Shah Faesal is an Indian Administrative Services Officer who also happens to be the first Kashmiri to top the UPSC Civil Services Examination. (Photo: Facebook)

Gender equality has still a far way to go in a country where so many girls are still killed even before they are born. In such a toxic environment, a woman’s basic freedoms can be seen as threatening fragile notions of so-called masculinity. An IAS officer recently shared on Facebook how the malaise of misogyny has not spared even educated sections of society.

Shah Faesal is an Indian Administrative Services Officer who also happens to be the first Kashmiri to top the UPSC Civil Services Examination. He recently wrote about how he received a resignation letter from a woman who had not cited any particular reason for leaving her job. But what happened next exposed the reality of the patriarchal mindset in our society.

Here are a few excerpts from his post:

The resignation letter had reached me by post, in a neat yellow envelop tagged personal, and addressed to me by name. It was typed in English. The Lady official had not given any specific reasons but just remarked that she didn't want to continue in government service anymore. In an age of job crunch someone quitting a government job came as a big surprise to me.
So as we do with all dak, I marked it to my next officer who marked it to next and as expected the letter went six levels down the bureaucratic value chain, to follow the same return path one day if it was so destined.
A few months passed and one day I received the file back, matter duly scrutinised, notes firmly numbered and correspondences indexed. But at the very moment while I was running through the pages, a lady crashed into my chamber pushing the door keeper aside and lunged straight towards me. I was frightened. She was yelling loudly and like a hawk she dived straight onto my table, gave a quick look at the file, and snatched it from my hand. I resisted but not to mess with a woman, I let go.
She snatched the file, tore it's pages and trampled upon it while I kept calling my assistants in. Then she sat on the floor and started crying over the shreds of paper.
I asked her to stop crying as I was unable to understand whatever she was saying, her sobs mixed with her speech. We got some water for her. I was angry and annoyed that she destroyed an official document but such was the swiftness with which it all happened that I couldn't do much. So we let her cool down and then she said.
"I have not filed this resignation. The letter was sent by my husband in my name without telling me. He is not having a job and he doesn't want me to have one. I want to work and earn for my children".
It shattered all of us. Most of us were men around and our heads dropped with shame. We knew that somewhere all men have this insecurity that they do not want their wives to outgrow and outshine them. But here was a great lesson to learn. The lady had been lucky. She got to know about it at the right moment.
Then we talked about our schools where these days girls are outperforming boys in every field. Girls schools are far more disciplined, clean, better managed than boys schools. You visit a juvenile home you will see boys only, you visit a drug rehab most of the inmates will be boys. You visit a jail, young boys are in charge. You see the mobs who are creating indiscipline on streets, it is the boys. You think of someone who is throwing stones at street-lights or spitting at the bridge-railings, it will be a boy and more often a boy with a rather awkward haircut. Boys are completely distracted. I'm talking about Kashmir but it applies to other places also.
I wonder how many fake resignation letters our future husbands will have to write on behalf of their wives, if things go on like this around us. We need to do something about it."