1. You will always be expected to understand things and never be allowed to show emotions. If you insist on exhibiting them, it will be to guys like water on duck’s back.

2. No wooing period for you. People will straight away get down to practical matters. Nothing will be offered to you on a platter. For smallest of things or what is your due, you have to fight tooth and nail.

3. Taking you for granted is guys’ birthright. Guys will never cherish you and don’t take a stand for you. They will not feel protective or have possessive bone for you. You have to fight every battle of yours alone.

4. When all the other avenues of playing will be exhausted, only then you will be remembered.

5. It will be understandable that you can always lick your wounds in silence and with dignity. No one will come to enquire about how you are coping.

6. It will be told hundredth times to you, you are not “that� type of girl wallowing in jealously.

7. You will never need sweet nothings two lines at odd times, tender moments, movies and romantic outings. You are the saner one. You are expected to behave.

8. Your hurts and heartbreaks will never be acknowledged. Making up for the past hurts is not for you! Even explaining to you is soooo boring. Yawn! Yawn! Yawn!

9. Two hoots for your inner beauty! Who needs that?

10. No flowers, cards, poems, chocolates or surprise gifts for you. They are reserved for your vivacious, sexy, flirty and attractive counterparts, who keep the competition hot and alive among the guys. Boys have to stretch themselves extra mile to remain in these gals’ RAM (but we all know it’s volatile.)

I was watching a demonstration on T.V. being held by the people from North Eastern India. They were demanding equal treatment from their Northern counterparts. To be treated equally, humanely and with dignity. Not like, “Ye Bahadur kahan se aa gaya or ye Chinki…..� This shows our level of intolerance. We can’t digest little differences in facial features and ascent. All of us have to conform to the herd (Read it hip and happening flock).
But everyone is not like us. I was reading about people of Geel, Belgium. I read one conversation between a husband and wife about this town,

“I just saw something very strange,� he (husband) said before I (wife) could speak. “A woman walking along with her hand to her ear, talking a mile a minute.�
“John, every other person here is talking on a cell phone!�
“She didn’t have a cell phone. She was talking into a black sandal. No one else even glanced her way.�
People behaving in strange manner on road, malls and in homes are ignored affectionately.

For many centuries, this town is caring for the mentally challenged persons. Even Nazis couldn’t break the community resolve to accept the mentally challenged as one of their own! The Nazis left the mentally ill in Geel untouched, unharmed and in peace, elsewhere they were not so lucky but executed along with Jews.

The family foster care for mentally challenged in this small town of Belgium started with the legend of a princess, who refused to marry her own father. The father got senile after the death of his beloved wife and wanted the look-alike daughter to take her place. The daughter fled to Geel. But ultimately she was caught and executed by soldiers, her father had sent. She was considered as the patron saint of the mentally ill. For centuries, they visited her shrine to seek her blessings. The villagers of Geel took in one or a few mentally ill people as a foster family indefinitely. The tradition still continues.

Mentally ill persons, who face rejection as a norm, indifference and callous attitude of society as their fate, find acceptance here. A normal home and where their being “special� doesn’t draw extra attention.

Do we really believe (forget about practicing) that God is everywhere? By respecting human beings we are honoring God Himself? I think we only recite or read Geeta from our throats not from our hearts. That’s why we see the lack of practical manifestations of its good teachings in almost every walk of life.