CHECKING CRIME: WOMAN AS A STABILIZING FACTOR FOR THE FAMILY

Women are a great stabilizing factor in the family. It is because they are loyal to the home, and they are also committed to their kids. Men may deviate from these duties, but a woman never takes her eyes away from her children. If a woman wants that the man she marries should have property, it is less because of her own protection and more because she is trying to secure the future of her offspring.  The idea of home making is integral to the vision of being a woman, not only giving birth to kids, and giving them good education –but also giving them a stable home.

It is a common passion among working women too, who have to stretch themselves too far, to work outside, and then, look for the comfort of the family members too.  These days, reacting to the need of the fast households, there are companies like Zomato and Swiggy who provide food items, saving the women from the arduous work in the kitchen, yet these options are not easy. They provide food cooked for business purposes, and eaten without any sense of love or attachment. It is just to satisfy the hunger, reducing the act of eating to a mere physical activity.

We forget that like air that we breathe in, and water on which we live, food too has around it an aura of divinity. We must thank the elements for the food that is available to us. But, this sense of thankfulness is departing. Readymade foodstuffs leave a layer of toxicity, not only in the stomach, but also in our minds. The members of the household remain under stress, or suffer from the malfunctioning of the body parts. This is food stuff, not food. Perhaps, it is time we understand what it means to cook, and what it means to eat with passion and desire.

It is important to look at the criminal side of the story. In the parlance of the law, it is said that all the conflicts arise from three things: Jar [wealth] Joru[Wife] Zameen[Land]. I think that in a home, where women are not present, or where their prime position is undermined, an environment of instability and mental depravity is created. All the criminals who are seen at work with gangsters are people, who have no families, and who quench their urges by going to the red light areas, or they have keeps, who are after their money.

The birth of a daughter even in the family of a gangster sets him thinking.  There are men who are running around the wedlock for the extra marital, or even for wealth creation through ulterior means, but women often stop them from these activities, and, in turn,  get beaten up. Although it is an event from a film, Naam Shabana, but the incident is worth quoting. Shabana’s, [played Tapsi Pannu,   father was a drunkard, and an evil character, who would come home and beat his wife black and blue. Shabana had actually killed her father, trying to save her mother from his bashing. It happens and crime burgeons where men do not listen to the women, who want a life of stability.

I am talking of this stabilizing impact of a woman in the family who loves her offspring, and wants her man to keep away from drugs and drinks, and even from red light areas. They have a preservative mind set. And they suffer, when they confront their menfolk, because men, in the patriarchal society, threaten them with divorce. They are silenced. But, try to impart their values to their sons and daughters. I wonder if I have reason to believe that all that is good, beautiful and lasting, in society has something to do with the presence of the woman.

Apart from what is happening in our society as a result of financial dislocation of families, and the evils of capitalism and materialism affecting the wedlock, those who go for marriage go for a life of steady relationship. And, if a daughter is born, it gives greater stability to the home. If we want to curb the bane of corruption and crime in our society, the most important institution that needs to be strengthened is family, love and faith.

Dr. Jernail S. Anand, with 200 books to his credit [19 epics] is a Chandigarh-based top ranking presence in the contemporary world literature, a polymath, and a vital architect of the 21st century ethical literature whose seminal work ‘Lustus: The Prince of Darkness’ challenges the moral complacency of our era.  Founding President of the International Academy of Ethics, and Laureate of Charter of Morava [Serbia], Seneca [Italy], Franz Kafka [Germany, Ukraine, Czeck Rep] and Maxim Gorky [Russia] Soka Ikeda and Mahakavi Bharati (India) Awards, his name is inscribed on the Poets’ Rock in Serbia.