There are many people in our lives, whom we treat like objects. Can you guess who are they? Well I’ve been thinking about this topic for quite long. And I concluded that they are our maids/servants, small children and celebrities. They all are quite contrary to each other but if we analyse our nature a bit, we’ll find out that we treat them like they don’t have any feelings or emotions. Let’s take the first one:
Maids, servants – We all have maids in our houses to help us with our daily chores. We wait for them to arrive soon so that they can clean our house, wash our clothes, do the utensils and all the other stuff. Obviously they get paid for their work. But unfortunately if one day that maid asks for an advance (in case of an emergency), all our big hearted ness disappears. Whether that maid is working for us from the last one year or so. We can give donations to those NGOs, which we have never seen or visited. But if our poor maid asks for help, we become suspicious. Why?
This is the case with our temporary maids and if we have permanent help then the case becomes even more difficult. We think that they are the robots and we have purchased them from the market. Here I’m sharing an incident I saw on TV recently. And believe me I got so shocked to see it that what are we doing?
Today we all keep domestic help through placement agencies. Without knowing what these “so called” placement agencies are all about. In that incident it was shown that people from placement agencies, who are originally from villages, once they settled down in metropolitan cities, they go back to their villages to spot innocent girls, who has big dreams of going to bigger cities and live a luxurious life. Gradually they lure these girls to come along with them. They show them the greener side of life and make them to run with them by saying that they will get married after going to (suppose) Delhi. When they come to Delhi, the person tell this girl to work for sometime as a domestic help. And lie to her that he will be back after a week. On the other hand he talks to the owner of that particular house that this girl is an orphan and doesn’t have anybody in life. He sold that girl to that family in 25 thousand rupees to be kept as a “Bandhua Mazdoor”. The truth is something else, that girl is the youngest daughter of her parents and has been brought up by love & affection of her family. The only misery in her life was that she has been born into a poor family and dared to dream big.
That family made that twelve year old girl, work day & night for them. She did all the cooking, cleaning of their house, wash their clothes etc. etc. The couple had two daughters, almost of that girl’s age, but they treat their daughters as kids, on the contrary they were blind towards that maid’s childhood and dreams. Why?
We don’t have any idea how many girls are living like this, may be in our own neighbourhood.
What do you have to say about it?
Now let’s take the second case of small children (from their birth to their infancy, approximate the age of two to three years).
When we talk in front of a baby, we treat him/her as a toy, as if he doesn’t have ears or he doesn’t understand anything. When we talk something or make any funny sound and if the baby smiles or laughs, we say,” Dekho hans raha hai”, (look he is smiling). Arrey, obviously when elders are also smiling at this funny sound then why don’t that baby would smile?
We pull baby’s soft cheeks or sometimes squeeze him, again we treat him as a toy.
If we do gossip in front of a baby, we should always keep it in mind that he has been born in our family, he is accustomed to everybody, he is unable to speak but that doesn’t mean at all that he is not understanding whatever you are saying.
We talk to the baby in a childish language, “allele… Mela baby kya kal laha hai”. Which should be,” are mera baby kya kar raha hai”. (hey, what my baby is doing)
I bet the baby would must have been smiling at this, in his mind. He must be thinking look; am I the baby or they?
I hope you will agree with me on this point also.
Now the celebrities: We all have been brought up watching Bollywood movies. I remember we always used to talk about every film star by his name, irrespective of his age. And with a sentence like; Amitabh Bachchan mera favourite star hai, not,”Mr. Amitabh Bachchan mere favourite star hain”. (Mr. Bachchan is my favourite star).
We all are always interested in what is happening in any famous film star’s house, whether we don’t know even our neighbour’s name. Why? Don’t you think they all are also equally human beings like us.
And when it comes to gossiping; all the boundaries crossed. We never think, even for a minute that everybody has a privacy and that privacy should be respected. Thanks to media for that, to exploit their privacy. Can we imagine a day of a film star who is always in the lime light because of the gossips made about him by the media (mostly).
And due to this habit of gossiping we take them for granted, we think they are objects, they don’t get hurt by rude or sarcastic comments. We can read many examples of this in the newspapers where it’s mentioned how a film star arrived at the airport or somewhere else and how the crowd misbehaved with him/her.
Well friends this is the end of this article. And these are my point of views. I hope many of you will agree with me. Do let me know your views.
Thanks and have a great day!!!
Medhavi
