In the memory of all the Saheeds of Nepal

Ankha n dekhne andha ra kan nsunne bahira politician haru lai kashri bujhaune?
kashri dekhaune jntako pir marka?
Iniharu danab hun!
Inihru le manb ko bhasa bujdainan!!
Khai ke gari shamjhanu?
Khai ke gari bujhaunu?
Tara panai kosis ta garnai priyo!
Sas chhaunjayal aas ta garnai pariyo!!

In their memories, please watche this video I found on Youtube:

HERA NA SAHEED HARU LAI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAW2G_5YDYs

Thank you!

My achievements

How did I spend the whole 2012 year? What did I do to help people in need? What did I accomplice that I can be proud of after a few years? What did I do to save the environment or to keep peace in the community I live?

I really can’t say I did much of anything to improve the situation of any one of these: My family, my community or the environment I live in. For that I can blame the following people: My colleagues, friends, neighbours and, most of all my own family -- my husband and children.

My children didn’t do what I wanted them to do. My husband didn’t allow me to do the things I wanted to. I didn’t have money to give away, or to buy things for others. I had plenty of excuses, like any others do. So, I’m fine!

This is how my 2012 year passed. Do I want my 2013 year to pass like this? No! And, therefore, my Lord, I beg you humbly to give me the strength to do the things that I truly believe will improve the situations of a few people, even if I will be hated by a few others …

 

Happy New Year!

 

 

Selective abortion and our girl fetus

A traditional Hindu son has lot of responsibilities in his house. He carries his family name, inherits family property, keeps his family traditions alive and looks after his sisters, their families and other female relatives. He is not to accept anything of monetary value from them.

 

Traditional Hindu men and women yearned to have a son in their family for another reason too. And, that is until a few years ago, religious rituals following the death of a parent could only be fulfilled by sons. In most Hindu families that responsibility is still reserved for sons only even in this day and age.

 

The role of a son in Islamic traditional families also seems to be similar to that of a Hindu son. For example, the eldest son in Islamic family holds the responsibilities of looking after his younger siblings, his parents and inherits their property (house, land or business) after his father’s death (or in his inability).

 

These stories partly explain why there is so much demand for a boy in the traditional households. However, times have changed! Most of us don’t live in a farming-society. Sons don’t stay with their parents and carry on their family trade. They don’t marry the lady selected by their parents. They don’t take their responsibilities more seriously than daughters do. Parents can’t expect financial support from their sons anymore than from their daughters. Instead of supporting their parents, most sons these days marry at the cost of their parents, ask for their share of property and separate. In this modern time, there seems to be less and less loyalty left in sons.

 

Even in these modern days, millions of mothers selectively abort female fetuses around the world. I personally know a few mothers who, without pressure from their husband or in-laws, have gone for check ups and aborted their girl babies not once, but twice or even thrice! Does this make sense?

 

Without the intervention of selective abortions, the natural ratio of boys to girls has been 103-106 boys for 100 girls for years, according to the demographer, Nick Eberstadt (The Economist, March 4, 2010). With the mortality rate slightly higher for the boy infants than the girl infants, we should have equal number of boys and girls living today, but that is not the case study after study show.

 

Girl fetuses are massacred at an alarming rate in China and India; however, the story doesn’t seem to end there. Mr. Eberstadt asserts that there are gender imbalances in South Korea, Taiwan, and a few Southeast European countries, also. So, is it the culture of Asia and the surrounding countries that craves for boys?

 

For years, we kept blaming for China’s one child policy and the mythology of heaven and hell stories most Asians so dearly hung upon. But now, we have changed our story and we blame for the failing fertility rate and the cheap technology as the culprit of the selective abortion, as done by Mara Histendahl in her book Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys over Girls and the Consequences of World Full of Men.

 

Whatever the case may be, the most disturbing trend to me is the research findings that suggest: Higher the income and education levels, higher the selective abortions occurring in the modern days. This should not be happening! If education doesn’t help today’s men and women to realize that killing their innocent baby fetuses is not the solution to economic and social problems, what will?

For more gendercide stories, you can visit these sites and educate your friends and families how barbaric these behaviors are: The worldwide war on baby girls: http://www.economist.com/node/15636231 Save every girl child: https://www.facebook.com/#!/Save.every.girl.child My husband threw us out: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/My-husband-threw-us-out-Neera-Chopra/articleshow/4451333.cms

My book online

Hi everyone,

 

I just published my very first book titled Longing to Belong: An Immigrant Woman's Story. I had started writing this book three years ago. It took me all these years to get to this point.

I knew that book writing is a daunting job. I’m the managing editor of a by-yearly academic journal, but I had not realized that it would be this much work! Publishing my book from a reputable publisher is another hurdle that I'm still not over with. However, after I researched a bit about the processes and the cost involved in publishing my book the conventional way, I decided to take the self-publishing route.

 

Here is the link to my book:

 

http://ar.gy/2Qcv

ar.gy

And, here is the Preface of my book you may like to take a look

 

Sasi Kala is not my formal name but the one given to me by my parents. My parents didn’t have formal education but they were exceptionally talented, nevertheless. My mother was a good hearted intuitive lady with multiple skills, while my father was a handsome man and an astute entrepreneur. Both of my parents worked hard and treated their workers with dignity and respect.

 

On my husband’s side, his mother died when he was still a child, but his father made sure that all seven of his children had a basic education. There was no school in the village my husband was born, but his father hired a private tutor to provide a higher education to his only son, my husband.

I’m a dreamer. I grew up through imagination. I have been imagining my life since I was a little girl. I imagined the life I am living now many years ago.

 

My dreams are my visions. My childhood visions were only the beginning of the end. My life’s events happened not just because I had imagined them but also because I relentlessly pursued them by working hard and tolerating others’ views around me (even when they did not fit into my imaginings).

I strive to be different than the people around me but at the same time the concept of belonging is important to me. This book is about my journey to that belonging: marrying an educated man, raising conscientious children and be part of a ‘just’ society.

 

My sincere appreciation goes to all of those friends who took their precious time in not just reading my untested manuscript but also persuading me to publish it. My especial thanks go to Carole Whiteford and Edith Hautcoeur. Thank you both so very much!

 

I want to thank my family: my husband, Dev, our daughters, Lisa and Jenny, and our son, babu, for believing in me that I can write a book, encouraging me and approving this genuine portrayal of immigrants’ lives to put forth in front of millions others. Love you guys so much!

 

Sasi Kala

Family violence: an observation

Family violence has no territorial boundaries. It does not discriminate between genders or races, either. In one form or another, family violence is present in every culture of the world.

I have also noticed that it isn’t always the women taking abuse from their husbands (or other family members); in some households the men are vulnerable and their wives are abusive.

From the beginning, daughters are conditioned to behave in certain ways which seems to have contributed to family violence. Depending on the religion and the part of the world people live in, there seem to be two sets of rules for daughters and sons to follow. It is not just that gender- specific activities which are justified because of the biological differences between boys and girls, but the overall disciplinary curriculum for daughters and sons seem to be different also. And, even though sons are often raised more favourably than daughters, it is the daughters who seem to lend their sympathetic ears (at the very least) when parents fall into difficult situations later on.

The paradoxical truth I’ve found about sons and daughters being raised differently is that most daughters gain resiliency when they’re treated unfairly within their family, while their counterparts (their brothers) lose their plasticity (flexibility) and are less able to handle adversity when they are faced with it, which proves Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection. So, for daughters there seems to be some hidden advantages of being discriminated against within their families.

However, I have also noticed that some of the daughters raised in that situation for a long period of time losing their buoyancy, while others had learned to accept it as a cultural thing and were able to move forward with their lives. But both groups of women, when they become mothers themselves, raise their daughters with the same treatment that they received in their families. This is the tendency that I have seen in most families which concerns me a great deal!

Daughters raised in discriminatory families (and societies) discriminate against their own daughters because that’s what they had learned from their mothers (the family is a child’s first school). I have seen this trend continuing until a daughter (or mother) determines to stop this repetition for good.

When I first came to know about the female circumcision performed routinely in some African and Middle Eastern societies, I was appalled! I was disturbed even more when I read that mothers in those countries not only allow the removal of their daughters’ clitoris but also encourage it. I thought, how can a mother tolerate such an act of violence against her own daughter? Then, as I got familiar with other kinds of family violence around the world, I noticed that mothers in many households customarily treat their daughters very unfairly.

In my view, one of the reasons why mothers routinely discriminate against their daughters is that no matter which part of the world they live in, they’re living within a male-dominated society. Men make rules and break them. Most women simply follow those rules either because they don’t think they can break the conventional rules or they do so to keep peace in their household. Fighting against well-rooted (systemic) discrimination takes a lot of courage that most women don’t have.

Even the very few who have that kind of courage would hesitate to go out in public with their stories simply because they know that they wouldn’t have the kind of support they need to win their case. They live within a male-dominated society; what can they expect?

Surprisingly, when discovering women in abusive situations, not only most men but also most women turn a blind eye. The predators know this. Because of this, when there is a conflict at work, the male boss usually wins. Within a family, the woman takes the blame automatically.

It seems to be true, also, that most households are together because of the women belonging to those families. If the woman in the household tolerates or uses prudent tactics to keep her family together, the husband takes the credit. On the other hand, if the woman is unwilling or unable to keep the family together, the family members go their separate ways and the woman gets the blame.

Also, I have found that most women take pride in keeping their families together, whereas most men feel proud only when they can fulfill the providers’ role. Further, most women feel that they’re responsible for keeping the family together. On the other hand, only a few men feel that way. Women also seemed to take pleasure in family-success more than their own personal success.

Those were the conclusions of a survey I’d conducted when I was doing my MBA nearly a decade ago. Many of the women I interviewed (in person or by phone) asserted that they had some issues to be resolved in their family. On the other hand, their husbands told me that they didn’t have any problems and were offended by my questions.

Family violence among immigrants

When compared to non-immigrant families, the hostilities within immigrant families seem to be much more prevalent than I had previously imagined. My findings are not based on empirical studies where I can show statistics to prove my point (although no empirical studies can prove anything indisputably), but based on my observations and the conversations that I’ve had with immigrants and non-immigrant people over the last 30 years.

In my recollection of those stories, an overwhelming percentage of the immigrant men told me that they left their country of birth for better opportunities, while their wives reported that they’d left their country for better quality of life. The desire to become wealthy drove most of the immigrant men to work hard, while their wives worked hard to fulfill their family’s requirements. However, in a few households the opposite was true.

Most immigrant men in my observations/conversations appeared to have the “nation building” ambition and were pursuing their careers with vigour. But their wives had a more balanced approach to life.

Also, the immigrant men in my study took time to make new friends in their host country. When they finally made friends, most of the friendships were formed around mutual activities. Most of these men seemed to have forgotten about their old friends once they made new ones here. But for immigrant women, although they made new friends easily and quickly after moving to a new society, they took years to replace the ‘buddies’ that they’d left back home.

By definition, most immigrants are young, energetic and ambitious when they move to a new country. They move to the country with the ambition to become “somebody”. They focus on their target and don’t mind working hard to meet their goal. For these reasons, they’re called “nation builders”.

In an article entitled, “Survival of Necessity Immigrant Entrepreneurs: An Exploratory Study,” Professors Elie Chrysostome and Sebastien Arcand assert that many immigrants are necessity entrepreneurs. They find it difficult to integrate into the new job market for various reasons and that forces them to start their own business. They do that first to survive and then to prosper. “Entrepreneurship gives immigrants social dignity in the host country,” write the Professors in the Journal of Comparative International Management, Vol. 12, No. 2.

This kind of entrepreneurship creates some prospects for them, their co-ethnic employees and the spill over effects of these two groups raise the overall welfare of society. But this welfare comes with costs; I will discuss this shortly.

Immigrant parents’ career choices are often guided by money and certificates. They seem to produce more professional-minded sons and daughters than non-immigrant parents. The immigrant parents want to avoid their children going through the same hardships they had to go through. They make extra efforts to make sure that their sons and daughters choose the professions which secure their financial futures. But not all children of immigrants become professional, which creates a huge apprehension within the immigrants’families.

The difference between immigrant men and women and the non-immigrant men and women I found are the ways they feel about their responsibilities, their wants and needs. For most immigrants, having a big house, professional children, money and certificates are “must have” things. Most non-immigrants also want these things, but don’t seem to want to work as hard to achieve these things because their energy levels are not the same as the new immigrants who have just started their new life in their host country.

All these “working hard”, “making sure” and“must have” conditions that most immigrants create for themselves seem to be behind the hostilities (which are rarely known to outsiders) within their families. However, we know that nothing is free of cost. There seems to be a great number of immigrants battling inside with emotional problems that eventually invade their physical system as well. Therefore, behind the nation builders, there are some not-so-fabulous stories that most people don’t know. My purpose in creating this blog is to expose these stories in my upcoming chapters.

Let’s shape our girls’ future

On December 2, 2011, Janet Bagnall wrote “the system failed” (Montrealgazette.Com) referring to the 2009 murder case involving Mohammad Safia’s family. The four ladies of Safia’s household screamed for help but nobody,“The school staff, the Montreal police, both of the city’s child-protection services, relatives, friends, boyfriends, the women’s shelter, the stranger on the street,” had the guts to intervene. Why?

The system failed miserably not because of the “unfamiliarity with the cultural differences”. There was no shortage of cultural-interpreter or the experts with knowledge in multi-racial/multicultural issues. It failed because of lack of interest on the part of the authorities and their fear of conformity with regards to the case.

Safia’s case may be an extreme example of an immigrant woman alleged to have participated in murdering her own daughters (and her husband’s wife she rather see dead), but there are many others who customarily participate in similar activities without even realizing because of their upbringing--from the beginning daughters are conditioned to behave in certain ways.

Mohammad Safia’s house rules may sound too harsh to many of us, but immigrants (in general) with strong religious beliefs and traditions face similar challenges everyday with regards to adopting new culture that is forced upon them. Usually, the stronger the beliefs, the longer it takes for the immigrants to settle down in a new society they move into. But their hardships seem to be nothing compared to their children’s struggles to fit into the new society, studies show. These children are pulled and pushed by two sets of rules, one set imposed on them at home and another out in the public they are forced to follow. These children often feel displaced (from the culture and people they knew) and seem to have developed distrusting attitudes towards grown ups when they grow up.

Depending on the religion and the part of the world people live in, there seem to be two sets of rules for daughters and sons to follow. It is not just that gender-specific activities, which are justified because of the biological differences between boys and girls, but the overall disciplinary curriculum for daughters and sons seem to be different, also. And, even though sons are often raised more favourably than daughters (in many cultures), it is daughters who seem to lend their sympathetic ears (at the very least) when parents fall into difficult situations.

Daughters raised in discriminatory families (and societies) discriminate against their own daughters; that is what they learned from their mothers (the family is a child’s first school). I have seen this trend continuing until a daughter (or mother) determines to stop this repetition for good.

When I first came to know about the female circumcision performed routinely in some African and Middle Eastern societies, I was appalled! I was disturbed even more when I read that mothers in those countries not only allow the removal of their daughters’ clitoris but also encourage it. I thought, "how can a mother tolerate such an act of violence?" Then, as I got familiar with other kinds of family violence around the world, I noticed that mothers in many households customarily treat their daughters very unfairly.

There are many reasons why mothers routinely discriminate against their daughters. Among others, here are a few:

1) Lack of self confidence (lack of emotional intelligence, asserted by Daniel Goleman, et al.) in mothers seems to be one of the major contributing factors giving rise to family violence situations. To be confident, girls need to be able to evaluate, control and manage their own as well as others’ emotions around them. Unfortunately, not many families allow their girls to assert these notions.

2) Most girls are taught to ‘serve’ others first then only take care of their own concerns, while most boys are used to being served first. This was working when the works were distinctly divided based on gender before the industrial era. But time has changed! Now, men and women both work outside and inside their home (although there is still a huge wage gap between them). However, most families are not caught up with these new phenomena. This is another root cause of some family violence.

3) When one member of the family (either husband or wife) exerts too much power and manage to get his/her away all the time, the other one feels left out and used. This seems to be another cause for family violence occurring. Therefore, ability of mothers to love themselves and be able to include their needs on the family’s ‘priority ‘list seems to help, not hinder, in preventing family violence.

4) This is still a man’s world. No matter which part of the world they live in, they’re living within a male-dominated society. Men make rules and break them. Most women simply follow those rules either because they don’t think they can break the conventional rules or they do so to keep peace in their household. Fighting against well-rooted (systemic) discrimination takes a lot of courage that most women don’t have.

Even the very few who have that kind of courage would hesitate to go out in public with their stories simply because they know that they wouldn’t have the kind of support they need to win their case. Since they live within a male-dominated society, what can they expect?

Surprisingly, when discovering women in abusive situations, not only most men but also most women turn a blind eye. The predators know this. Because of this, when there is a conflict at work, the boss always wins. Within a family, the woman takes the blame automatically (in most household).

It seems to be true, also, that most households are together because of the women belonging to those families. If the woman in the household tolerates or uses prudent tactics to keep her family together, the husband takes the credit. On the other hand, if the woman is unwilling or unable to keep the family together, the family members go their separate ways and the woman gets the blame.

That is being said; however, I still find it hard to believe that the mother, Tooba Mohammad Yahya, with all her conscience would devise a plan to murder her own daughters. If she did plan, was she forced to put her “priority” straight; I wonder?

Mia Farrow's story

It was closed to 1A.M when I finished reading Mia Farrow’s memoir, “What Falls Away”  last night. I didn't know what to make out of the book until the very end. It was kind of confusing, you know?

I must admit starting the book with some presumptions that I wouldn’t like the book. She is a celebrity, born and raised in a privileged home. This is not the kind of story I enjoy reading, I thought. But my feelings changed as each chapter progressed.

First I said, “Poor child,” when she was struck with polio at the age nine. Then her affairs with Frank Sinatra I was not impressed. At her tender age she didn’t need the love and betrayal of that manipulator, I thought.

Mr. Sinatra practically wrapped her around in his thumb. He was using her as his spare shoe, called her in his place and visited her when he needed. Asking her to sign a divorce paper she had not even read was preposterous! I pitied Mia for her inability to stand up for herself.

After all the anguish with Sinatra, she fell in André Previn’s trap. “She is so shallow. She can’t control herself when she sees rich and famous men; what for?,” was question. I was angry with her!

I had lost complete respect for Mia by the time I read her marrying the eccentric bully, Woody Allen.  Her inability to keep her adopted baby girl (Soon-Yi) away from his sexual touch angered me a lot!

I also thought it was very immature of her to keep adopting so many children when her own personal security was in jeopardy. “What is she trying to prove?” “Was she trying to create a human-shield for herself, so that nobody can hurt her anymore?” I accused her.

Then, I went on searching for more of her stories to make some sense out of her life and legacy. The more I came to know her, her desire and the devotion for her biological as well as the adopted children, the more respect grew in me for her.

She was a child of immigrant parents. She grew up watching her parents’ struggles and triumphs in trying to establish their new lives in the adopted country, USA. Her parent’s short-lived fame and fortune had introduced her to the world of rich and famous life-style. She had learned to admire the ‘privileged’ people, not knowing exactly what lay underneath their pretentious lives.

Her sense of righteousness seems to have sprung from Dr. King’s “Letter from Birmingham jail”, a response to the clergymen’s “A Call for Unity” in 1963. But her passion for love and her need to be compassionate seemed to have grown out of her own insecurity at home and from her unstable marriages, in my opinion.

My concluding thoughts about Mia are that she is a woman who always longed for love but there was none for her when she needed the most. She understood the futility of life, perhaps more than others. Loving the destitute (kids) provided her the redemption and salvation she needed so badly since she was a child.

My favorite paragraph from her memoir:

“I’ve often thought how presump- tuous I was – to assume that I could be good enough to be the person that all of them need...”. “I just knew that … it’s a philosophical question: if you walk by a pond and there’s a baby drowning, are you allowed to walk by the pond? Well, people are walking by the pond all the time.”