THE VICTIM

The year was 2009 and I had just finished my 11th grade exams. It was a typical day number one of the vacation. I woke up late, sat in front of the T.V with my brush in my mouth for more than 20 minutes trying to catch the latest film releases that summer, got yelled at by my mom for being late for breakfast, followed by home-made “panta-bhat”(Bengali dish) for brunch. As I gobbled up whole panta-bhat, I breathed freedom. I was at home and this meant that I did not have to wash my plate. I lazily walked into the drawing room as I noticed my best buddy (shweta) and my mom sitting together ….

I flopped myself on chair in eager to catch up on their conversation. It was then that I noticed the weirdness in the air. My friend looked perplexed. I was just a curious guy so I pressed shweta to spit it out. And thus, she began.(not in front of my mother but in coffee house).

A brief introduction; my mom ran a non-government organization (NGO) that had worked on some projects to provide free education to kids under 14 years, employment to single mothers, etc. She also participated in some sort of “women counselling” program where she did a lot from abc to xyz. Basically, she was all for women rights. 

“There is old three year girl, this kid from the nearby village (bamheta). She is in the hospital. I’m going to see her this evening”, she said.
“What is wrong with her?”
“She was raped two nights ago”
My mind went blank for almost 60 seconds. I was 17 years old. This kind of stuff was not too much for me to take at this stage but still “badha ajeeb sa laga”. But my friend continued.
“She doesn’t have a father. She was sleeping outside, on a cot, in between her mother and her grandmother. (Summers in GHAZIABAD were really hot and most people slept on their terrace) This man came along, he was drunk. He picked up the little girl from in between those two women and carried her to the dumpster at a distance, threw her on a pile of garbage, thrust his shirt in her mouth and raped her. It was only 15 minutes later that her grandmother woke up and found her granddaughter missing and went looking for her. She heard muffled screams at a distance and gave out a shrill cry at what she saw. Of course rapist ran away but only after the grandmother got a good look at his face.”
“She is very sick. The sick, drunken bastard bit her all over, on her vagina and it was bleeding uncontrollably. He happens to be the BLOCK PRAMUKH’’s son so we have tracked him down. Me and my friends want justice for the little girl. 

Do you want to go to the hospital with me?”

I was numb and disgusted. A three year old girl! What kind of a demon does that.

She was tiny, with several bandages on her elbows, knees and forehead. My friend’s mother was there and she went to talk to the little girl’s mother, trying to comfort her, and telling her that they had found him. I was very uneasy. I did what I do with most kids, gave my index finger to her to hold. She didn’t take it. She was expressionless, and just started and started and stared, into some sort of emptiness above my head. I wondered if she could even fathom what had happened to her. I wondered if she would grow up to forget this incident. I shuddered and wondered about the society we are living in.
She hadn’t moved for more than 10 minutes now. She was wearing a bottle green frock. A doctor came in to examine her. He moved up to her to lift her frock and see if the wounds on her vagina were healing. The second he touched her frock, she became violent. She started to fight off the doctor’s hands with all her might and was screaming so loudly that probably the entire floor could hear her now. Her mother ran forward and tried to pacify her but the little girl wouldn’t stop her terror stricken cries until the doctor left her room. Her mom was all tears said that she had been doing this. The kid wouldn’t let anyone examine her vaginal wounds. My friend’s mother pacified her mother and asked if the little girl had shown any signs of speech. Then she turned to me and explained that the girl could speak really well. She had even started going to the local nursery free-education program. But the incident had muted her. The doctors couldn’t tell if she had lost her voice due to the shock of the horrific incident or due to the way her neck was handled during the same. They mentioned that if it was due to shock she would eventually be able to talk again.
I ran out of the room. I cried, a lot. I cried more that night. I could not get her empty eyes and her bottle green frock out of my mind.

The rapist eventually got away. Neither was he tried at court nor was he convicted. Huh! He wasn’t even arrested. He was after all the son of the BLOCK PRAMUKH. He faked a letter from the Government Hospital that said that he had been in the hospital for the last seven days suffering from diarrhea or some shit. The police refused to issue an arrest warrant.
I have thought of that girl many times ever since. I think of her when I read about the rape of any woman, in India or otherwise. I thought of her when I read about the public molestation about a 16 year old Gawahati girl by a dozen savages, I thought of her when I read about an independent 25 year old woman in Mumbai who was assaulted and murdered by her lust-filled watchman, I thought of her when another 6 year old girl in Haryana was recently raped, and I thought of her as I watched Haryana Khap Panchayats shamelessly tell the media that the cause of such rapes is women not being married early. I thought of her when 22 year old girl is raped in Mumbai by 5 people at some old fort. And how could I forget about that delhi one.

She must be 7-8 years old now. A teenager. Does she go to school? Does she remember the brutal attack? Will she ever lead a normal life? Does she have a friends? Is she a strong and independent girl? How does our “society” treat her?  How does she feel about denied justice? And most importantly, can she TALK?
I probably will never find answers to these questions because I am like most Indians. I do nothing. After all, I have lived and grown up in a society that flops itself in front of the television every Sunday morning to watch shows that have been adapted from the epic, Ramayana, the one where the antagonist sneaks in and kidnaps a married woman against her will, in her husband’s absence, and where the protagonist rescues her from him but gives her as much respect as asking her to jump into the fire to prove her chastity and who abandons her when she is pregnant with his kids.

We live in a place where if a girl is travelling in a crowded city bus, the chance of her being molested is higher than the chance of her getting a seat before she reached her destination. Yes I am an Indian, very patriotic, and stood up every time I sung Jana Gana Mana and all that, but deep within, I know that my country shouldn’t  be famous just for its diversity, curry, and snake charmers. I am not saying that the Western countries are the crime-free nations. Yes, there were molestation, rapes, bomb blasts and a high crime rate at that. But then, there is something different here. I don’t know what exactly it is. The best I could say is that it is the sense of freedom which I personally feel.

A girl could go and watch a film without being afraid of someone groping her body parts in the dark. She could go and have an ob/gyn exam without feeling exploited. She could go shopping without having to fear hidden cameras in the fitting rooms. She could cross the road, and walk her dog at the same time, without having to be extremely cautious of male hands that could pop out of nowhere and abuse her. She could stand at the billing counter in a grocery store without fearing that someone would get hard and rub it on her ass. She could let the plumber or the electrician inside the house to fix stuff when her husband was not at home. She didn’t have to fear the male taxi driver or the bus driver. She didn’t have to shield her body with her laptop bag, or office files, to protect herself while walking on a crowded street. She didn’t have to fear that they guy on the other side of the cash counter at the bank would try to play with her fingers when she tried to collect cash. She could go and eat at a restaurant at 11:00 pm and not be molested by 16 men on national TV. She didn’t have to fear sitting next to a man on the bus or train. She wouldn’t forcefully be made to watch two men masturbate at a dark street corner.
 Its not just an article, I wrote this to make you feel that its not a matter of girls only it’s a matter of our country please come ahead and stop this…YES, you can all you what to need to do is try to change your surroundings, and off course mentality , if you find someone teasing and abusing a girl go ahead and stop him, it motivates her and make her feel confident that she’s in safe land and She don’t need to worry “kyunki uska bahi har jagah hai”

“government ya kisi ko bhi blame krne se ,ya discussions , rallies krne se kch nai hoga…kch change chaiye to apko initiate krna padhega..”

SO PLEASE…..