Skip to main content

Malala – daring to dream


With the American first family - Exactly a year ago 
Malala Yousafzai is a symbol of human aspirations.  What did she want apart from the simple things of life?  Nothing.  She wanted education, freedom to live her life as she would choose, and the space to dream.  Why didn’t people give her that? 

When she was shot point-blank as she was returning home from school, it was the innocence and aspirations of childhood that was assaulted.  Malala was just 15 years old when she became the target of religious fundamentalists.  She was a child.  Why would a child be a threat to any religion?  What kind of a religion is it that permits the murder of innocent children?  The masked Taliban gunman who attacked Malala asked, “"Which one of you is Malala? Speak up, otherwise I will shoot you all."  His religious fervour was such that he could kill a whole lot of innocent school children.  No normal human being can understand the relevance or meaning of such a religion.

“I had a terrible dream yesterday with military helicopters and the Taleban. I have had such dreams since the launch of the military operation in Swat. My mother made me breakfast and I went off to school. I was afraid of going to school because the Taleban had issued an edict banning all girls from attending schools.”  Malala wrote that in her BBC blog on 3 Jan 2009, three years before she was attacked by the Taliban. 


A girl who wishes to study, a child who wants to have dreams and not nightmares – that was Malala.  That is Malala.  She is a symbol of the dreams of every child.  The Nobel Prize Committee has done the right thing to honour her with the award.  It has drawn the attention of the world to a serious issue: the child’s right to dream.  
Labels:

Comments

  1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 13, 2014 at 9:29 AM

    And that too a little girl. She started writing as a little girl, I mean. Even 17 is not much of an age given her status now.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Devesh PrajapatiOctober 13, 2014 at 4:46 PM

    Very true sir, She is a true inspiration to girls and she showed her women power or dedication towards studies.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 13, 2014 at 9:31 PM

      She has become a mascot for the West against a certain kind of religion. But I'm not worried about the politics behind it.

      Delete
  3. Ankita October 13, 2014 at 8:10 PM

    yes, but still,I do not think she deserves a Noble prize. There are many unsung heroes who do rather this girl who has recv more applauds than she actually deserves.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 13, 2014 at 9:35 PM

      "Full many a flower is born to blush unseen and waste its sweetness on the desert air," as Thomas Grey sang. We had never heard of Kailash Satyarti until the Nobel committee discovered him. Malala is a young girl whose spirit (mettle) deserves recognition.

      Malala's case is not just about a blog or what she writes. It is about a whole lot of people suppressed and oppressed in the name of religion. The Prize draws the world's attention to that problem. That's important.

      Delete
  4. UnknownOctober 14, 2014 at 11:37 AM

    Talking about dream. It did remind me of my dream yesterday. I was reading khaled hosseini's novel "A Thousand Splendid Suns" and didn't realise when I slept and ended up dreaming. It was scary. With all the Taliban attacks happening all over, I was scared to death. It wasn't less than a nightmare. It took me 15 minutes to get back to the reality of life. A dream left such an impact on me, imagine kids facing that everyday. They never ask for much. All they need is a place to learn and a place to play. Education is the right of every child. Malala is sure a symbol of dreams of every child.
    Nice read :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 14, 2014 at 4:55 PM

      Life in all the Muslim countries where Taliban and the like (IS, for example) are active is a nightmare. 'A Thousand Splendid Suns' shows one part of the picture. The actual picture is much worse. Hence the greater relevance of dreams. The greater need to probe into what the militant and fundamentalist organisations are doing. Malala's service is of much value in this regard.

      Delete
  5. UnknownOctober 15, 2014 at 1:07 PM

    True example and inspiration for woman power!!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

Waiting for the Mahatma

Book Review I read this book purely by chance. R K Narayan is not a writer whom I would choose for any reason whatever. He is too simple, simplistic. I was at school on Saturday last and I suddenly found myself without anything to do though I was on duty. Some duties are like that: like a traffic policeman’s duty on a road without any traffic! So I went up to the school library and picked up a book which looked clean. It happened to be Waiting for the Mahatma by R K Narayan. A small book of 200 pages which I almost finished reading on the same day. The novel was originally published in 1955, written probably as a tribute to Mahatma Gandhi and India’s struggle for independence. The edition that I read is a later reprint by Penguin Classics. Twenty-year-old Sriram is the protagonist though Gandhi towers above everybody else in the novel just as he did in India of the independence-struggle years. Sriram who lives with his grandmother inherits significant wealth when he turns 20. Hi...
9 comments
Read more

The Lights of December

The crib of a nearby parish [a few years back] December was the happiest month of my childhood. Christmas was the ostensible reason, though I wasn’t any more religious than the boys of my neighbourhood. Christmas brought an air of festivity to our home which was otherwise as gloomy as an orthodox Catholic household could be in the late 1960s. We lived in a village whose nights were lit up only by kerosene lamps, until electricity arrived in 1972 or so. Darkness suffused the agrarian landscapes for most part of the nights. Frogs would croak in the sprawling paddy fields and crickets would chirp rather eerily in the bushes outside the bedroom which was shared by us four brothers. Owls whistled occasionally, and screeched more frequently, in the darkness that spread endlessly. December lit up the darkness, though infinitesimally, with a star or two outside homes. December was the light of my childhood. Christmas was the happiest festival of the period. As soon as school closed for the...
14 comments
Read more

The Ugly Duckling

Source: Acting Company A. A. Milne’s one-act play, The Ugly Duckling , acquired a classical status because of the hearty humour used to present a profound theme. The King and the Queen are worried because their daughter Camilla is too ugly to get a suitor. In spite of all the devious strategies employed by the King and his Chancellor, the princess remained unmarried. Camilla was blessed with a unique beauty by her two godmothers but no one could see any beauty in her physical appearance. She has an exquisitely beautiful character. What use is character? The King asks. The play is an answer to that question. Character plays the most crucial role in our moral science books and traditional rhetoric, religious scriptures and homilies. When it comes to practical life, we look for other things such as wealth, social rank, physical looks, and so on. As the King says in this play, “If a girl is beautiful, it is easy to assume that she has, tucked away inside her, an equally beauti...
31 comments
Read more

A Government that Spies on Citizens

Illustration by Copilot Designer India has officially decided to keep an eagle eye on its citizens. Modi government has asked all smartphone manufacturers to preinstall a government app, Sanchar Saathi , on every phone in such a way that no citizen can ever uninstall it. The firms have been also ordered to install the app on existing phones too using software-update technology. The stated objective is to strengthen cybersecurity and protect users from fraud. The question is why any government should go out of its way to impose “security” on its citizens. For over a month now, I have been receiving a message every single day from the Government of India’s Telecom Department to install the app on my phone. I wanted to block the sender, but there is no such option. Even that message is an imposition. I don’t trust any government that imposes benefits on me. “ Beneficent beasts of prey ,” Robert Frost would call such governments. When Modi government imposes security on me, I ha...
8 comments
Read more