Arshid Malik
Fiasco: Values and value systems have taken a hit, here in Kashmir as also elsewhere. Speaking of Kashmir the worst casualty has been womanhood and the peculiar Kashmiri male’s peculiar disposition towards it.
Deluge:  I am primarily given to understand that we Kashmiris are poor critics and much sorriest of cynics.
What, why and when: Womanhood and the rest of us. I am not here to argue that women deserve all that men have earned for themselves over the centuries and thereof, implicitly, as per the ground rules of women’s lib “rendered almost impossible for the former to attain” but rather to do some timely justice to the concept of womanhood in Kashmir and help sketch a manual for “upkeep”.  I hereby extend my support to all those women who do not have the faintest idea as to what the extended idea of women’s emancipation eventually amounts to (which is anything but sensible) – and I mean all those women who have been churning their lives inside out within the four walls of our home and hearth and who deserve all the appreciation and respect that one human being can possibly accord to another human being.
So: Something is gravely wrong when we attend to the troubled domain of womanhood in Kashmir, I am forced to say. Most unfortunately, we have been witness to an unprecedented increase in the number of women ending up their own lives, and my reasoning tells me that we might not be treating our women all too well, even though we generally tend to believe that we are treating them “just right”. Every now and then a woman is washed ashore and believe me there is an untold saga of imposed and implemented mistrust, misfortune and misery behind each of such deaths.   
Lessons in life: How could we be sure that we are not being cunning when it comes to the women in our lives and thereof not degenerating into clumps of evil that are anything but just to the womenfolk? The keyword is “Mama”.
A Story: My mother is a “veteran” homemaker who has poured her blood and toil into turning a concrete monolith into what we (me and my family) proudly call home – a place all of us love retiring to, all of us crave for and all of us want to spend the loveliest moments of our lives in and around.  Ever since I was a child, I have been very observant of her talents and tastes. She knows almost every creative household art so well that she would give the best doers in their respective fields a run for their money, given the chance to perform. Even though her talents have never gone beyond the four walls of the house she has been living in for the past 25 odd years she has not withered at all and does what she does best even today. And she is proud of just that. My mother, your mother and all of those who are yet to mumble “Mama” – she is the woman in every house and she is at the core of our value systems. She is all the good we can ever get.
Praxis: A journey that started as a sketch may very well serve the purpose of enhanced, multi-layered, 3-dimensional Google Maps Live for all the men of the land as also those who may stray in here.
Herein and Hereafter: Beyond the “No Smoking”, “Say No to Polythene”, “Protect the Ecosystem” signs, we need a sign that reads, “Protect the Mothers of this Land”. And this Sunday relives the saga of Shopian.

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