THE CRIME : RAPE OR BEING A WOMAN?

India. A land of beauty. A land of variety. A land of diversity. A land of culture.

These are the descriptive tags associated with our country when we read about it in school books and essays as children. It's only when we open the newspapers that the uncensored truth comes before us.

Ours is the only country in which both the phrases "Beti ghar ki laxmi hoti hai" and "Beti baap ka bojh hoti hai" can go hand in hand and still be legitimate.

Let me just say that my intent is not to defame or generalize India in any way whatsoever. India is a developing country, and has it's share of negative and positive qualities. Yes, the government is invested in the development of women rights and the reform of our country.

However, in the light of certain events such as the ban of the BBC documentary India's Daughter, it's been made clear that some things need to be discussed and to be changed.

Novelist Margret Atwood once asked some males why men feel threatened by women and they replied, "They are afraid women will laugh at them." When she asked a group of women why they feel threatened by men, they said, "We're afraid of being beaten, raped and killed."

I've always been a feminist. I was a feminist before I knew what feminism meant.

By definition, Feminism is the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities.

It just seemed like such a no-brainer to me even as a child that I was shocked there was an actual, separate term for it.
I mean, Human Rights existed already, so why the need of special rights for equality among men and women? Doesn't the basic Human Rights apply to both automatically, in the same measure? Or does having different sets of chromosomes and reproductive organs somehow make women less 'human' as compared to men?

Often, feminist are considered to be 'man- bashers '. You might have read the last paragraph and thought to yourself, "What in the name of God does she have against men?"

The answer is- nothing. I don't hate men. I don't think all men are rapists.

I have nothing against men, nor do I consider the male race solely responsible for the inequality and prejudice that some women face. In fact, most of the men I have come across fortunately believe in the equality of all the genders as strongly as I do. 

This equality issue goes both ways- just as women have the right to be strong and independent, men have the right to be vulnerable and sensitive. It is equally wrong to teach a boy-child not to cry or show his emotions since he's "not a girl" as it is to not send a girl-child to school since she is a girl.
Every person has the right to be as and what he/she chooses to be. 
This is what feminism meant to me, and I assume to most people.

Maybe that is why it was such a slap to my face when I saw the documentary and witnessed the rapist of a young girl discuss how the rape was entirely the victim's fault for having struggled against her rapists, since 'taali ek hath se nahi bajti'. 

I watched in disbelief as he looked right into the  camera and nonchalantly discussed in great detail the way they had inhumanly raped her; so brutally, in fact, that they could pull out her intestines. 

How they dumped them and then went on to wipe the blood soaked floor and seats of the bus the next day.

All this, without blinking an eye. Without the faintest trace of guilt or remorse on his face. According to him, they gang raped a girl to the point that almost all her bodily functions stopped working in order to "Teach them a lesson."

This was a slap to my face alright, but then came Mr Manohar Lal Sharma, the defense lawyer of the 16th December gang rape case, who literally knocked me out. I seriously had to pause the video and concentrate on breathing for a moment there. Imagine my complete shock at hearing a presumably educated man (although I have my doubts there) spout such utter nonsense. Never have I been more disgusted, humiliated and scared as a women than when I heard that man, a lawyer, say "We have the best culture. In our culture, there’s no place for a woman. You are talking about man and woman as friends. Sorry, that doesn’t have any place in our society. A woman means I immediately put the sex in his eyes. " 

Yes. In a land which is worshiped as 'Bharat Mata', apparently there are people who don't even consider women a part of our culture.

The harsh truth is, even as we read of the endless rape cases all over the country and even as we see the endless news about it, we subconsciously distance ourselves from such an incident. No one never considers in depth that we could be the next victim.
Even if we go no farther than the park at the front of our houses (or maybe even if we don't go out at all), even if we cover ourselves from head to toe, even if we are with someone, even if we are alone, irrespective of our age,  we could be the next victim.

We are NOT safe. We are all vulnerable.

Was it really so wrong to have gone out for a movie with a male friend? This incident happened around 8:30 pm. Is it really such an unconventionally late hour? 

As I finished watching the documentary, I was devastated and disgusted to my very core. I felt powerless at watching the misery of Nirbhaya's parents, who took such pains to bring her up into a beautiful and talented young woman. And the thousand upon thousand women in our country, who have fathers, brothers and relatives like these defense lawyers, whose rape cases are not even reported. People who  would sooner set fire on a daughter who "got herself" raped than let her show her face in the society again.

Again, who is to blame here? And most importantly, what can be done to stop this hideous crime? 
Yes, girls should learn self-defence techniques, and carry pepper sprays in their bags for protection, but aren't these solutions too short-term?
These prevention methods would not have to be taken if there was no such crime to prevent.
In a country that boasts of the grand title of "The Largest Democracy" in the world, shouldn't there be some solutions in one form or the other?
I could literally write on and on and not get to any solid conclusions.

One long range solution perhaps, I believe, could be Education.
All the accused of the 16th December came from extremely poor backgrounds. Such people have spent all their lives living in very misogynistic environments, wherein they witness their mothers beaten day in and day out; and their sisters treated as inferior to them. Their minds are molded since childhood into the idea that women are no different that animals, to be used when necessary.
This was also evident by the rapist Mukesh's statements in the documentary- his ignorant disbelief at being punished for a crime that he did not consider remotely major or relevant. For him, women have been treated as an object his entire life- and do you get punished for using an object? 
It's a disgusting school of thought, but this belief is shared by many in our country.
Maybe if these people grew up in literate environment, where they were taught the basic equality among men and women and exposed to more liberal ideas since childhood, a lot of things could be different. 
After all, knowledge is empowerment.

Although we have, i'm sure, a long way to go before we are able to eradicate Rape from our country, I feel that a change (however small at the moment) is coming on.
Maybe not in a very large scale, but our youth's mindsets have a wider view on topics such as equality and justice.
Our generation is more understanding towards the need for equality and respect for women, and hopefully, this knowledge will be passed down to the next generations in greater ratios. After all, as a friend reminds me, change in the mindset begins right from our homes.
Let's hope this positive development spreads throughout India till women don't feel forced to think twice about every step they take.

The Story Of A Peculiar Girl: Chapter 8

                                          ~Chapter 8~   
                                       INTO THE GRAVE

Jay stood frozen in horrified alarm until it registered to him that the Girl was holding a small hand spade. She couldn't possibly be trying to dig something, (or someone) out of the grave.
His assumption was proven to be correct. After a few minutes of silent digging, the girl stopped.
She sat there for a moment, staring hard at the headstone, her lips moving in an inaudible whisper.
Her fingers deftly folded the piece of paper she was holding multiple times before placing it inside the shallow pit she before her.

THE UNMASKING

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In the words of George Bernard Shaw, "Two percent of the people think, three percent of the people think they think; and ninety-five percent of the people would rather die than think."
Now, I can't positively say which category I belong to, but isn't it such a wonderful activity- to think?
Wonderful, albeit under-appreciated, underrated and underutilized.
In the meager nineteen years of my life, I've come across my fair share of people, a number of whom I noticed to have a 'Sheep Herd' mentality.( Not being judgmental here though,we've all been there and done that.)
Some people see the world through the superficial glasses of  "Is it what is 'in' at the moment? Am I displaying my non-mainstream-ness to its full glory?" Maybe subconsciously, maybe not. ( Like people and their fixation with branded things. A 2 lakhs worth of Rolex is still just a watch, and at the end of the day its sole purpose is to show you the correct time.)
Sometimes its more layered- "Won't I stand out as weird if I don't do this?" (Like a guy who likes writing and reading poetry more than playing football, but he couldn't possibly confess that to his friends lest they think lesser of him because of it. Because he is a 'man', and men do not participate in delicate activities such as these- just as men never feel pain and men never cry. But of-course, that goes without saying.) 
More often than not, it's forced; the famous "Log kya kahenge?"- a phrase that has haunted us all at some point in our lives. ( Like a girl who says she wants to cut off her long hair for a short pixie cut and the reaction she gets is, " Are you crazy? Do you want to look like a boy? What will people think? Lambe Baal to ek ladki ka gehna hota he pagal". As if the shortening the length of her hair has anything to do with her femininity. Like cutting it would make her any less a woman than she is now.)
And it's more common that you'd think. Nobody teaches anybody how it's done directly. Kids probably watch their friends and elders do it and adapt to it. I mean, that's probably how we learnt it too.
Our society, friends, relatives, our own insecurities, vanities, or our need to please others, to be a part of this society (similar enough to fit in but different enough to be edgy )- these and many more factors result in us hiding our true selves behind a mask of sorts. We've developed a different mask for each person, each situation. We are basically several different people and personalities, all in one.
And that leaves us frighteningly little time to actually be ourselves.
One might wonder, in all the different persons we choose/ are forced to play, which one is really us?
If we can be different people in different situations, does that make us just a jumbled messy nobody?
Kind of like negative cancels negative and the answer gets rounded off to a zero ( That doesn't really makes much sense; I'm horrible at maths.)
And isn't that a frightening prospect- that we are so busy being a perfect version of ourselves for other people that we have no time to be the real version of us.
This is where George Bernard Shaw's quote comes in. So now, if I may, I'd like you to ask yourselves this one question. Does any one of you ever find yourself in this situation? If yes, then ask yourselves this: Are you happy, in-spite of it all? Are you content and happy ? If its a yes again, then.. well and good . But if not, then its time you did something to change that.
'Cause at the end, it all boils down to this one thing- being HAPPY. 
At the end of it all, the happy moments of your life will amount to a lot more than the magnitude of your wealth and success combined.
And the people who accept you for who you are will matter indefinitely more than any number of people you tried to please or impress into liking you by being someone else.
Do not let your personality be distorted to fit someone else's image of you, 'cause in that case you'd be being untrue to both, that person and yourself.
As the lovely quote goes "Don't change so people will like you. Be YOURSELF, and the right people will love the real you."
So go on, be crazy, be a nerd, be loud, be an introvert, be weird, be whatever you wish to be. You live this life only once, don't let anyone define it for you. 
Be the artist of your own life's masterpiece. And it doesn't even have to be a masterpiece, really- that's the beauty of it all. It can be whatever the hell you want it to be :)

The Story Of A Peculiar Girl: Chapter 7

                                               ~Chapter 7~       
                                         MYSTERY UNVEILED

Jay watched the Girl, transfixed, as she knelt at the foot of the grave, her unblinking gaze staring at the headstone.
The moonlight bleached her completely; her red lips the only hint of color on her otherwise shockingly pale face.
A sudden gust of wind blew through the graveyard, causing her hair to blow behind her eerily, like a cape. Her unmoving figure made for such an unearthly sight that Jay was half sure she'd disappear if he allowed himself to blink.
The trance was broken as the girl reached for something behind her. A bag. So that's what had given her the semblance of a hunched figure when draped in a stole, Jay thought.
The Girl pulled out what seemed like a piece of paper in the limited moonlight.
Jay waited for uncountable minutes, hardly moving a muscle, as the girl scribbled something on the paper, pausing every few minutes to think. Once, he thought he saw her shoulders quake and with a jolt wondered whether she was crying.
Finally,she stopped writing and reached inside her bag again.
A cloud moved to block the moon just then, engulfing the cemetery in darkness.
Jay didn't see the object she pulled out of the bag until the Girl started digging at the grave.

        

The Story Of A Peculiar Girl: Chapter 6

                                              ~Chapter 6~
                                         THE GRAVEYARD

Jay followed the hunched figure for what seemed like a very long time. As they proceeded through the trail, a sense of foreboding dawned upon him. Jay knew where this trail ended.
And it was quite literally the last place he wanted to be at midnight.
He weighed his options - to barge into a graveyard, following a potential serial killer; or to turn back and forget this mess. Some sane corner of his mind told him to flee before it was too late; whatever was going on wasn't any of his business.
But predictably, his curiosity won over sanity.
As the heavily bolted and rusted iron gates of the cemetery came into view, Jay felt a shiver run up his spine. Behind the door, the crooked head stones seemed to glow in the moonlight through the thick blanket of fog.
The hooded figure noiselessly unbolted the cemetery gates and , to Jay's relief, left them ajar as it proceeded to move in.
Jay followed the figure deep into the graveyard until he no longer could because of the lack of cover.
Finally, the figure came to a stop beside an ancient looking headstone, some 14 feet away from where Jay hid.
Kneeling at the foot of the grave, the figure removed the slole that covered him in a swift motion.
Jay did not realise he had been holding his breath till it was knocked out of him in a gasp as the mystery person's face came into view.
It was her - the Girl.

The Story Of A Peculiar Girl: Chapter 5

                                             ~Chapter 5~
                                       MYSTERY PERSON

Jay, in his shock, was left with just enough presence of mind to run behind the overgrown bushes and hide himself. He saw the running figure slow its pace , and as it approached closer, Jay recognized that it was beyond a doubt the same mystery person he had been spying on for 2 weeks now.
The eerie magnified shadow stretched out just in front of Jay. His heart was beating frantically, and every other sound was drowned beneath the loud thumping in his ears.
The figure that passed by Jay was not nearly as tall as he had imagined. Its back was hunched and draped in a black knitted stole. Jay couldn't discern the figure's face as it was covered in shadows, but his wild imagination produced many a gruesome faces to fit the bill.
As the figure vanished into the woods, Jay ran after him , without giving himself a chance to think about it.
Following the hunched figure was easy enough, as it seemed to be following a trail.
The difficult part, however, was trying to be discreet about it.
He had to walk slowly so as to avoid stepping onto any twigs or dry leaves and attracting any attention to himself. For all he knew, the mystery person was some kind of a crazy axe serial killer on his way to his bloody hideout.
Jay gulped at that thought nervously and tried to concentrate on walking silently.