When you get rape threats by fans of a Bollywood star

Last evening, while driving home, a friend in Mumbai texted as part of a WhatsApp group, “Aruna Shanbaug is dead”.

There was an uncanny silence, post which another member of the group texted, "?".

The person replied, "Are you serious? Shanbaug."

"Say ya. Shanbag who?"

I read the messages, not saying a word.

"Shanbaug? That euthanasia case, right? Wasn’t she brain dead already? What do you mean dead then?" someone quipped.

"Dead means dead yaar… Google the rest, okay." The conversation ended.

We did as we were told.

When I checked the group again after some time, there was a longish update. Possibly copy pasted from a news website.

"The 25-year-old Aruna Shanbaug was a staff nurse at the KEM Hospital when Sohanlal Bharta Valmik, a cleaner at the hospital, strangled her with a dog chain that cut off the oxygen supply to her brain and damaged her cortex, leaving her blind and in a PVS. Brutally sodomising her. Valmik was subsequently convicted of robbery and attempted murder and served a seven-year sentence. The charge of sodomy was dropped."

No one said a thing.

"Hey, wasn’t Irrfan hot in Piku?"

That has been the last reaction on the group ever since.

***

As I read the headlines on Shanbaug on May 19, I was overcome with a gnawing sadness. To think that it needed the natural death of one of India’s oldest surviving rape victims to remind us of her cruel fate seemed ironic.

I asked myself, if sexual violence by its very nature and definition, by the fearful shame it results in, leads to a silent immunisation. The way we consume it with a fleeting passivity, almost daily. Outraged while penning a blog, or a status update, or leading a candlelight vigil when a rape victim dies, but saying nothing when a woman blogger is shot dead in Pakistan.

The way we gleefully soak in television serials at primetime, that routinely objectify women, depicting gruesome mental and physical torture by the spouse and in-laws, overrated reality shows like Bigg Boss indulging in actual physical bouts coupled with the most uncouth verbal abuses hurled against women contestants. Sometimes guised as a game.

An icon like Salman Khan is paid handsomely to play match referee – an actor allegedly famous to beat his beaus, someone with a legendary temper and drinking problem.

But wait…

Can I say that even?

What if I am threatened with rape again?

Just last week, as a reaction to a Facebook status update on Salman Khan that was falsely shared online as an open letter and subsequently went viral, fans of the star threatened me numerous times — on my FB timeline as well as Twitter handle. No one was spared. My parents. My family. My books. My breasts. My hair. My weight. The words “rape” and “ra**i” were hurled at me in much the same way, casually, condescendingly, crassly.

“WTF, kick her ass and strip her naked.”

“KUTIYA.”

“Ur born after ur mom got f*****d by a slum dog, you mother f*****r”.

“Will rape you bitch. You need Bhai’s d**k in your ass to teach you a lesson”.

Were just a few of the messages…

Initially, I sat up blocking these trolls, deleting these crude comments, cleaning up my timeline, the way I would imagine a Hindi film heroine awkwardly covering her bosom, when the villain yanks off her dupatta, laughing.

I nursed a helpless anger. I was advised to immediately deactivate my Twitter handle as the paid trolls would intensify. A former journalist friend in Mumbai who covered Bollywood, urgently called me the next day, saying the actor's men may land up at my doorstep.

“You live in Delhi – it’s the rape capital”.

“Get a lawyer”.

“Call the cops”.

“Carry a hockey stick in your car please”.

Less than 48 hours later, I couldn't log on to Facebook. It was like my worst fears coming true. As I tried logging in, I was asked to verify my identity, by producing a government of India validated documentation that I was indeed Sreemoyee Piu Kundu!

It didn’t matter that I was the one being attacked. What did was a faceless fanatical mob “reporting” my account to Facebook officials on grounds of nudity, claiming mine was a fake account.

I had to prove the charges.

Write emails to the head of Facebook India, with the help of some well-meaning readers and friends. The majority of whom still asking why I am so vocal? Why not use the medium to just post movie reviews, participate in contests, play Candy Crush, flaunt selfies, quote great thinkers, post holiday albums. Like the rest…

No opinions.

Even as I won the battle against FB, I was never told why my account had been deactivated.

For the first time, in a strange way, I wondered if this what an actual rape victim is made to go through?

Is this how women who have been sexually violated are made to feel when asked to not talk about it? Is silence therefore more convenient? Safer?

I contemplated deleting my FB account.

Staying away, for a while. Not because I was scared that I might be hounded again. But because I was keen to know what my chances of fighting back were in this vicious, sexist battle that was now raging.

Are women softer targets? Is their mass humiliation a cheap, vulgar entertainment, just the way a heroine gyrates before a villain, or is forced to kiss the bad guy in college, or Sunny Leone heaves suggestively in a skimpily-clad item number? Is there something voyeuristic about violence against women that makes it a ritual in this land of the Mother Goddess?

Over the past week, as I dealt with this public outrage, what shocked me the most was how openly misogynistic we were as a people. The way women – friends and acquaintances on my friend list – left no stone unturned in telling me how I deserved the abuses.

To me they at times sounded like Nirbhaya’s rapist who in Leslee Udwin's documentary India’s Daughter had nonchalantly declared that women who roam the streets after dark, with a boyfriend, wearing skimpy clothes, deserve to be mutilated.

To be dead.

Does the word rape now denote punishment? A corrective measure. A tool to control women. Their bodies. To scare them into painful submission. To teach them a bloodied lesson that the rest of us will never forget. Rape, a power device, much more than a moral and social perversion.

What do these naarimorchas, feminism debates on television, women’s empowerment panels, Women’s Day awards amount to then?

When and how can we be safe?