The peanut vendor tightened the tarp on his
wheelbarrow, ensuring to cover every bit of everything that was on it-the drum
of peanuts, the stack of newspaper bags, the bag of coal, and the small
aluminum pan he burnt the coal on. With the warmth of his coal fire gone, Niru
double-wrapped herself in her shawl.
"Bhaiya, do you know what time the last bus
comes?" She asked the smallish vendor who was now almost ready to wheel
his wares to wherever his home was.
"Should be coming any minute now." He
raised his hand. Niru thought he waved to her, but he was only getting ready to
give a giant push to the cart. Off he started.
With him gone, with the street lamp only giving a
dim, lethargic flicker, and with the shops behind them all closed now, the
bus-stop became desolate in the uninterrupted darkness of the cold December
night.
"Sham, let's take an auto till Dwarka."
Niru said, feeling a bit nervous now. She only had enough money to get her
closer to home. She imagined she could at Dwarka catch a bus already en route
to her village. Sham looked at his watch again.
"Let's wait for ten minutes, and maybe
then." He said, stretching his hands deeper into the pockets of his jeans,
his fingers making a rough estimate of the rupees in his possession.
In silence they kept peering towards the oncoming
traffic, to spot a bus.
'The movie was fun. The chaat after that even more
yummy, made memorable by Ravi's constant supply of jokes and Sohini's constant
bargaining for time with her mother on the phone. Wait till Ratna comes to know
that we indeed saw the movie. She will curse herself for having left early.'
With exams over in the afternoon, Niru's mind was filled up with the masti of
the evening. The film's catchy tunes kept coming to her lips, and yet her mind was
racing towards home too. She had been this late before. She would be fine, she
reassured herself. Pappaji will probably throw a fit, but Ma will convince him,
like always. Niru also told herself that she should better note the
bus-schedule.
"There it is." Sham said, pointing
towards a bus slowing down in their direction. Niru took a few steps, but then
noted that it was a private bus. Before she could say anything, the bus
stopped, and the door flung open with a young man beckoning to Sham and Niru.
"Jaldi karo, jaldi aao." He spoke like a
bus conductor. He appeared in a genuine rush to do his last trip for the
day.
Niru and Sham stepped into the bus that had
darkened glasses.
**********
Three years from that cold December night, Niru is
gone. Gone, as in gone, obliterated, annihilated, massacred, slaughtered, shot,
stabbed, poisoned to death. You say she was raped, and died of injuries on her
own. You say she is gone because her body was weak and could not take the
onslaught. You say she is gone because she should have weighed the pros and
cons of refusing five men to mutilate her. You say this, because you are alive,
because you are remorseless. And you are remorseless because you think a woman
out at night is a woman to be plundered, just like a woman at daytime is
someone to serve your home and nourish your brood. You take the day away from
her, and you don't give her the night?
What hurts is that you come from a strong
background of similar thinking. You come from, and will go back to, a baithak
full of men who will say, "Why did the girl go out at night?"
"Why did she wear pants?"
"Why did she speak English?"
"Why did she study more than her matriculation
failed brothers?"
"Why did she leave the house?"
And yet, I can assure you that every time you and
your like-minded brethren utter such words, there will be a parent, a brother,
a dadi, a nana or a friend, who will look around and say I will let the women
in my life flourish just as much as I would the men. Our women will not just
study to make careers, but they will enjoy lives just as they want. They will
drive, dance, drink; they will get married, they will have children; they will
get married, and choose to not have children; they will choose to not get
married; they will divorce, they will re-marry. They will do anything and
everything that any woman wants. You and your like will not snub them.
Never.......and you still believe Niru is gone?
Niru, who was just another youngster, doing what
happy and healthy kids the world over do. Niru, who is the kid in my kid, and
the woman in us all.
Niru, who in her facelessness till now has become
the strongest face of the modern Indian woman.
Niru, who in her namelessness till now is the
strongest of all names -----NIRBHAYA---the fearless!
4 comments:
I love it, Nidhi! It is so sad, and true that it's the mentality that hurts more. As much as the horrible crime traumatized the senses, the realization that this mentality is so deeply ingrained and so uniformly wefted in our society jangles the mind to unfortunate numbness.
Neiha, you got the pulse of it: the mentality (and I can't help breaking this word into men-tality) of male chauvinism, of the grandeur of the male form, is so deep and so all pervasive that it sickens and makes all the shiny growth of India appear a big farce.
I spent a couple of months in India and more often than not all social conversations steer towards rapes, corruption and governance. I avoid being an active contributor to these conversations because talking the goriest tales has become a national pastime.
But I was appalled to see some bizarre deviations to the regular compassionate post rape talkathons:
Conversation 1:
she said- One has to understand that men are dogs. So why let your girls out at those hours. That's why our sons always accompany our daughters. I told her that we are two sisters so where does one get a brother from? Very meekly she replied that this was my parents' biggest fault to not have invested in the right brood mix, given how India is.
Conversation 2:
She starts off by saying that when girls start going out for films etc, they're pretty much a seeking rape time bomb. And that she married off her daughter much before she learnt to even look outside the window.
To my mind, any country where women in middle and upper middle class strata can blabber this crap, we have a long way to go. These women are retired bank managers and school principals. I also realize that degrees, skills, jobs, financial empowerment have nothing to do with how we define womanhood and live our beliefs. I do hope as women, we judge our women peer group less for who they are and what they do and someday pass on the legacy to our children to snap out of judgements, stereotypes and just be who they want to be. We have a tall task of 'just being' before we ask our daughters to 'just be'
Nicely written, Nidhi!
Priya, you are right. So much of this crap is spewed out by women themselves!
To all my fellow-moms, I repeatedly say, we got what we got from the past, but we can surely make better men and women by raising kids who speak gender sensitive language, who take gender for what it is, and nothing more. And luckily, even though the number of such enlightened moms is not very large, it is growing, and therein lies the hope!
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