A Tale of Two Aishas.

Aisha.
This beautiful name of Arabic origin means "alive", or "she who lives".

Two Aishas dominated the news this weekend, for two very different reasons.

Let's start with the trivial. The Sonam Kapoor-Abhay Deol starrer Aisha.

(First thoughts as I see this-BIMBOS!)
Why I even choose to write about this Bollywood chick flick is because it is supposedly an adaption of the Jane Austen classic, Emma.
And Emma, is one of the very few classics I can read and re-read forever, and then some.
Now, Bollywood(yes,I will call it that, calling it cinema is like calling fungi beautiful) churns out, at the very least 500 films a year. Is asking for one half-decent movie a year too much? That too, when the story you're drawing inspiration from has been around for the past 185 years. But I see the trailers and all I see is bright hair accessories and trendy shoes and silly dance moves.
This movie has got 2 stars out of 5. Who is surprised?

As a general thumb rule, I don't like watching movie adaptations of books. But tickets have already been booked for this evening by my parents.(I think.) Understandably, my expectations are zero.
I shall concentrate on my caramel popcorn and jumbo Coke in the worst case scenario that we actually do go. :P


Moving on now. To a way less glamorous Aisha.
Bibi Aisha, her name is.

The face on the cover of Time magazine is graceful, serene and unimaginably maimed. The heart-shaped hole where 18-year-old Aisha's nose should be is a mark of justice, Taliban style.

I'm pasting here the New York Times account of her horrific experience.

"At age 12, Aisha and her younger sister were given to the family of a Taliban fighter in Oruzgan Province under a tribal custom for settling disputes, known as “baad.” Aisha’s uncle had killed a relative of the groom to be, and according to the custom, to settle the blood debt her father gave the two girls to the victim’s family.

Once Aisha reached puberty, she was married to the Taliban fighter, but since he was in hiding most of the time, she and her sister were housed with the in-laws’ livestock and used as slaves, frequently beaten as punishment for their uncle’s crime.

Aisha fled the abuse, but her husband tracked her down in Kandahar a year ago, took her back to Oruzgan, and on a lonely mountainside cut off her nose and both ears and left her bleeding. She said she still did not remember how she managed to walk away to find help.

In Pashtun culture, a husband who has been shamed by his wife is said to have lost his nose, Ms. Naderi explained; from the husband’s point of view, he would have been punishing Aisha in kind."


I write this knowing fully well that Taliban-infested Afghanistan is home to a million more such Aishas. After all, 90% of the country's female population is banned from access to education, 97% women in the country show signs of severe depression and thousands are abducted, raped and killed indiscriminately. Reducing women to mere objects, the minister of education says, "It's like having a flower or a rose. You water it and keep it at home for yourself, to look at and smell it. It [a woman] is not supposed to be taken out of the house to be smelled." The plight of women, as stated by another Taliban leader, is that "there are only two places for Afghan women - in her husband's house, and in the graveyard."

From where does one even begin to comprehend the depth and and deep-rooted nature of extremism prevalent in the country? For heaven's sake, we are talking about a country's economy that is driven by its opium and hashish production and export.
And the U.S.A, for all its good intentions, must understand that unless the country decides to pull itself out of the medieval ages, no amount of war will change the sheer depravity of the mainstream figures in that country,be it terrorists, the government or civilians.

Bibi Aisha is travelling to the U.S. for reconstructive surgery this week. As the brave survivor puts it herself, “I don’t know if it will help other women or not, I just want to get my nose back.” 
This is the story of Aisha, eloquently, the girl who lives.


"It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known."
- Charles Dickens, last line from A Tale of Two Cities