\"You've got to have a dream. When you lose your dream, you die. We have so many people walking around who are dead and don't even know it.\" - Story of Rose.

This is the philosophy of my life. Dreams are things that cannot be censored. Something no one can limit you from having or punish you for them. No one can even know what your dreams are because to share your dream is your wish. So, if I dream of riding a horse to gallop away in the deserts of the Sahara, no one can laugh at me or raise an incredible brow. No one can stop you from dreaming. It is as simple as that. Dreams are goals you set for yourself and with determination, can seek to reach.

My personal vision of life is to keep on dreaming. I dreamt of doing my Ph.D. for 40 years. When I finally could manage to finish it, the question after the normal euphoria was - what next? A close friend complimented me when I said this. She wrote back - \"typical of you - always reaching out beyond the horizon. \" That was an exaggeration of course, but it made my day and shaped my future. Or rather, dreaming about my future. I visualise a future where there will be complete equality between the sexes and no girl-child or female foetus will be aborted the way it is in many parts of my country today. No girl's parents will be burdened by dowry demands or bride price for 'giving' the daughter away. How can anyone 'give' a human being away? Even slavery was an exchange process that involved money, goats, cattle, gold, et al.

No girl will be forced to make choices she does not care for or against her personal wish such as getting or not getting married, divorced, separated, remarried or just to remain single. No girl will have to face discriminaton on account of the colour of her skin, the boneliness or fatness of her figure, the flatness of her nose or the squint in her eyes.

I hope to achieve this as a Pulsewire correspondent by highlighting incidents of such sexist discrimination in my country that happens everyday. It is my way of reaching out to my sisters on Pulswire who may not be completely aware of the position of women in my country. I am an educated, fully employed and independent urban woman. But am I really independent? Can I walk back home alone at 11.00 pm in the night without looking over my shoulder to fiind out whether I am being followed or not? Becoming a correspondent is also a continuous learning process, a process of discover and self-discovery that is dotted with surprises at the end of every sentence and the beginning of each paragraph. I discover this even as I am writing my fourth assignment ex tempore, spontaneously putting out my thoughts to share with others out there reading this.

How do I hope to achieve this by writing for WORLD PULSE? The answer to this question lies in these two words, WORLD and PULSE. I am dreaming of a better world and where else can I hope to realise my dream unless I address the women of the world who are members of world pulse.

Pulse means a sub-pumping station of the heart within every living human body. Metaphorically speaking, Just like the doctor fiinds out what is wrong with his patient by feeling the patient's pulse, the PULSE in WORLD PULSE will help me feel the pulse of my sisters across the world just as they will be able to feel the pulse of Indian women through my writing. My writings as a columnist will be the PULSE and the people who will be reading them and who I will be addressing is my WORLD.

It will be my alternate avenue of writing, of letting off steam, of drawing attention to things about women that need attention, to little-known and shocking truths like the ugly crime of incest that is pervadiing our world at this point, and hoping that, if dreams are to be believed, I will continue to dream even after I die.