He came to know through some of his FB friends about the help that we provide for men suffering from legal terrorism (terrorism from false 498a, DV, maintenance and many more different gender-biased laws). It was like any other false 498a case where all the family members including his mother and sister were detained by police for one week. He sounded very depressed while he tried to convince me hard that his family is innocent. Before I have given any solution I said –

– I can help you in two ways, one – sympathize with you and immediately give you some tips and tricks and you will get immediate relief and two – a tough solution that will be very difficult for you to digest. Which one do you want?

Needless to mention that he has chosen the first one. He was very depressed and in that state of mind that was the obvious choice. So I continued –

– See, in the first solution, you may get immediate relief but in the long run, it may not help you. You may have to come back to me or someone else for help again. Also, your advocate can arm-twist you in future.

– I did not understand.

– I mean, the easy solution will only give you temporary relief but you will still feel what you are feeling today after a few days. It is like patch up work, will not last long.

Obviously, he was completely at a loss and I unanimously decided that I will provide the permanent solution to him. He agreed, half-hearted though. So I continued –

– Good. Now I will ask you a few questions and you need to give correct answers to me. I don’t who you are, where you live etc. so these should not matter to you. Are you ok?

– Yes. He replied

– Good. Understand this in any false criminal case they need to prove their allegations with evidence but before I get into your case specifically I will ask some different questions.

– Ok

I asked him to give me some examples of work they have done for women causes. He was glad to answer that. In a nutshell, what he mentioned was his family has always fought for women’s rights in the country. Not only they were against dowry but also against other menaces. He and his sister were two foremost protesters after Delhi and Mumbai rape cases. They have done all possible ways of protest on social networking sites, commenting on newspaper articles, rallying, participating in walks, run…whatnot.

I was very particular to know the details so I probed deep into their activities for women’s causes. No doubt they respected women throughout their life. So I asked –

– So you have respected women in your life?

– Yes, very much. I have always educated everyone around us to do that.

– …and have you ever demanded respect for yourself or any other men?

He was at a loss with this question. He never realized that men would need extra respect than they get today. So he said –

– No. I mean, where is the need for the same? Men are not looked as sex objects right. – he tried to justify.

– So respect is only needed if someone is looked as sex objects? – I asked

– Yes, I mean that is the idea behind it.

– Ok, so when you asked respect for women, you didn’t demand respect for your grandma?

He was again at a loss. Obviously, he wanted his grandmother to be respected as well but didn’t know how to react to my question. So he asked –

– Yes, I did. But how is it related to my case?

– Wait, your case will come later. You need to correct a few things even before we get there. So now you say ‘sex objects’ is not a valid reason to respect women, right?

– Yes, I mean in general we need to respect all women.

– Good, so you mean men including you do not need any respect.

– No, I did not mean that..

– But you have demanded only ‘Respect Women’ NOT ‘Respect people’

– But everyone can’t be respected, how can we respect thieves, murderers, swindlers..that is wrong

– So you mean women can’t be thieves, murderers, and swindlers?

He had no clue what I was talking about and why the hell this kind of time wastage when all he wanted was some tips and tricks to tackle his case. Since he was not able to understand anything, I have asked him to go through all articles on this blog and come back to me after one week of study. I have also cautioned that he needed to raise/mark questions if anything is not clear to him or is difficult for him to understand.

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