DIGNITY MAULED

It has been some time since that scary incident took place, but even today at times it haunts me. Jaipur was proving to be fun for me, until that day. As usual we had our 10:00 am English class. We were studying something related to direct and indirect speech. I was trying my best to solve the assignment given to us without making any mistakes. The 10^th question was a little difficult and a small discussion started in the class. In the midst of the discussion, I felt a huge heavy hand on my butt. I was paralysed. For a moment I could not understand what had just happened. All my childhood classes of good touch-bad touch simply disappeared from my head. I turned to see whose hand it was. I saw a huge guy, my classmate backing off and saying, ‘There was something on your dress so…’. I didn’t allow him to complete his sentence. I simply glared at him and turned back again. I don’t remember what happened in class after that. My mind had stopped working and my eyes were filled with tears. I wanted to run out of the classroom and hug my Chacha, (who happens to be the owner of that Institute) I wanted to slap that guy who had dared to touch me without my permission, and I wanted to disappear, all at the same time. Of course I did nothing of this sort. Instead I pretended to be fine and continued to work. After class got over, I rushed to the washroom. I cried as I splashed water on my face. The rest of the day was even more difficult. Every time I passed that guy and he gave a weird smile at me, I felt my heartbeat getting faster, my palms sweating and tears forming in my eyes. I wanted to talk to my mother, but I just couldn’t at that moment (for I was visiting my Chacha & Chachi after my 10^th grade and getting a hang of CLAT exams). I wanted to see her and hide in her arms. I felt somewhere I had failed all her trainings.

Gathering myself, I finally spoke to my Chachi. Somehow, I felt relieved. I felt safe in her embrace. She was surprised that I didn’t say anything the whole day and acted normal. I told her that I didn’t want to create a scene. She told me- ‘Voicing yourself is not making a scene. What happened today was not your fault, so there is nothing you have to ashamed of. You are a strong girl and I love you’. This gave me a lot of strength and I was a bit relieved that it was not me who had done something wrong.

I remember arguing with my parents at times for not allowing me to go for parties, sleepover to some of my friend’s place. But today, when I read these  news of women getting raped, I don’t have the guts to tell my mother that she is worrying too much or tell my father that his little girl can take care of herself. Each heinous act takes me into flashback, making me feel extremely unsafe, helpless and small.

When I hear about 24 year old Priyanka Reddy getting raped and burnt, my heart reaches out to her. When I hear about young girls getting raped, I feel scared. Every time I have to walk to the bus stop alone or wait for an auto, or go out alone, I feel scared. Scared of making the headlines the next day. Every man who looks at me, haunts me. Every time I read about culprits not getting strict punishment or there is delay in court procedures, I lose trust in humanity and our democracy where every politician and the political parties are talking about equality in the nation!!

And what hurts the most is our leaders, our society come up to side with the rapists, and indulge in victim blaming, and character assassination, stripping the dead. It pains to hear our leaders say, ‘Men will be men’, ‘Why was she out at that hour?’, ‘She was wearing a short dress, what else do you expect?’, ‘The girl was drunk, she bloody deserved it’. They find excuses to save these monsters and many times justify their act. I want to tell this to everyone loud and clear that a woman doesn’t get raped, because she was travelling alone, or because she was wearing indecent clothes according to the norms of the society, or because she was drunk or out of her senses or simply because she was not careful enough. A woman gets raped because some so called human beings do not know how to respect another person, or because they are sick to the core.

Despite living in the 21^st century and claiming to be on a path of development, we are living in an orthodox patriarchy, where young men are raised with zero sex education. Men are not taught that they have to respect every individual be it a man or a woman, in any damn state and at any hour of the day. It is time men learn that no woman is a public property which they can access as and when they feel like. Their own mothers and fathers forgot to teach their sons the basic humane qualities.

What saddens me even more is that in India, after some candle marches, days of social media outrages and pending cases, people eventually forget about the loss of the nation. They forget about the stain on humanity and move on, waiting to repeat this cycle again with the next rape case. When brave officers do the encounter of these monsters, they are questioned and pin-pointed at. Why were they questioned? The men who could rape and burn an innocent girl are they not capable of trying to run away from the authorities? Human right activists come and scream that there was foul play. Where were they when the very same men were busy in assaulting and trying to prove their masculinity in the most barbaric manner?? In other countries, punishment for rape is death, hang in public, burn alive and in India just a few years of imprisonment. 

It’s high time that punishment for rape be death. And not only that but the punishment should be given within three months period of the crime committed. I guess we were taught that justice delayed is justice denied.  It is high time that we do something about it. Otherwise we would be regressing back to the medieval period where we would be asking our females to stay at home or covering them from head to toe when and if they ventured out. Be it Delhi, or Bengaluru, Ahmedabad or Guwahati, every female should feel safe at any time of the day at every corner of the nation. It is time that our leaders stop normalising rape culture and it came to an end. It is time that the society teach their sons to behave and respect every individual. It is time every man should be scared to death to even think about doing such an act of total destruction of another human being. It is simply time for change.