Malala Yousafzai Speaks at UN

Years from now, I don't want to have to search hard to find this speech. I want to be able to find it in my own blog and replay it.

It is tough finding a speech that inspires by being genuine. Decades ago, we used to look upon figures like Mandela and Mother Theresa as awe-inspiring, purely by their deeds. Today, we are dependent on media-PR services to tell us that the best options that Indians have are enigmas and polarising figures like Rahul Gandhi, Narendra Modi, Mamata Banerjee or Sharad Pawar. Honestly, do you expect to see any of these people make such a speech ever in the UN?

On one hand, you have our famed prime ministerial candidates who are incapable of speaking to the country directly and need their stooges to come on news channels to speak for them and defend their actions; on the other a 16 year old girl living in an area with horrible human rights conditions, who was shot in the head at point blank range and still got up to give a speech a year later in front of the leaders of over a hundred and twenty nations on her 16th birthday.

Think about it... what were you doing on your 16th birthday?

I have written about her a year ago... about the concept of 'Ideas being Bulletproof' first drawn in the pages of Alan Moore's 1982 graphic novel 'V for Vendetta'. I still stand by those words. But now, as an addendum, I find the words from the 2013 superhero movie just as suitable for this girl.

"You will give the people an ideal to strive towards. 

They will race behind you, they will stumble, they will fall. 

But in time, they will join you in the sun. 

In time, you will help them accomplish wonders." 

 - Superman: Man of Steel.

This girl whose struggle against the Taliban for the right to read a textbook started at the age of 12 has proven that every superhero does not need to wear a shiny cape or fly over tall buildings to fight injustice in the world. It's a lesson we would do well to remember.
Someday, hopefully, we will be lucky enough to find one such person in our population of a billion who we all look up to for their deeds instead of their heritage or PR-image... someone who will indeed give us an ideal to strive towards.