Mearl Colaco

As a woman I am devastated that in this age when women are working harder to achieve the unachievable, in areas of education, sports, politics, service sectors, science and technology, they also face routine abuse both mentally and physically. Today a 23-year old medical student lost her life after a thirteen-day battle against physical injuries inflicted on her. She was a girl like any girl next door, who woke up one fine morning, left home to watch a movie, but sadly never returned. She wanted to live like any twenty-three year old youth with aspirations to make it big…someone who wanted to live an exciting life ahead. But her battered body asked her to give-up her fight to live. She was called a gang-rape victim in death. She was severely beaten, gang-raped and thrown out of a moving bus.  Even wild animals are so well-behaved. What has happened to sections of society in my India? How can they commit such insensitive inhumane crimes?  If I was in India today, perhaps I...

The world is battered and ailing with terrorism of a different kind. The terrorism of gun shooting incidents, in which, an individual who has been living a normal life like one of us suddenly comes out on a mass shooting rampage killing people randomly is hard to fathom? Today public areas, educational institutes, and places of worship have become places that we fear going to. What if? Is the question we ask ourselves? What if, someone comes on a rampage while we are enjoying a film? What if someone puts the gun to our head while we are attentively sitting in a class and taking down notes? What if someone creates a chaos while we are praying at a temple or a church? What if….and my list goes on?   I’m not a mother, but I am a daughter, a grand-daughter, and a sister of my parents, my grand-parents and my siblings, and I exactly know how it feels to lose a loved one. Even more, it pains, when victims of these gruesome mass shootings are six and seven year olds who don’t unders...