Yours Truly

I don’t remember what happened that day. When I try very hard to recollect, my mind conjures up some blurry images, some grainy snippets of a very long film I seem to have forgotten. A huge ceiling fan looming large over me, a pink frock with a lot of frills, a burning sensation in my abdomen, a white uniform. But what my memory has refused to erase is the distinct feeling of wanting to scream, but not being able to. Even now, in my dreams I sometimes see a hand with a wrist watch, clasping my mouth, stifling my cries, drowning me in an ocean. I get up startled, covered in sweat, and never sleep for the rest of the night. Mother says I was raped. On my fifth birthday.

I am Shubha, now fourteen years old.  We live in the chawls of Nalasopara. My father is a photograph hanging on the walls in the single room we have. My mother is a domestic help. My brother sells lemons and oranges in the local trains. I should have been married off by now. But mother needs five thousand rupees for my dowry, which, of course, she does not have. So here I am, an extra mouth to feed in an already starving family. Thankfully, I have joined her as a domestic help, and I might soon be an extra pair of hands as well. Poor though we are, we do have a television set, complete with a Tata Sky connection. My brother says he procured it from Jalla, a guy in the locality who sells cheap second hand stuff. I believe he stole it from somewhere. It is on this television set that I heard the word rape for the first time. And I realized that what mother tells me has happened to me, is wrong, that it is a crime.

That day, someone in Mumbai had been raped in the Shakti Mills compound. Everyone on the television was angry about it. Well dressed men and women were talking animatedly, exchanging sad glances, using wild gestures. Words like brutal, human rights, violation, crime, punishment, death were used all the time. I sat glued to the screen, my mind absorbing every detail, furiously trying to figure out if that was what had happened to me as well.

When mother returned from work, I asked her.

“Mother, when I was raped, was there a furor?”

“ No. Why?”

“I saw it on TV. People are weeping, protesting on the streets, lighting candles. Didn’t they do it for me?”

Mother did not bother to answer. She busied herself in rolling out the mat and making a bed for herself.

“Did the police come? Were the culprits caught?” I asked.

Visibly irritated, mother said, “What do you think you are, eh? Some laat sahib’s daughter?  This TV is eating your head. I will ask Ganesh to remove it now!”

Her outburst confused me even more. I decided to discuss this with Meena, my only friend in the locality. She was a couple of years younger to me, and worked as a daily wage laborer in some construction site.  As I went out of the door, I looked back at mother, hoping to see an expression of pain, of a hidden shroud of mystery. But all I saw was the usual grimace and frown she wears. My questions did not hit her to create a ripple of emotion. Probably it was ok to be raped? I hurried towards Meena’s home.

“Meena, do you think it is ok to be raped?”

“Why do you ask?”

“I saw it on TV today. They say it is wrong. I do not remember what exactly happened, but I think it was similar. But mother did not seem to care much”.

“I don’t know of right or wrong”, Meena looked sad, “but I’ll tell you a secret. Promise me you won’t tell anybody?”

“Of course I won’t.”

“You know that pot-bellied contractor whom we work for? The one who has pock marks all over his face? The other day he asked me to wait back. I thought he wanted to give me some extra work. But after everyone had left, he felt me all over, took me behind the brick kilns, and raped me. I screamed, I even scratched him on the face, but he slapped me hard and said that he had paid five hundred rupees to father in return for this, and if I did not let him ‘enjoy’, he would take the money back!”

“My god! Did you come back home and tell your father? He would have surely killed him! And your brothers? They would take his eyes out I am sure!”

Meena  laughed, “Quite the contrary.  For quite some time I could not move. My entire body was aching and there was blood on my dress. After I somehow managed to limp back home, I saw them all waiting anxiously for me outside the house. At first I thought they were worried. But as soon as they saw me, they all went inside, their heads hung low, eyes downcast, except mother, who, I realized, was silently weeping. She took me inside, washed me, put on me a fresh dress, served me warm food, and cautioned me not to share this incident with anyone. That day, for the first time in my life, I tasted rice pudding. But unfortunately my mouth was bitter and it tasted like bile. If mother makes it again someday, I will surely make up this time”.

“You did not protest?”

“Like you, I did not know it was wrong. If parents are asking us to do it, it must be right. I have been doing it regularly now. Yes, it pains badly and I feel nauseated at the very thought of it, but father says that with all this money he will be able to repair the roof before monsoons. No more sleeping in a puddle”.

“But everyone is saying it is wrong and the culprits should be hanged”.

“Who everyone? The ones you see on TV? Have you ever seen them here? Do they give you food when you go to bed hungry? Go ask them for work, and they will bully you with all kinds of questions like ration card, police registration, employer’s reference. They don’t trust us. We are poor. We are the ones who do them wrong.  Rapists are supposed to thrive here, not rape victims! If we told them we have been raped, they would probably laugh their heads off”.

“But that does not take away the heinousness of the crime! I was very small then so I don’t remember the details. But I am sure it must have been gory. And I still get nightmares! Whoever did it to me must be punished!”

“Yes.  They should be hanged by their testicles. But do you know who they are? Even if you did, what if your father had sold you off to them? What if he is a member of the local mafia gang?”

I did not argue further. My head was spinning. I walked towards home.

“Be careful’, Meena called out, “and don’t think too much”.

Why shouldn't I? Am I not a citizen of this country? Those men on TV were talking about laws. Does it not apply to me? Yes, I come from the poor strata of the society. But does that take away my dignity of being a woman? When you civilized folks unite together in a protest march, do you ever think about me? About the likes of me? Staying under tarpaulin sheets barely managing to earn four square meals a day, you treat me as an untouchable. But when the carnal instinct in you arises, this is the very untouchable body you shred down to pieces, mark your animal footprints with.

Around me, rape is so common that we ourselves have stopped considering it as a crime. You, always on television with your strong viewpoints, in your starched shirt and tailored coat, with your impeccable English vocabulary, do you know me? Who will come to my rescue? I am Shubha. I am Meena. I am the hawker girl you shoo away when I board your first class compartment, I am the flower girl who taps at your window every morning begging you to take my roses, I am the eunuch who ‘blesses’ you in the traffic signal, I am the domestic help who does your dirty linen every day. I don’t know the fancy terms you use. All I know is that I, too, am a woman, I am a human. And I have my rights. I don’t want to be raped either . It pains me as well. Even I die of this brutal act. I want to breed sons who know that rape is a crime, that torture against women is a crime.

Spare us a thought. Visit our slums. Not for distributing your NGO pamphlets, no. Educate us. Empower us. Yes, it will take years and years before we join the mainstream. But is it not time you start your humble efforts? Unless you do, ‘the plight of our country’, as you lovingly call it, will never improve.