This past weekend Punjabis all over the world celebrated Lohri, the quintessential Punjabi festival with bonfires, food, drinks, music and dancing. This is an occasion that celebrates new beginnings. I like to call it the Punjabi New Year and it is marked by the end of the month of "Poh" & beginning of "Magh". It is considered to be the end of winter season and beginning of spring. People hope that Lohri will bring an end to laziness and make them more active/productive. This sentiment is echoed in the saying that goes along with throwing "til"(sesame seeds) in the bonfire : "Issar aaye dalidar jaaye, Dalidar di jarh chulhey paaye".
This is also a festival that is special for newborns and newly-weds. Couples celebrate the beginning of their journey together and families celebrate the beginning of a new life in their midst. Even though,here I am saying newborns are celebrated, ask any Punjabi and you will realize that most people will celebrate a new birth only if it is a boy. They say, if you celebrate the birth of a girl, you are basically inviting more girls to be born in your family. Clearly, this is unacceptable to the people who would not think twice about murdering their unborn girl child; in a sense they are just trying to avoid unnecessary killing by not celebrating Lohri for girls.
This mentality is at the heart of the problems that women face in India, especially Northern India. When her birth is something that is a cause of grief for her family, her upbringing is an expense that they have to endure without any hope of gaining from it, her wedding is a problem so big that they start worrying about it from the moment she is born and the only time she actually gives her family any joy is when she has gone away to her husband's house, how can a woman expect anything better from the rest of the world?
The immediate step that needs to be taken to empower women and to make them feel more secure is to bring about a drastic change in laws that helps deliver justice quickly and efficiently, while being sensitive to the victims and ensuring harsh punishments to the perpetrators. But to bring about real change, girls need to be cherished and loved unconditionally by their parents and family, they need to be respected inside their homes to make them capable of demanding, expecting and commanding respect from the outside world.Even the popular Lohri song- "Sundar mudariye, tera kaun vichara? Dulla Bhatii waala........." tells the story of a guy who was a savior of girls, someone who treated others' daughters as his own and tried to do good for them.
This desperate need to have boys is making beasts out of us.I hope this Lohri marks the beginning of the end of this sickening mentality that we have developed as a people and the start of a new age where the birth of a girl is also an occasion for celebration and where these girls can hope to live their lives with dignity.
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Here's the full Lohri song (copied from Wikipedia).They also have it translation there : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lohri.
Sunder mundriye hoye!
Tera kaun vicharaa hoye!
Dullah Bhatti walla hoye!
Dullhe di dhee vyayae hoye!
Ser shakkar payee hoye!
Kudi da laal pathaka hoye!
Kudi da saalu paata hoye!
Salu kaun samete!
Chacha gali dese!
Chache choori kutti! zamidara lutti!
Zamindaar sudhaye!
Bum Bum bhole aaye!
Ek bhola reh gaya!
Sipahee far ke lai gaya!
Sipahee ne mari itt!
Bhaanvey ro te bhaanvey pitt!
Sanoo de de Lohri, te teri jeeve jodi!
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