Pro-Choice or Pro-Life?

This question has burned at the back of my mind since a long time. They talk about a normal pregnancy usually. But I think of it in a very different context.

More than a political view, I think we all hold a very personal stake in this question. Consider this:

Would you like to give birth to your child when you know he’s going to be mentally or physically handicapped?

Days back I was reading a book by Jodi Picoult called Handle With Care. It dealt with a couple who had a girl who was diagnosed with Osteogenesis Imperfecta type III while she was still in the womb. They still decided to not abort her. What followed were moments of happiness but more than that… a chain of hardships. Their marriage almost fell apart, their first daughter strayed and developed bulimia nervosa, which is an eating disorder, the mother sues her best friend cum gynecologist  to be able to earn monetary help for the daughter’s future needs. She claims in court that had she known of the problem, she would have terminated the pregnancy which she'd been lying about because she'd not say that even if she was held at gun point. Point being, no matter how noble we want to think or be or believe, when we consider the first question more things than just the desire of having that child matter:

Can the disability or handicap be cured?

How bad will it or can it get?

Will your circumstances- social and financial- allow you to take the liberty and give birth to this child?

And will YOU be able to handle it? Emotionally speaking!

Let’s face the facts. Apart from will, you definitely need a supportive environment to be able to raise such a child. You need to have the finances, the resources and finally some family support to an extent. If you do not have practical, affordable, effective and accessible resources (a part of it is medical facilities) you can’t possibly make this child survive or not hate yourself wanting to give up every time it gets hard. If you’re too lucky, you’ll work on some kind of a denial mechanism to refute the fact that it’s getting too tough to handle. And then how would it feel to see that child suffer every minute of his or her life which could be shorter than yours! It tore me apart every time Jodi Picoult described how the child was getting on with her life in the book.

We all deal with certain issues in our life. We struggle to come to terms with them. How would it be to give birth to a child who has to learn to struggle from the very minute that the child starts breathing? There is absolutely nothing to help, no consolation. Everybody would just keep thinking of those two words- what if…?- which give rise to a million questions in your mind! What if this disability didn’t exist? What if I was different? But will anybody be able to answer those? Well, nobody would know any different than what they’ve seen.

I know that families and couples who now are living with such children or family members will think I am anti-disability or anti-handicaps but trust me, I am not. In fact, I have had my share of relatives who are living with fatal problems and incurable disabilities and they’re loved like none other. If given a choice, their parents would like to do that all over again because what they got in the bargain was a beautiful child that is an indispensible part of their lives. I understand why people claim that it is more important to love your child than anything that your child suffers from. This would help you pull through. But who are you kidding?

Normal kids can’t get through just with their parents’ support. They want to commit suicides for being too fat or too ugly or if they’re bullied. How can we say such utopian things for the handicapped or disabled kids? Are you guaranteeing the fact they will have everything else perfect in their life if they overlook that one limitation? Life is a lot tougher. It bullies you, it betrays you, it eats you within and compels you to not talk about it. Then what?

Yes, I’m angry. Just because you want to say that such people deserve a life (which I don’t deny) why are you giving it to them if you already know that what will follow their birth is a just a non-terminable series of agonies, loss of faith and moments of despair which (let’s face it) are more in number and degrees than the moments that are simply divine. Also, say if a child has some mental disability or disease, I can only remotely imagine the million pieces it would tear his/her mom and dad every time they realize that they can’t live longer than their child, that there might not be somebody who would love their child they way they do, that the future of their child is uncertain to the extent of not knowing how he/she will survive after them! That dreaded question- how will she/he survive by herself? Can she/he?

It is not about the right of a child to live. Everybody has the right to life. But they should also be given a chance to live a life where they don't have such problems! And they parents get that choice. If given a choice would you not choose a life free of this handicap?

Can a parent really live through this every moment? Can a child be subjected to live through this just because deep rooted belief and thought says “Good or bad- it’s mine and I’ll handle it”?

Are you really going to forget that the child has to live that life?

Are you really that selfish?

Sour Grapes, Greener Grass... Whatever!

So well sometime back I was with this friend in the metro who was two years younger. So we had a pretty animated conversation on India, mentalities and it ended on guys.

Okay so it all started when she said she wants to go abroad for further studies because she is sick of India. And I am a whole-hearted patriot. Don’t get me wrong. I see all kinds of wrong things in India which are like in my face but then at the end of the day, it’s my country. So I told her to not get me started on it but she went on about how people think so conventionally and she just wants a group of friends that are similar to who she is and the kind of family background she comes from which is liberal. Even though I get where she’s coming from I failed to understand how India can be blamed for that.

At the age that we are broadly, every person starts getting enough individualistic perspective to be who they want to be and what their choices makes them. So, if the family background makes them who they are, she can very well go meet other people. There are tremendously varied kinds of people to get to know in our surroundings. She thinks India kicks in because of the fact that it is the typical Indian conservative mentality to hold her back. But I think that kind of phrase doesn’t hold value anymore because the phase we are in, we can’t be called specifically traditional or conservatist  or on the contrary, modernists. We are just a diverse lot with diverse mindsets. To each his own. She just has to find the right people. She doesn’t understand that she just wants a change of environment and not change of country. Or maybe it’s just her desire to travel.

Then she started talking about how the guys here are just huge perverts and think that a girl is asking for it if she is wearing hot pants or something. But what she’s forgetting is that this is not limited to Indians. It happens everywhere. I don’t know how she can think that it’s just Indians. To be clearer with this, the “slut walk” that happened in Delhi was a foreign idea adopted by an Indian girl. I understand how hard it can get to fight this mentality but you can’t quit thinking there’s a better alternative. Nothing like that exists.

And no, I’m not being complacent and nor am I playing the denial card here. I personally am in awe of this particular country and I would love to go and base myself there but that’s for entirely different reasons. India has a different characteristic about itself. Others love it. But it’s just human psyche that the grass always looks greener on the other side. You really have to set your reasons right and mostly, you have to stop lying to yourself. If you want a different kind of a culture, say it. If you want to live like the rest, say it. If you want to go to the UK or the US because it has always been your dream and it looks so fancy and the accents seem so attractive or whatever, say it! No matter what others think of your reasons, they are your reasons and you’re not lying to yourself. You’re not believing a lie and in turn expecting something which is so not what you wanted to expect in the first place. You want to have a life which is different than this and that’s it! Stop blaming India for being bad so that others look lucrative to you!

And if you really think something’s wrong with India, don’t go. Let the quiet riot simmer inside of you and make it contagious. Let all the Indians break free… with you!

Politics

Don’t we all hate it enough already? Well, let’s talk about that today. I attend something called the Model United Nations (MUN) conferences. They’re like just another debate competition with different sort of proceedings. In my very first college MUN, I along with many others observed the clear networking politics that people use- to win, to get their first executive board, etc.

As if it wasn’t all, one of my friends started doing the same. And now she’s joined on the hip with some really important people in the MUN circuit. JUST to get ahead. And all this infuriates me. I mean, I know I want to get there, too, someday- The executive board, the best delegate, etc. But for that I’m not using such political ways.

MUNs for me are sacred, if you wanna call it that. I go there for the kind of debate I get to see, the amazing intellectual stimulation, the analysis and reasoning behind it all. There’s a real skill involved in MUNing. And all of this politics just ruins it all for me.

Seeing it so clearly, I feel like I won’t continue doing MUNs from next year. It’s frustrating to go through all this.

And moreover, every big wig in MUN, I quote somebody “has an MUN that he/she endorses”. And in that process, I’ve seen a few people trying to malign the others while they’re at it. They take open digs at their “rival MUNers” and try to show them that they are better. However, they never attend each others’ conferences to really understand who’s doing what better. So, since that leaves no room for improvement or even bitter realization in some cases, these claims of being ‘better ’seem somewhat hollow to me. Competition can happen in the real senses when you really acknowledge the efforts of the other and THEN try to top them! That’s being better with ‘substance’.

However, since I love it so much, I am going to put up a few words of defense for it too. It might have politics, but some people are there because they deserve to be.  Some people make me want o overlook all of this and keep participating. And if not really then at least on the face value of things MUNs acknowledge true talent. Some people ARE arrogant about where they stand today, but they are, indeed, amazing at it. So, more or less, I want to learn. I want to grow. I want to be huge with efforts earnestly put in!

DOESN'T THIS FEEL GRAND?! Ok maybe the settings are not all this grand but i feel this!! =)

Oh and trust me, I want to learn and grow. Proof? I happen to be working for this MUN in unrealistic and really ridiculous circumstances and environment and I’m still sincere about it! (However, I’m planning on giving a good piece of my mind to the person who has been acting ridiculous and making it a painful experience for me!)

*God I’m so sincere, it’s not even funny!