"You know I wear Jeans and top in regular days and when
we have meeting with government I either wear kurta or saree" said one of
my friend who works in Danish Embassy and studying Women's Studies. I immediately
reacted and said" really, why?" She smiled and said "When I wore
jeans and top they called me Manju, when I was in kurta they called me Manjuji
and when I was in saree they called me Manju madam and behaved
accordingly". I remember the very day when my boss called me adding
"ji" in my name. I was so surprised because she usually calls me only
with my name. Well, usually I wear jeans and top and that day I was wearing
Kurta. It sounds funny but most of us might have experience this. Our cloth
defining the level of respect we receive.
In Nepali society we have tradition to respect elders. Age
and respect are directly proportional to each other, aren't they? And this is
true for most of the women/girls that we do look older when we wear kurta and
saree comparative to jeans. But my question is, are knowledge, skill, capacity
and most importantly attitude based on how mature we look? Is it fair to change
the level of respect towards a person according to her dress up?
A three years of girl was raped by her own father, a four
years of girl was raped by her own uncle, a 16 years of girl was burnt by her
own parents and relatives, many women are being killed by her own husband and
family, more than 3749 cases of domestic violence were filed during 16 Days
Activism Against Gender Based Violence in Nepal ( Kantipur daily), these are
the news we heard and sadly it is becoming very common now a days. So, what
should we do respect age or attitude?
In the episode of child sexual abuse in "Satya Meva
Jayate", a very famous and one of my personal favorite show in Indian T.V
hosted by actor Amir Khan, a participant in the end of the program said we
should respect the attitude of the person not his/her age, if we continue
respecting age this kind of crime will never end.
