Blank Stares: Of Rape and Rehab

“Mumma meri Kummo se baat karogi?” (Mother, will you talk to my Kummo?) asked excitedly my 2 year old daughter drowning whatever my mother was telling me on phone. I asked my mother about this ‘Kummo’ who had activated such enthusiasm in Nyasa. “Her name is Kamala and she teaches Nursery kids in the school. And when you send Nyasa to me, she becomes her governess,” told my mother. So, Kummo is the one who handles my child and I better be thankful to her. After a week when I travelled to my hometown to fetch Nyasa back, I finally met Kummo and her sister.

My mother has been running a school in what can be called one of the most backward districts in Uttar Pradesh. Whenever I get too busy in my professional ‘shenanigans,’ I send Nyasa to her grandparents where she can be taken care of in a much better manner. All the parties involved love this arrangement. Including Kummo.

When I reached my parents’ house that noon, I saw Nyasa being fed khichdi by a tall teenaged girl. She was dressed in the way almost every small-town girl does: a pair of unaltered jeans with dirty and worn out cuffs, a synthetic kurta and a shiny stole. Her hair was tied in a high pony-tail and she wore inexpensive earrings. A dusky complexioned, completely average looking girl who greeted me with a Namaste and stood aside to facilitate an emotional reunion of her ward with the mother. As I learnt later that day Kummo took care of Nyasa during the school hours when my mother was busy in her office downstairs. She bathed, clothed, fed and even tutored the two year old. Her elder sister, who also teaches in our school, paid occasional visits during the school recess but Nyasa hadn’t taken a fancy to her.

As a nitpicking mother and an ungrateful daughter I observed Kummo very closely during my stay there for one reason initially and quite another after the first day. The girl appeared a little unstable, extremely sweet at one moment and quite detached the other. She stared continuously at a spot without realizing it. She ran without really having to. I found her really irritating at times. I was waiting for my mother to come upstairs after winding up for the day. How could she trust our most precious treasure with a girl who was definitely mildly idiot if not totally a crackpot! I never realized in my sanctimonious demeanour at that moment that Nyasa was MY responsibility which I comfortably transferred to her expecting world class arrangements in a god-forsaken mofussil.

“Mom, this girl is a crackpot, her hair is dirty and she has no sense of hygiene. And she stares a lot. Find somebody else. Can she actually teach? Just because her sister was a student here doesn’t mean that you have to employ both of them.”  And so on. I had endless complaints. My mother, as usual, made an angry face which was an age-old signal to shut up. She then declared, “This girl is a rape survivor.”

“Stop being so judgmental,” she demanded. “And, haven’t you noticed how happy your daughter is in her company! Nyasa is an extremely headstrong child and hypersensitive one at that. You think it is easy to find somebody who can be so patient and genuinely caring. Why don’t you find one in Delhi?” I was ashamed of myself on many accounts. How could I be so callous that I chose to ignore her patience and loving ways with Nyasa and focussed on her messy hair! That she was a rape survivor hadn’t sunk in at that moment.

“You ask me why I have employed her, so here are the two reasons. Firstly, the sisters belong to a poor family and do not have means to support their education. Whatever I pay them here goes towards their education. I agree that they are not great teachers but at a nursery you don’t need educators. You need people who can connect with little children. They take long leaves during the exams and come back to teach once done. And with all your gender equality activism in a metro, do you realize how difficult it is for a girl who was raped and brutalized in childhood to survive in a small town like ours? She is a little unstable but at least she is putting up a fight. Isn’t it our duty to help her and the family to put the trauma behind them?”

I was suitably chastised.       

Next morning when I woke up to Kummo’s shrill voice, I was gripped by a renewed sense of guilt. Her instability was an outcome of horrible deeds of some depraved men and it was as if she was questioning our collective consciousness through her blank stares. Her ways did not change but my attitude towards them did. I learnt a new lesson in empathy. Till now rape was something distant, which happened to some unfortunate women. A woman myself, I had hitherto distanced myself from rape, it only happened to unknown people. It would never happen to me or my friends or family, I had thought. I had tackled it as clinically as possible to save myself the emotional drain. When I faced Kummo, however, all that was bound to change and it did. The reality behind her odd behaviour and the pain behind her loud laughter educated me like no literature, seminars or debates on rape would.

I still keep sending my daughter to my parents at regular intervals. In the past one year the bond between my daughter and her Kummo has strengthened. Whenever Nyasa is set to come back to me, Kamla asks about her next visit. Last birthday the sisters gave Nyasa a cute little yellow bag. I tried my best to stop them but their loving defiance was way stronger than my concern towards their economic status.

Last night Nyasa asked her father all of a sudden, “Dadda, aapko Kummo yaad hai? Aap Kummo se miloge?” (Father, do you remember Kummo? Do you want to meet her?) What a coincidence! I was outraging against the brutal gang-rape of a 23 year old medical student that is sending shock-waves across the country and has jolted even the most insensitive and apathetic of cops. While almost everyone is demanding a befitting punishment for the brutes- ranging from public stoning to bobbitization, I am more concerned about her rehabilitation if she survives. The brutalities suffered by her body will unfortunately deprive her of a normal “physical” life. The doctors have said that she might never be able to eat again. She has decided to live and has shared the sentiment with her mother through a written note.

I pray she gives no blank stares upon recovery for I now have at least a little understanding of what lies beneath them. And if there are any, they must meet cheering and empathetic faces. Rehabilitation and assimilation of rape survivors is far more important than punishing the culprits. One sneer here or one jeer there can annihilate even the bravest of us while we are picking up the pieces of our brutally shattered life.  

* The rape survivor's name has been changed to respect her privacy. 

** Image courtesy http://www.kabar24.com

Slut Walk to Chhattisgarh to the Streets of Guwahati

That morning, I could not find the most appropriate attire to befit the occasion. SLUTWALK, arthaat Besharmi Morcha. Besharm is a relative term, with a nuanced understanding spread across space and time. To be besharm, I settled for a pair of denim shorts and a blue T-shirt. I was staying in the Officers’ Mess of National Security Guard at Manesar. As ‘memsahib’ is not supposed to dress like any other girl, and not at all like a SLUT, I decided to wear a skirt to cover the legs. The skirt was supposed to be removed later.

The husband volunteered to drop me and our daughter, less than two years then, at the venue. It was an extremely uncomfortable weather to be outdoors and I immediately regretted bringing the daughter along. But then, it was for her sake that I was participating. Blame it on my hyper enthusiasm, we reached the venue before time. And after the husband left, daughter and I tried to make sense of the scene around us. I also had to get rid of my ‘modest’ avatar. Those now famous denim shorts had to be revealed. But how and where? There were no ‘green rooms’ at Jantar Mantar. Carrying the already flushed daughter to a relatively cool and shady spot, I spotted some minarets of chairs leaning precariously against the wall. So, this was going to be my little dressing (down) room.

A few steps away was a bevy of camerapersons and reporters from all the possible newspapers and TV/Radio channels. One of the camerapersons noticed our presence and kept shooting me while I took off my skirt. Others followed suit, obviously, and zoomed in. It is because of their dogged determination to find the ‘slut’ at the otherwise modest walk at Jantar Mantar that the trio, daughter-denim shorts-I, shot to fame. When I got back home that afternoon, the husband greeted me with a mixed look in his eyes: appreciative and yet confused by my dare-to-bare act on national TV. What?

The ‘media’ had done it again. The story had to be sold and it was important to focus on the ‘sellable’ aspect of the entire ordeal. The mundane act of getting ready for the walk received more attention than my reason to be a part of it. Runs and reruns of the footage did wonders. The men and women from national and international media houses hounded me for ‘bytes’ and would not relent even when I requested them to leave us alone. My two-year old was not comfortable with microphones thrust upon our faces. Thanks to their desire to develop a sensational mother-daughter narrative, I became the face of Slutwalk, Delhi. And yet, the skirt-dropping footage was what people talked about, on and off-record.  Actions speak louder than words, certainly.

I am reminded of my Slut Walk experience today but not only because it remains forgotten after a year or that it failed to achieve anything substantial for the cause of women empowerment. I’m compelled to rewind the happenings of that day to be able to understand the pain of girl from Guwahati. She, unfortunately, has clearly suffered much more than I did. In the Slut Walk case, I was perhaps a victim of the misplaced sense of support. The Guwahati girl, on the other hand, has suffered at the hands of unabashed pursuit of sensationalism. Now that it has been proved that it was the cameraperson who instigated an aggressive and hair-brained mob to molest this hapless girl, one wonders what do the upholders of “media as a pillar of democracy” have to say? To stoop so low to look for a scoop, and to create one when not finding any, is that what has become the norm? Yes there is outrage against such a barbaric act, and the strongest criticism has come from the journalist fraternity. Yet, there is no denying the rot that is weakening this fourth pillar. Only a matter of time when the collapse happens.

I do not wish to launch a tirade against paid-media, sensationalism and other such things. Yet, there are a few questions that I’m compelled to raise on behalf of every individual who has suffered because of media’s insensitivity and ethical malpractices. The business of news seems to be overriding everything else, even human life. Nobody should be allowed to forget about the death of Tarun Sehrawat, the young Tehelka journalist. The Frankenstein’s monster has begun feeding off itself. Many people blamed the young man’s act of bravado for his tragic demise but few raised questions pertaining to the pressure that he must have had to face, to prove his worth. A daring story from the forests of Chhattisgarh was perhaps going to be his ticket to fame. At what cost, though?

While the rot in media needs to be addressed pronto, it is hypocritical to blame the media for desperately trying to feed a gargantuan appetite that the readers and viewers exhibit all the time. The demand and supply dynamics cannot be wished away. Yet, we need to be constantly reminding ourselves that there is a limit to which one can ask for ‘news.’ Nobody deserves to die to fulfil our cravings for some piping hot news on the platter. Nobody deserves to be molested either. 

Reclaiming the Vagina

(Inspired by watching Scent of a Woman for the millionth time tonight) The other day vagina was trending on Twitter. No, not vagina, but the demand to look for its euphemisms. Twitteratti or tweeps went into a frenzy looking for appropriate substitutes for the vagina. Oh well, anything can “trend” there: people to policies, names to numbers and Jolie’s leg to Sonakshi’s forehead. Vagina also had its claim to fame for a few hours. Tweeple of Tworld were united in finding a new signifier for the “space between a woman’s legs.” There was humour: crass and sophisticated, the characteristic “outrage,” indignations and pontifications amidst the search for a perfect substitute. After the “silencing” of the Michigan representative in a floor debate about women’s health (she used the V word), this was a logical aftermath.

Personally, I have my doubts if anything can substitute vagina. The word works just fine. It is used in clinical sense and clearly conveys what it is supposed to. What further renders the quest for euphemisms and substitutes ludicrous is the fact that even the word ‘vagina’ is a euphemism. Etymologically speaking, ‘vagina’ comes from a Latin word vāgīna, which means a ‘sheath’ or a ‘scabbard.’ So, vagina is something where the ‘sword,’ man’s weapon, is supposed to be kept. The English word, therefore, is a joke unto itself: a canonised euphemism. The prude in us attempts to look for a euphemism for a euphemism. Al Pacino tried to convince us in Scent of a Woman “There's only two syllables in this whole wide world worth hearing: pussy.” The very title of the film can also be seen as a beautiful euphemism for the vagina. Pheromones at play! Slangs are easier to use and relate to. The usage of slang-words, however, poses a serious problem when the aim is to sanitize the language. The ‘taboo’ words are replaced with slangs and euphemisms.

Three years back, an ‘English Honours’ final year student of mine introduced me to a silly-sounding word for the female genitals: vajajay. This slang for vagina was first heard in popular TV series Grey’s Anatomy. A little later, the glorified queen of blah, Oprah “legitimized” the word and used it ad nauseum during her talk shows. There are over 1200 slangs for vagina in English language alone. It appears that too much human effort has gone into keeping the little female organ wrapped in a shroud of mystery and secrecy. In the age of information bombardment, however, the intrigue has remained only in the matter of naming ‘it’ and not seeing or knowing about ‘it.’

The recent TV commercials for the vaginal fairness creams are a classic case of cultural hypocrisy. While the cosmetic companies are bringing vagina- the organ to the mainstream for sheer business gains, they are hesitant to use vagina- the word. As a potential consumer, you are made aware of the fact that fairness (synonymous to beauty) is and must not be confined to your face and body. Vagina is brought out of the closet, yet without its name.

My question remains, why don’t we let vagina be? Both, the word and the organ. Almost all the expletives are designed/coined around woman’s body, especially the genitals. And it is perfectly alright to use those words. We may cringe a little and yet do not really hold it against those who use “geni-pletives.” In my hometown, people are comfortable listening to and using certain words as expletives. But the same people find it scandalous to hear those very words in the course of a neutral conversation. Women, unfortunately, are no exception. Their modesty is outraged during such innocent and neutral conversations but not listening to the ‘gaalis’ that people around them keep hurling at each other. And often it is done in “good humour.” Eve Ensler’s 1996 play, The Vagina Monologues, was an attempt to free the word of taboo. The play has assumed a cult status in the discourse of women empowerment. And yet, even after sixteen years the taboo stays. So do the expletives and the euphemisms. The taboo around ‘naming’ the female organ is almost as barbaric as female circumcision. A ploy to subjugate women by denying them the right to use what is theirs, the organ and its name. The vagina is held hostage, now is time to reclaim it.