Days of our lives

The significance attached to Women’s Day is beyond me, nor for that matter do I subscribe to any of the other new-fangled Days that seem to have suddenly sprung up in the past few years. This may have to do with my upbringing in India, which already has a calendar chock-full of ethnic and religious holidays without needing to observe these rootless, often meaningless, international Days.

To begin with, I find that the ways in which ‘Women’s Day’ is celebrated often cause it to deteriorate into ‘Patronize Women Day’, which (I hope) is the opposite of the original intention. In my office, for example, there is a contest in which male employees perform skits demonstrating the spirit of Women’s Day – whatever that is. If done purely for fun this would be ok, even enjoyable. However, this is intended to be seen as a mark of respect for women.
Why don’t we have days on which women employees hold similar skits in honour of men? Is that because men ARE to be honoured and respected by default? That’s a given, is it? But ‘honouring’ women, now that’s a special deed, to be done on a special, internationally recognized day! Women who feel good about this are what Scott Adams calls induhviduals. (Disclaimer: I am not a feminist; I am normal. I just believe that the protocols of behaviour between the sexes should be reciprocal.)

Of course, here I am referring only to the empowered class of working women belonging to urban areas. The deprived, underprivileged woman is out of scope of this discussion – she has more serious problems to tackle and is probably unaware of an international Day dedicated to her.

I don’t have any suggestions to offer as better ways of celebrating Women’s Day. I am looking for reasons why this day was invented in the first place. Just as reservations or quotas for ‘backward’ communities actually insult the merit of the reserved category, special days for otherwise normal people makes them look non-mainstream, if you get my drift.
Similarly, the concept of Mothers’ Day and Fathers’ Day is absurd. Ditto for Valentine’s Day. So you want to make someone feel good and dedicate a day solely to meeting that objective. Why not simply remember their birthday and celebrate that? A birthday is something everyone is quite literally born with, and therefore much more individual and special than a randomly selected Day that clubs you with everyone from your ‘category’.

It’s merely a question of getting back to basics.

(Disclaimer2: My sincere thanks to those who sent me their well-meaning wishes on Women’s Day, I appreciate the sentiment. I just happen to be an annoying habitual nitpicker :))