We are a land where female deities are worshiped as well as acknowledged with utmost faith and love. In our celebrated festivals like Durga Puja etc. we leave no stone unturned to pick the most adorn statues as we cherish the beauty and art which a female body is blessed with. Yet somehow, we see these same bodies becoming a matter of acceptance in the ongoing society. Sadly, all women are not goddesses. They are normal human beings who are still expected to confine their faces and sentiments inside a veil. There’s a stigma associated with the female body in our society, the same female body that gives birth and breastfeeds an infant. What is the blemish ideology behind this stigma is still hard to understand but let’s thank our ancestors who failed to value the real-life goddesses.
Breast Cancer which over the years have become a significant matter of worry is still discussed among people with anxieties. The statistics are alarming and one very major cause adjoining this fact is lack of awareness among the society. Women suffering from Breast Cancer themselves find it inappropriate to talk and discuss the disease with people because they are tamed in a way to believe that female body is a myth. They have been preached to see their own sexual organs with disregard. And if we talk about the rural area, the conditions are even worse. People hesitate to talk about the disease just because a female sexual organ is related to it and most of them are not even aware of the basic test “mammogram” that is needed to detect Breast Cancer. Like any normal x-ray, it also comprises the very same process of x-raying the breasts but we hardly hear people talking about it.
In order to enhance the services available to cure breast cancer which undergoes deep crises in our country, we have to make people address the issue on a large scale. Where we see countries like the UK pondering over the issue in the most critical way, we also see India not providing proper platforms to conduct research on breast cancer. Most of the deaths around Breast Cancer is due to the secrecy which people wish to maintain and not coming openly to seek treatment for the same. If the situation continues to remain the same, the results can be catastrophic.
~ Aimen Zaki
