What horrifies me is that onlookers chose to film drunk man raping Vizag woman
Every day, there is something in the newspaper that makes the stomach churn, makes you sick and shocks you to the core.
Did the people who stood and watched a woman - sleeping on a footpath - being raped also experience the same churning? What were 10-15 people afraid of - a drunken man who perpetrated the crime? What if they had all got together? Couldn't they have pulled the man off, held him, called the police? Couldn't they?
And then the questions - why wouldn't they? Why couldn't they? Would they have acted differently if she was not a starving woman on the road but one of them? What if she had been a teacher in their children's school, a neighbour, a cousin? Wouldn't they have stepped ahead to stop the horror then?
The actual horror, to my mind, is not the drunken man's depravity, but the crowd's apathy. To film the act on a phone and not stop it. That is the true crime. But poor woman, she was not "Us", she was "Them". She didn't belong to anyone. And so she could be raped.
Think about it, would the same be true for one of us - reading this column on an online platform - probably not. Now let's reverse the situation. Suppose one of us ventured into the "Themland". A slum, a remote tribal village. Suppose one of the denizens of "Them" fell upon our hapless "Us" woman and raped her. Imagine the Thems watching - recording, filming… letting it happen. How would we react? We would call them animals (though animals never behave in this way, by the way). We would cry blue murder, we would ensure that there was hell to pay. We would. But because it was a Them, we stood and watched.
Through my books, through my writings and through my work with young people, I repeatedly try to create empathy for the "Others" - those who are outside our immediate circle. Through my stories I try to get young people to put themselves into the shoes of others and walk for a little while. See how those shoes fit. Or don't. The Us wearing Them shoes and sometimes the other way round.
Here I would like to give the example of a young boy I met in Jaipur. I had just read a story from my book Like Smoke about a Kashmiri Pandit girl, whose father is killed in a terrorist attack. She expresses her grief by speaking against all Muslims — "it was a Muslim bomb that killed him". I had got this first line from an actual conversation overheard in a Delhi school. It was — and is — a prevalent sentiment, I have repeatedly heard. Therefore, I had written this story.
After the story ended, one young student got up to say, "Ma'am, I agree with you that all Muslims are not terrorists, but you will have to agree with me that almost all terrorists are Muslims, so what do you have to say about that?"
I said, "Alright, let's put aside religion for a moment and take another example. Let's take the case of rape. Now, we can all agree that all men are not rapists, but you, son, will have to agree with me that almost all rapists are men. Therefore, let's treat all men with hatred and anger and suspicion. Let's treat all men as potential rapists. Which means you, young man, are also a potential rapist and I will treat you as such."
There was dead silence in the hall. I saw the young boy ball up his fists. For a fleeting moment, I thought he might even hit me. He was that offended by what I had said. And of course, it was such an offensive thing. He should be offended. But then I saw the expression of anger turn to understanding, I saw his fists unclench and the whole hall of students burst into applause. Later, this child said to me that no one had ever explained it to him in a way he could understand. There was a little opening of that tight circle of Us and Them. At least, I hope so.
And that is why I write what I write. That is why I urge my young readers to be proactive, to think and make up their own minds instead of mindlessly following prejudices. I recently wrote an article after the horrendous rape and subsequent pregnancy of a very young child. I wrote that there should be stories that deal with this issue written especially for young adults.
I have been overwhelmed by the number of responses I have received from this article. Dear friends and total strangers have come forward with their own stories of rape and sexual assault. Most said that they did not think that they could tell anyone about it. Those who had were told to keep quiet. Everyone urged me to write such stories. We need to shush no more. The wounds exist. Simply looking the other way is not going to heal them.
Stories, though, can heal. They can bring festering wounds out into the open, where they can scab over and empower those who have been mute for too long.