Suzette Jordan: The rape victim who didn't break till the end

Mamata Banerjee saluted the martyrs of Nandigram. Narendra Modi finished his three-nation tour. Aamir Khan turned 50. India won a six-wicket victory over Zimbabwe…It sounded as normal a day as any. Except it wasn't. Pricking at the edge of our consciousness through March 14 was an immense sadness: for a horror story called Suzette Jordan.

Gang raped by social criminals and ganged up against by state machinery, her three years in public eye-as the Park Street rape victim who refused to accept that label-played out without an iota of relief or redemption. And just as one hoped for resurrection (a court victory, perhaps?) life dealt her a singular and absolute blow: death.

Suzette died on Friday, March 13 of multiple organ failure from a rare infection of the central nervous system, meningoencephalitis. A double whammy, where encephalitis causes brain inflammation and meningitis leads to inflammation of the protective membranes covering the spinal chord. It was possibly an "opportunistic infection" that does not normally afflict healthy individuals but those with weak immune systems. At least, that's what doctors at Calcutta's School of Tropical Medicine, where she was brought in comatose on March 12, have hinted at. Compromised immunity or not, Suzette was going through mind-blowing depression-known to alter the immunity system. The key to survival lay in early diagnoses. But it was too rare an infection to be treated at a nursing home. Time ran out on Suzette over the week as she battled high fever and seizures at a Wood Street nursing home.

It's the saddest story the nation can tell. Not just because she was gang raped, humiliated and insulted. That routinely happens to women across the country, every day. Not because the woman head of her state tar-brushed her, or the prime culprit could not be captured or the woman judge denigrated her publicly. She got enough affection and attention from strangers across the country to heal her wounds over time.

Her story is the sad story of a being a woman of a community under siege. The space for Anglo-Indians-as also Armenians, Jews or the Chinese, who made Calcutta their home and gave the city its cosmopolitan flavour-has been shrinking rapidly. Geographically, they always lived in the ambivalent "grey town" in and around Dharmatala, separating the "native town" in the north and south from the well-laid-out "white town" in the middle of the city, around Park street and Chowringhee.

Those who remember the Calcutta of '60s and '70s recall Anglo-Indians with respect, as brilliant teachers, doctors, lawyers, restaurateurs, railways men or newspaper editors. Spectacularly good looking and smartly-attired, they won top awards in sports and beauty pageants. Their ease with English brought them coveted jobs in the radio or Calcutta telephones. And the upwardly mobile Calcuttans loved to be a part of the schools or shops they ran, the music they enjoyed, the racing or boxing matches they patronised or the lavish parties they threw.

That world has disappeared. With large-scale Anglo-Indian migration over the years to UK, Canada and Australia, about 30,000 remain in the city-an invisible minority in a city of 45 lakh. Most of them have been dislodged from prime areas of the city to its suburban underbelly. Most dress like, and look like, other Calcuttans. Most speak fluent Hindi and Bengali. And with few role models and influential personalities in the community, they suffer from an unwritten code of stereotyping that makes them vulnerable to insults and ostracism-as people with attitude but no work ethic, into gambling, drinking or prostitution. Anglo-Indian women, often the breadwinners of the family, find it difficult to get jobs and don't want to marry fellow Anglo-Indians. But marriage with Indians is something that almost never works out.  

We don't know much about Suzette's past. Did she have any Armenian blood? Most "Jordans" in Calcutta belong to the tiny 100-strong community, who had come to the city before the British and later married into other communities. She lived in suburban Behala but spent her leisure hours in the heart of the city, around Park Street. She had studied at the prestigious Pratt Memorial school, was good in debates, elocutions, and sports. Although from a family of teachers and educationists (her grandmother was the principal of a reputed school) she had left school after class 10, right after her parents got divorced. Ever since, she had taken up odd jobs-as a sales girl, a receptionist, a call centre executive-bringing up her two daughters as a single mother. She had married someone many years her senior, she had said, and the marriage did not last. The acute negativity she faced since February 2012, was largely that of being an Anglo-Indian woman, that too a young, attractive single mother, with no protective father, brother or husband around her and no source of income. Who could be more vulnerable than her?

A life wasted, without reason, without justice, without mercy. The only miracle in this relentlessly grim saga was Suzette herself: brave, bold and unputdownable. India Today had chosen her as a Newsmaker for 2013. When reporter Malini Banerjee met her at Park Street, she had said, "When they see that you won't break, no matter what they do, they will be afraid." She was right. The trick, she had added, was to "hold your head up high like you always did." And she had talked about her faith in the Virgin Mary: "People laugh at my belief in God. But I know what brought me back."

Suzette may become yet another footnote in the long list of injustice the country witnesses, but the beauty of her courage will stay in our collective consciousness for time future.