Unveil The Disguised Crimes As Well.....

(This was written couple of months back and for some strange reason lay sleeping on my desktop. But here it goes. Hoping it still strikes a chord ).

Last night I sat in front of the mirror and stared at myself for a long, long time. After the deluge of reports and posts and statuses about the gang rape in Delhi, my mind had finally found a moment of silence. Nirbhaya could have been any woman. Nirbhaya could have been me.

I cried. 
            With the awakened need for prodding its conscience, the government is planning reforms in the laws against such criminals and the country is demanding nothing less than zero tolerance. Women’s activist groups are going berserk.

          But there was something unsettling about the whole thing. Something that seemed to scratch only at the layer. Because from amidst all this, there emerges another vicious hidden face of reality. There emerges another deeper layer, another face of crimes committed against women which scare me. They hang like invisible mist all over our society. They are scary, because they are disguised crimes. They are scary, because many do not recognize it and the violence continues unchecked, with women presuming they are ‘safe’ or ‘free’. They are disguised in the garb of ‘morality’ or ‘social acceptance’, but they are violence nevertheless. They might be subtle and seemingly sympathetic to us women (how my mind sneers at such mentions), but a crime nevertheless. Very cleverly devised, these crimes try to curb a woman in every way. Sometimes when women see past the hypocrisy, they start fighting for their rights and freedom.

           And it is strange that we women seem to have taken it to our heart that our freedom has to be fought for and won. ‘My dear, dear women’, my heart pleads – ‘We are BORN free. We are BORN liberated. If we could just see past the invisible shackles around our legs and- what is more fearful- around our minds, we realize we have been kept in disillusionment all this while.’
      Because there are no shackles. No boundaries. We don’t have to FIGHT for freedom, we are already free, but have mysteriously agreed to be bound in chains which don’t even exist except in our own fears and hesitations.
     I am not provoking or blaming anyone, though. I am a woman too, and I have the same fears too. I have been made to have the same fears and am made to feel scared and insecure at every available opportunity, and the nonexistent shackles start breathing and tightening their grip. I am given free handouts and fervent advice at every possible step about the path of a woman’s  life, or rather, how it should be and must be.

      And it brings me to the very starting point of it.

 I think of a little female fetus. She is curious about the tiny enclosure she is in, and is waiting to go beyond the walls of the womb. Is she let to live? Or is she killed? Who or what presumes the right to decide her life? Maybe her family, or the society. But why? I ask, outraged. Or is it the mother? Which makes me wonder, why would she, a grown, mature woman and a ‘mother’, want to wrench out her own blood? Is she forced to? Or is she given a choice?

      Or maybe a few days after she is born, she will be discovered in a pit or in a dump of garbage. What a worthless image of her own sex her mother has been fed on throughout her life, which probably is shorn of all self respect, I wonder. 
But let me not be cynical, I tell myself.
    Maybe the baby girl is let to live. Her heart is fresh , and her mind vast and free. But as her crawls turn into steps and her steps into sprightly hops and gallops, she realizes that maybe she hasn’t left the enclosure of the womb yet. It has followed her, invisible and intangible. It does not let her run around.
Her mind probably seeks the answers to why a summer cloud is always white or is curious about the depth of the ocean. Maybe she dreams of flying. Or maybe she just wants to sing and dance around lush gardens.

But the enclosure becomes tighter. She is chastised, and she is often made to apologize and feel sorry for the silly unreachable dreams of her own life that she had dared to indulge herself in.

And then she just walks around, a faceless being and a voiceless creature. Her intellectual curiosity is quenched (stifled or restricted, actually; ‘quench’ is the word given to fool her) even before she recognizes its thirst. And no, we don’t have to go to all the poor third world countries or even into our rural areas to pin a name and a face to this girl – (They will, anyway, shamelessly  beg pardon on the grounds of illiteracy or ignorance.) It could be a neighbor. It could be that girl who was standing next to you in the bus. It could be that girl who is walking into a college, but had dared of dreaming about another occupation.

As she grows into a woman, the enclosure becomes even more restrictive.

‘You cannot do that, the boy’s family will not like it’ ‘You cannot study this, that rich family is seeking a housewife for their son’ (Read house maid and child-bearer, in most cases). ‘Degree is enough, why study further? What use?’

And then, as if to pacify her vain stifled sobs, it suddenly beams at her.

‘You can bring new life to the world! You can be a mother!’ The world exclaims to her after her family proudly marries her off to a ‘well settled’ and ‘highly educated’ man.

 Which makes me wonder, is marriage and motherhood a choice that a woman can choose to explore when SHE is ready and wanting, or is it a compulsion? Well. In our society at least, the answer need not even be spelled out.

Does she find a way to be economically independent, then? Does she even realize the need for it? Or does she resign her life to her family, whether she wants such a life or not? Her little heart had already been made to feel guilty for her insolence before and is probably afraid of being chastised again.
At this point, my memory jabs nameless people who killed their children because they were 'resisting being sold off' (no I am not falling into vague memories of uncle Tom's cabin) or mothers who killed ( yes killed) their child or threw them out of hospital windows. One such was In October 2012, when we had all been left speechless by the coverage of a certain Dharmishtha Joshi who had killed her three month old child. She had pressed her head down, and had severely beaten her up. It had left me shaken. Could motherhood, which was supposed to be a blessing upon woman, also be cruel and cold to the extent of killing your own helpless child; I remember thinking.  But now I wonder, had she really wanted motherhood? Had she looked forward to being a mother and celebrated it?  Or had her divine ‘gift’ turned into a mere societal and familial compulsion, leaving her frustrated and distraught, leading to a mental breakdown?
“She allegedly told police a day before the beating, Ahuti had fallen from bed. She said she hid the incident from husband Kalpesh fearing he may shout at her. The police officers said Dharmishtha also told them Ahuti cried a lot and Kalpesh blamed it on her inability to care.”

I do not know if and what psychological problems she had or how much fury she had stifled and buried inside her throughout her life which had led to this kind of unforgivable finale, where a young baby cruelly lost its life. But I do wonder about the incidents that she had had to face and go through that had incited this amount of unbridled rage in her.

And moreover, why had she ‘feared’ her husband?  Children falling are common, isn’t it? What kind of a marriage had it been? Wasn’t she secured enough in that relationship, emotionally and psychologically?
Had she wanted marriage? Had she married only for security and status and safety and acceptance into a ‘normal’ societal life? Had she a choice in who she had wanted to marry?
Now, I do not even need to go into details of honor killings or disowning daughters for marrying ‘out of caste’ or ‘religion’ or ‘status’ or even ‘age’. Just last week, in rural North Karnataka, a couple had killed their own daughter for falling in love with a man of another caste. And no, none of them were psychologically weak. A dead daughter to them was better than one who dared to take the liberty of choosing her mate.
Was that what her mother had been taught since childhood? She herself being a woman, why had she accepted it? Or had she even been aware she had a choice?

But all this is seldom asked. You open the paper this week, and there will be another incident reported. Another honor killing, another dowry death, another rape, minor child molestation, another murder. Headlines come, headlines go. Cases rise. Frenzied reports make us shiver for a while.

     I wonder if our society and our systems have become unchallenged experts at making us so fearful and apprehensive that we are beaten into narrow corners from where, after a point, we don’t even want to escape, and consider it a ‘safe’ and ‘acceptable’ haven.

And God forbid, if it is even a hesitant yes, we should be unspeakably ashamed of such a society.

               Well, it isn’t all gory and pessimistic. On a slightly brighter note, a lot of us young women in cities now fearlessly claim and enjoy our ‘independence’ and be proud of our ‘liberal’ families, and things seem to be getting a little more better. But it isn’t so for EVERY GIRL. And most of ‘Young India’ still lives in our villages. What about the crores of girls there? Do they even know of life beyond what they are conditioned to believe?  Who listens to their grievances and who sympathizes?

Why do most women agree to become mute spectators who watch their own life roll by as society dresses them up as it wants as if they were in a fancy dress competition? Or do we even realize there could be a choice?

Because every kind of conscious ‘force’ against us, no matter how small or big, and no matter for what reason, is a rape; and every kind of conscious deprivation is a robbery.

 I desperately dream of an India where every woman, urban or rural, young or old, can be free of ‘Moral’ hindrances; free of the fear of denied occupational/artistic/economic choices; free of shame and fear from her own sexual needs; free of every unnecessary emotional/mental shackle ; for that is when our society can claim to have rid of all its disguised crimes against us.

In short, when we can ‘live’ in dignity and self-respect without the burden of emotional and moral guilt, and not just ‘exist’; is when the nation can raise its head with pride.

        For a minute, my mind goes to the numerous women in Nirbhaya’s rapists’ family. Had they suffered/been abused/restricted  in some way?  Did they have no choice but to be silent, which might have given the men the unpardonable attitude that force against women will go unnoticed? I feel fearful thinking of other such silent victims in our society and other such men, perhaps young still, who are developing the idea of woman as having no voice and identity.

But in the very end of it all, we will be left with no one to blame or point a finger at but a gaping void filled with generations of frustrations and garbed slaveries. The ‘society’ is one big nameless, faceless mass , brimming with live currents of ‘values’ and ‘traditions’ and ‘culture’. Very heavy words they are, aren’t they? Maybe we should just simply start by ‘living’ and letting ‘live’. Oh yes, yes, we women too, please!

Radhika Prabhu
(28/12/12)