Blame game - the psychology behind

So, which blame game am I talking about? Well, not hard to guess! Its about the society blaming the victim for crimes. Particularly victims of sexual violence against women. Let's start with this awesome sarcastic, viral video:

Sparing the ones with modern thoughts, the ones who get and love the above video, there is a huge population in India that firmly believes that somewhere, it must have been the victim's fault. Okay, lets go through this, it must not be hard: Its a normal daily activity that you are pursuing, travelling or just your profession. Most of us have at least one daily activity in which we interact with strangers, travelling is one example. So, on a regular encounter with strangers, you had a male companion but you had no idea that those regular strangers were a bunch of united people with a good level of mutual understanding and ofcourse bad intentions too. The strangers execute what was on their mind and control slips out of your and your male companion's hands in just seconds and once they have the power on you, its even harder to beat that and escape. In all this, do you see any fault of the victim? Probably (hopefully), no. But, there is a huge population of India that sees largely the victim's fault. I am not saying that they say find the criminals correct or good, but before anything else, they'll point out something where, according to them, our victim went wrong. Obviously, its unfair and incorrect of them to call the victim at fault. So, lets go through the psychology behind this.
Its defensive attribution which is at play. Now, what is that? As wikipedia defines it: The defensive attribution hypothesis is a social psychological term from the attributional approach referring to a set of beliefs held by an individual with the function of defending the individual from concern that they will be the cause or victim of a mishap. In simpler words, we humans have a tendency to believe that this world is a good and fair place to live in. Acknowledging that the world is unfair and that something unfortunate can happen to you based on chance factors would lead to a sense of fear and vulnerability which we would naturally want to avoid. So, whenever we hear of some incident we have a tendency to explain that it was the victim's fault and that if I or someone closely related to me doesn't make that mistake, we'll be absolutely safe. In some sense, that's a coping mechanism to make oneself feel better and less insecure about it.
Well, I learnt all that in my psychology class. Now the next thing that comes to my mind is, why is this blaming trend more in India than in the west. Is there something like the tendency to make defensive attribution is higher in our culture than in theirs? So, let us look at the basic difference in our cultures. Western culture is predominantly individualistic while ours is a collectivistic one. Individualistic culture is one which is oriented around the self, where humans are viewed as independent beings instead of being identified with a community, Whereas, a collectivistic culture is one where there is a higher emphasis on interdependence of beings, where people belong to a particular political, religious or ethnic group and are expected to exhibit behavior that matches the interest and beliefs of the group. A simple way to understand this cultural discussion is to look at an example: If in a group of people that share the same workplace, some guy lives a different kind of lifestyle, wears different kinds of clothes and pursues an indifferent set of hobbies than the usual one. Such a group in India has a tendency to talk about that person behind his back, exclude him out of casual group meetings, and call him a not-normal or not-our-type person. While such a group in the west is more likely to accept this guy's differences, live with it comfortably and even let him be a part of their larger group. 
Now here is my attempt to relate this cultural difference with the blame game: Generally, in a collectivistic culture, if something goes wrong, people have a tendency to blame everyone involved while in an individualistic culture, the fellow at the root cause is solely responsible for what happened. In a crime, both the criminal and victim are deeply involved and hence we have a tendency to put some amount of blame on each given our culture. While the same crime in the west will be viewed more as the criminal's fault than that of the victim's. So, our cultural structure in addition to the normal tendency of defensive attribution leads to a relatively high tendency to blame the victim than the westerners do.
Now is it okay or acceptable on someone's part to blame the victim? Well, no! Although defensive attributions are self-protective, somewhat natural but certainly an irrational strategy that helps us avoid unnerving thoughts and give a feel of our life being in our control. As healthy individuals, we should try to look at things from the perspective of the victim and stop this blaming!
Note: the relation of culture with blaming is completely my view and arguments are most welcome. :)

You :)

Just to have a word with you,
I’ll keep all my work aside

Without that word with you,
my tasks remain shattered, unfulfilled

'coz in everything I say, in my every act
I just reflect the you I carry in myself

Though I have an image of yours in me,
without you yourself, I feel incomplete

And my eyes would shoot open, in the middle of the night
wondering how the day not had a single encounter with you

And I feel as if everything got disturbed,
as if nature ran against its own rules

Then I ask, How could the sun set,
without me talking to you?

Bolly songs of 90s :D

I am a 90s kid. So, I was brought up with these. The typical bollywood songs of the 90s. Infact, the first imagery of my ideal boy I had in mind resembled a typical hero depicted in these song videos - the one who would take me (yes, literally take, against my wish! :P) to a picturesque location and sing and dance with me. Fortunately, this imagery doesn't exist anymore. :P
To give you the feel of what kind of bolly songs I am talking about, consider the following for reference: chalo ishq ladaye, ankhiyan tu mila ley raja, chori chori sapno me, dholna, jangal hai aadhi raat hai, chunari chunari, sona kitna sona hai, kudi kuwari, and many more. A couple of videos:

The pattern of all songs is exceptionally similar. The same template, still they were always entertaining! Most of the typical ones are filmed at some location in Europe or some exceptionally green lands, etc. The song is lively and full of beats. The hero and heroine appear in 2-3 different clothes throughout the song. The design of the female's clothes is particularly new while the hero is wearing particularly bright and colorful bottoms and shirts. The bottoms are a bit too tight in case of Govinda. The hero and heroine have a good practice of doing the dance steps in sync and their steps are weirdly symmetric too. The characters get rhythmically romantic while doing these steps. I have seen some song videos where the heroine blushes with the beats!
However illogical stuff they contain, they entertained me a lot back in the 90s and continue to do so. Here, I choose to stay a bolly fan. :)

The anger is justified - Delhi gang rape case

Anybody who is well aware of the culture in this country (in fact the world) knows that above all things, be it law, opposition, God or whatever, there is one thing everyone including the government and the criminals (I am not calling them the same) should be scared of, and that one thing is mob anger. If you suppress the mob anger for now, it will come up later, with double the force and will hence render you double helpless.

There are protests all over the country demanding immediate hanging for the culprits in the case. Well, this protest is not precisely over the gang rape, etc. It’s over the regular abuses a girl wanting to stand on her own legs faces in her everyday life. Everyone who is participating in the rallies have either experienced some trauma or seen it happen. And just because of this, we need to give a strict punishment in order to tell them that its not easy to rape someone and escape with a life. Our government or the court fails to understand this very trauma. Is it because these bodies are composed of largely men? Maybe yes. Most of the men do not know what it is like to be scared when you are on the verge of losing the shreds of your dignity. The way our culture goes, I guess its difficult for men to even understand what dignity I am talking about, ‘coz they are never assumed to possess such dignity. Yes, our culture is like that. If a guy sleeps with another girl who is not his wife, then he doesn’t lose anything. It’s the girl who loses her dignity, etc. We feel a girl is insulted if she is raped, not the guy. He has his desires. And that is so justified! We have rapists and abusers around and amidst this, we demand for virgin wives.

Many people have expressed how the hue and cry over the Delhi gang rape is useless and a waste of time. If our best justices feel that a step towards better securing our women is useless, etc, then I am scared and paranoid of living here. Female folk is supposedly the half of our population. Given our sex ratio, women in this country, in the least exaggerated sense, are a minority. And for the government, securing the minority is nothing more than a duty. I recently got from the news that our home minister Susheel Kumar Shinde declared the forming of a council to ensure the safety of women. Recognizing the routes where women safety is better so that women can take up those routes while travelling is also one of the roles of this council. Well, what?? Let’s mark certain roads with a red sign saying “its unsafe for you to travel by this route, lady!”. 
A good number of people expert in law have also told that the max they can be punished is lifetime imprisonment. Well, by law, this is true. But wait, are we joking here? We all know really well that law has been tweaked to suit our requirements. Okay, lets talk of law. Law is to make our life easy and comfortable. It stands to protect us and not to make us more vulnerable. So, law! Law doesn’t even recognize inserting foreign objects into the female’s body as rape. Law dictates the same punishment for rape and murder. In the eyes of law, rape is equivalent to gang rape. Definitely, for the victim, it is not. And none other than the victim herself knows the gravity of the pain. Our law anyways doesn’t treat rape as that heinous a crime. The list of capital crimes (crimes that can lead one to death sentence) does not include attempt for murder by sexual methods, or rape. It’s strictly for the “rarest of rare cases” . Probably, a girl getting gang raped and attempted to be killed by pathetic sexual methods in a bus moving on the roads of the capital of the country crossing three check posts is too usual or too not rare to be imposed this sentence on. Maybe yes. Our newspapers are full of incidents of sexual abuses, rapes, etc. Even if 50% of these are fake (talking on the assumption that every victim files a police complaint), the rest are sufficient to assure you that you are insecure here. And our government unwilling to treat such a pathetic crime as a rare one assures you further. As Sheila Dixit quoted, “It is the most painful incident that has taken place since I became chief minister of Delhi”, I guess pain is a rare thing for any country. Isn’t it? I wonder what impression of our government’s efficiency does this give to the other big democracies of the world. At a moment, I would even question, do we have a government? We can’t call it a government if it is bereft public confidence.

In my view, and in the view of a large fraction of the country, death penalty to these rapists is justified. But the government doesn’t seem to agree with this. All we need is a good lawyer/justice to stand up for this cause. Do we, the women of this country have a supporter?

In the pink ghetto

“Pink ghetto”, this term is basically originated from the term “pink collar” mostly used to associate the pink collar jobs, the jobs meant for women, the ones with the flexibility to suite working moms and the housekeepers. Obviously, on the very assumption that the sole responsibility of household lies on the woman.

Though we (Indians) are still in a stage where women development level is way behind where it is in the rest of the world or where it should have been right now, I’ll choose to talk of the urban female folk which is far more developed than the rest of the country.

The male dominion in our culture is kind of inherited. The idea of a female taking the lead position of a project or team is still a little unacceptable. While the world saw Marissa Mayer being hired as Yahoo! CEO while she was pregnant, we think extra for even employing a married woman or mother. Even in one of the most urbanized cities like Mumbai, getting hired while you are pregnant is not even a question.
Well, the problem is clear, we lack female leaders and female professionals leading to the mentality that a woman can't be skilled at this. Not actually society's fault in thinking so. Tracking down this problem, we realize that these leadership and professional skills are not developed in girls, like since childhood. We pamper our daughters with all cute, nice and delicate stuff. In most of the urban families, even their choices are also not theirs. When up till teenage, parents or brothers take most of her decisions, all she learns is, taking support. Going by the way we bring them up, being strong, independent and decisive is not their part. That's called being a man. And we choose to teach that to our sons.
And the women who take the other path, choose to be independent are treated as superpowers and even their vicinyl society (family members) looks at them with little sympathy. If they choose to write their own destiny, obviously, in a setting like India's, this would require utter amount of strength to be able to face the society and its million questions and hence they are treated as heartless beings. The independent woman is expected to be exceptionally self consistent, especially emotionally. A friend of mine recently shared this cartoon strip on Facebook: 

Precisely here, I fail to relate being strong and independent with wanting some love and pampering. We all as humans have an emotional quotient and want to be loved (in addition to being ready to love). If the working husband, the sole bread winner of the family, upset from his day or something else, wants to cuddle in his wife's lap, takes pleasure in some pampering, its fine. It doesn't contradict his being independent and strong. But it does when its a woman. Sad.

Even today, we come across people who feel that the right place of a woman is within the four-walls of the house. This reminds me of a PhD friend of mine at insti who wondered why do women want to study so much when they are from well off families and can really easily find themselves a husband who is rich and loving. And yes, there are females who want to settle as housewives in their lives. I hope for most, like me at times, its just out of laziness. 

Another friend of mine equated being a housewife to being a good housekeeper. The term "housekeeper" did hurt me at first. How does a silly binary characteristic "gender" entitle the responsibility of housekeeping to one particular person? Why can't all members of the family put equal shares in housekeeping? Unfortunately, if a man wants to sit at home as a househusband, our society shall taunt him till death. In the case where the family accepts the working lady, she is just overdone with responsibility. She is expected to cook or to look after all the servants in the case where the family can afford them, to take care of the elders (mostly in-laws), to ensure her kids' homework, well bringing up, etc. A silent obvious compensation of her wanting to pursue her own dreams. And if you raise the matter of gender equality to such families, they would say with pride, we have a working wife, we obviously understand and implement equal status to females.

We fail to understand even the meaning of gender equality. Implementing it seems too far off. Poor females, perhaps born and destined to die in their pink ghettos. Its time that we as society realize this and grant our women actual equality.

Of what I am feeling like...

Advice: Ignore.

The green leaves turned yellow. It did not rain for long. And when it did, I did not like it. The sun did not shine for long. Though later it did, but that was unacceptable as it was burning hot and I wanted the clouds. I knew the clouds would make it better. But the clouds never came. The birds didn't chirp. I don't know why. I always felt that they stopped chirping on seeing me. The beautiful green parrots never came by my balcony anymore. The moon didn't seem to smile when it looked down at me nor did I feel as if it was stalking me from behind the bushes, like a secret admirer.
I didn't sleep. I never felt like eating. Not even my favorite dish. I didn't feel like painting, not even writing. I didn't even want to sit and dream all day like I used to, when I was a little girl. I wanted no music. I did not want to remember God either. I didn't feel like staring at the night sky, the stars. I didn't like the breeze at the lakeside or through the door of the rushing train either. I was not interested in the games I would otherwise spend entire day playing. I did not feel like talking. Not even with my love.
I was living a monotone routine and I wanted to continue living like that only. I didn't even want a change. What I wanted seemed too far to even think of. I constantly felt as if the leaves won't turn green ever, it won't rain, the sun won't get soft and nor would the clouds come over softly without making it gloomy.
It seemed as if everything happened all of sudden. But no, it didn't. It rather was gradual. Too gradual. So adiabatic that I couldn't even notice the change coming. Now I feel that if I had noticed it, I might have either avoided it anyhow or learnt to adjust to it. But I couldn't do any of those. I was too blind to realize what was coming.
I wasn't unhappy all the time. I was happy too. But that was because I wanted to be happy. Not because I was actually happy. And now, I want to be actually happy like I was, when the leaves were green and the weather felt nice. But again, this is just wanting. I don't know if the actual reason will ever show up. Nobody knows that.

Tutor-ed kids

Whenever somebody talks of school, what we immediately do is, go back to our school years. For most of us, school was actually the temple of all knowledge we have gained and remember till date. It was also that battlefield of our heart where making/breaking relationships at times composed whole of our mindspace and nevertheless at times it was also the place where we would take interest in the first, second and third wives of that fat language teacher. But definitely, above this all, what meant most, were the classes, the time when we actually learned stuff and most of us (I hope so) just loved it.
On the bare mention of school level education, the images of those classes and playgrounds come fresh to the mind and with a little more quickness, we think of our buddies. But with time, things have changed. Studying is not restricted to schools and home works for today's kids.
In the last decade, the education industry has seen an enormous boom in the tuition culture. Catch any middle school or high school kid in an urban neighborhood and he'll make you count the number of tuitions he is attending and how his timetable is jam packed. Its not that the time table is void of any physical activity or stuff. You'll discover that the same child is also going to dance/music classes and sports classes too. Such a time tabled kid might seem to become an all rounder, a perfectionist, but the poor fellow lacks somewhere. He misses what we had in our childhood. It includes silly things ranging from staring at the night sky, or peeling layer by layer of the flower from the garden, or discovering how the rainbow patterns in so many transparent-ish objects, or even picking up a spider or cockroach by one of its legs and inspecting each of its body organs. The child basically misses the time he actually needs to develop his mind. And ya, when it comes to mind development, parents will claim that they are sending their child to the Vedic Math classes. But unfortunately, math is not the only thing that develops mind.
These kids end up being a bigtime failure when they are asked to understand the stuff written in the book by themselves. They need a teacher, a tutor at every step. They do not know how to discover a way to do stuff. All they know is that if they are told the way once, they will efficiently repeat it. Though this level of efficiency is surprisingly awesome at times. The most unfortunate part is, the teachers who created the school environment for us back then themselves have become greedy enough to start their own tuitions and ensure a good crowd in them.