Dear Nirbhaya,

This is a letter from a lamenting soul! It is really unfortunate that I realized something significant only after you departed from this hell of a place called earth, Nirbhaya. That I’m living amidst some human beings who say women must be subjugated and kept locked up at houses and Men can walk around freely and do whatever they please. One says women are flowers and Men are thorns. So, we are this and we are that. ‘Are we not human beings at the end of the day?’ I wanted to ask him.

I’m afraid Nirbhaya, I’m living amongst some individuals who have devised some ways of living for themselves (they call it ‘culture’!) only to enforce them down into our throats. Any culture I believed, was to serve the needs of the human beings. From when did we start serving its needs blindly? One could rape and kill women brutally and call it a culture? I bet, vultures have a better culture.  Is getting choked by the closed-mindedness of the people in the name of culture, the fate of every free individual like you and me?

 I feel guilty and shameful to live in a society where a criminal who claims himself to be a man is not guilty despite committing a beastly act. Neither are his friends; nor are his parents. How can I peacefully reside here? I’m suspicious of some teachers who repeatedly tell to their girl students, ‘Behave like a girl!’ I am utterly disappointed of the mothers who fail and have failed to teach their boys how to treat a girl! It is totally ironic to me that both danger and safety come from the same society we live in. It is unworthy to live in a place where fellow human beings- the women who are the co-partners in the human life are treated as sub-humans.

I cannot live in a place where somebody somewhere is waiting to rape one of my sisters and one of my daughters simply because women are considered inferior to men in the so-called culture I belong to. Oh Nirbhaya, this is not the place for me. It is too suffocating to reside here. Please do liberate me from this place as you liberated yourself; for I know death is a better alternative than 'cruelty' in the name of culture; for I know, in a sick society the dead souls stay and the divine souls depart!

With You,

Another Lamenting Soul.