What we talk about when we talk about rape
A few days ago, a friend sent a distraught message. She was walking to her house in a reasonably posh and secure South Delhi colony when a young man came on a bike from behind, hit her and sped away. The attack was neither sexual nor was it a botched attempt at theft, it was plain violence. "He looked as if he was 19," she said. "Where does he get the audacity to hit me? To even touch me? He knew I was older than him." Even though we were chatting on messenger, I could sense that my friend was upset and on the verge of tearing up.
It is horrible.
Every time a rape is in the news. All the scars of harassment, molestation, violence and other crimes and misdemeanours, termed as “eve-teasing”, that women face and brave in the city on a day-to-day basis, turn to fresh wounds and ache. Ask any woman, young or old, sister, friend or colleague, and they will tell you that the abuse women face in the city is not in some dark and deserted alley, but in broad daylight and in full view of the public.
Just last evening, I was on the Metro from Noida to Delhi, standing and reading a book next to a young couple. A middle-aged man close to us wouldn't refrain from staring at the girl. I remember seeing a video someone had posted some while back of a similar situation, so I promptly took the idea, and began to block his view. Every time he shifted, I would too. After a point, he got frustrated and left.
Staring, I have realised, is a form of violence too. It is cold, lascivious and offensive. Imagine you're going about your way and no matter which way you turn, you are being followed by pairs of ravenous eyes. You feel you're nothing but cold meat strung up at a butcher's shop. This strain of always being probed, always being followed has now come to be a part of a woman's existence in our country today. We may have done away with the purdah, but we still feel a woman rightly belongs behind one. That it's not a pair of jeans or chowmein that cause rape; it's a woman's sense of independence.
"I wish I were a boy," my friend said. My heart sank. Perhaps this was one of the saddest lines I've heard my entire life. What has the city done to us? When we end up saying the city is unsafe for women and women ought to be more careful, and even though we mean it with the utmost sincerity and concern, we're not only acquiescing to the fact that men will be men and they will rape, but that in this life, a woman's freedom (read: honour) stretches only to the extent that she can keep herself safe. That in her mind she comes to loathe her gender, which denies her freedom, is someone else’s burden and responsibility, she doesn't want to impose on anyone. How depressing is that. Not depressing that my friend is entertaining such a thought, but depressing because we've all reduced her to think like this.
What can we do to stop rape? More awareness? Better vigilance? Harsher punishment? We've been through these rounds of discussions before. Two years ago when the December 16 gangrape took place, we saw the same hurt and anger women feel, spill onto the streets. It was humbling to see people of the city bear the coldest and cruellest days of Delhi winter demanding justice, demanding the right to feel safe, demanding the right to be left alone.
I was in the newsroom of a national newspaper when the metro editor informed us that there has been a rape in the city. Two days before, a woman had been raped twice by two different men on the same night. One, by her uncle and the other by a taxi driver, whom she thought would help her get away from the nightmare. And a few months before when the same newspaper had broken the story of two children who were being injected with heroin and were being filmed for paedophiles for months during school hours in an apartment by their driver in the heart of the city. Yes, the same editor's voice was quavering as she discussed the details of the rape case that went on to become a national headline in the following days. The doctors had not seen anything like that, the field reporters were saying. "They didn't even leave the intestine," a woman reporter told me.
How do we go about changing the mindset of this country? Rape and violence against women isn't restricted to the streets. Women, be it a wife or a domestic help, face some of the worst forms of abuse because it is cloaked behind the secrecy of four walls. Someone I know who runs a placement agency in Gurgaon and provides migrant women training to work in homes talks of the chilling abuse employers inflict upon their maids. Most often, it is the elderly male, who sits at home all day, while his son and daughter-in-law are out, who preys upon the help.
The Uber rape case once again has got women being told off, almost taunted in a sense, that this is what happens when you're alone on the road. You're almost meant to feel the collective shame of what the victim had to endure as well as know the price of your independence.
What good is living in a country that worships women in the morning and rapes them at night. What good is living in a country where the priority is converting or re-converting people from one religion to another but not in gaining equal gender rights. What good is living in a country and learning Sanskrit when we can't teach that a "no" is a "no". What good is living in a country that is losing its culture to the fire of hate and violence engulfing us all: we can either stamp on it or be consumed by it. Either way, we’ll get burnt.