Aamir the Hero

As an actor, he was everyone's hero. In real life, he didn't turn out to be one for his wife. However, he might have scored a karmic ace in redemption with his TV show, Satyamev Jayate. The first episode was on female infanticide, and from what I have read in the press, this has shaken the conscience of our nation, which we jokingly call Mother India.

Apparently, this iniquity is not restricted to the poor, but extends to the affluent and educated as well, and across the length and breadth of India. And although Kerala has a state has all the ingredients of an economy on a Grecian path,- without any clear vision for the future, it remains the only state in India where there are more girls than boys. Governments past and present quite conveniently equated our basic literacy drives with education,- but they did well to squeeze in this vital element of gender-equality into the syllabus. If at all Kerala has to accord any recognition to its political apparatus, it has to be for this alone.


Switching back to female infanticide, my wife gifted me a daughter after four years of marriage. Her birth turned my world upside down, and undoubtedly for all the right reasons. If I have felt anguish, stress or tension, it's only because of concern for my daughter, and not because of one. What fuels this fire of bias against girls, who, according to Hindu tradition, are the Lakshmi of the house? Atrocities that transcend social and economic segregation have to be rooted in a deeper and more endemic cultural contamination. How else do you explain this happening even in the metros? But then, if you have to uproot cultural vices, you have to strike at the very roots. 


And this is what Aamir is making an attempt at, and for which, he has to hailed as a real hero.