Speak Up

Written by Surpreet Singh Dhingra
Leadership Open Elective taught by Jibrael Jos
Nov 2018 at Christ University

My grand mother belongs to a typical punjabi family rooted in Pakistan Punjab. She is a very calm and understand. He is capable of holding the joint family together. She has in total 7 children and she managed their upbringing very well. As most of the grandmothers she gives immense love to her grandchildren.

 My grand mother inspires me in many ways and one incident with her that inspired me is unforgettable. My grand mother is a person who can never tolerate anything bad or unethical being done by anyone . Once I heard voices of a women shouting from my neighborhood. Shouts were of a women when her husband was beating her after consuming alcohol. The reason for beating her up was that he did not like the dinner made by her. The man started abusing his wife and her family. This women being very weak couldn’t utter a word in front of her husband and quietly got beating from him. Usually this happens in our society because women are not well educated to feed themselves and their children are completely depend on their husbands for living. This is the reason even that women couldn’t protect herself and kept silent. Suddenly I heard my grand mother’s voice in between and I came in shock. I rushed to the balcony and saw that my grandmother went to the neighbors house to stop this inhuman activity. The shouted at the man badly and even threatened him about calling the police if he attempted any kind of violence again ever. It was surprising for me because there were many men around but no one came forward to save that women. After all my grandmother stood with her and even that cruel man did not utter a word in front of my grandmother.

The next day, that women secretly came to my grandmother and thanked my grandmother for what she did for her. My grandmother told her to never stay quiet and suffer torture and also make her realized her importance in this world. My grandmother's few words made that women feel strong and gave her strength to live life independently. This might not be related to me in any case but still my grandmother Indirectly influenced me to never stay quiet when it’s the time to speak up. I learnt that we need to take initiative to bring about change in the society that we want to see.