old guy, part of a visarjan rally, raped a 3 year old girl, who came out to see the passing Ganesh Idols, near the Goregaon Bridge. If that wasn’t enough, he also ended up killing the girl just because she retaliated by crying. I was completely disgusted when I read this.

I am not denying that these incidents occur even without a festival around. We have all heard of love killings, eve teasers, rapes and stuff but neither can you deny that on such festive occasions, these monsters get out of their wardrobes and onto the streets endangering our safety. I really fail to understand why people behave this way! Do they have no moral values? Have they not been taught civic sense of living in a society? Worst come worst how do we even identify such people without an incident committed by them! Even if we rule out these extremists, I always see people staring away shamelessly at a passing by woman. Even if the woman is uncomfortable about it, what does she do? In the attempt of stopping one, ten others will stare back. How do we protect our mothers and sisters in such situations?

I titled this post as ‘Festive Season’, because such occasions are more of a festival for such monsters than our own. If you all feel the same too, then let’s think of a way to try and curb this together. Let’s try and make a difference that makes us feel safer in our own society. I hope to receive a lot of reviews and comments on this post and wish that this post in turn reaches a lot of eyeballs.