she was asking for it??

another rape in the capital. a five year old brutalized and i think about how when the nirbhaya rape shook the nation i heard educated people sympathize but with always a shadow of doubt concerning the victim. they wondered what she was doing out on a bus with a male for company....was she wearing society defined "decent" clothes....and a whole lot of such absurd assumptions. wonder what they have to say now....this one is a child...she is five....an age at which she did not deserve to even know about the acts that she was ruthlessly subjected to. girls her age play with dolls, chase butterflies, dream about fairies and elves....and she was exposed to such savageness. her body may heal...i doubt her mind ever will.

posting something i wrote earlier.....disillusioned yet again....

she was asking for it' some of them said....if she was alone out at night she was asking for it....if she was wearing clothes she liked she was asking for it....if she smiled or god forbid laughed she was asking for it....if she fought she was asking for it....there’s no way that she couldn't have been....could she?

Days go by and people are back to their humdrum existence. me.....im back to writing this note which i started writing a month back and again im reminded of the fact that i had stopped. i had stopped writing it because the anguish inside me threatened to erupt in words which would have probably made no sense to anyone, i stopped because i wanted a clearer perspective. i stopped because i wanted to be less angry when i wrote this.i also stopped because i wanted to see if i would forget too.....like so many others do.

i have not forgotten and i dont think i ever will. people have discussed rape, slammed the protests and the protesters, mocked the media and the laws but in my mind the horror i felt on reading about the inhumanity is fresh...like a wound that refuses to heal.

i cannot forget because i am a woman and i have given birth to two. to think that there are men out there who can treat women as a commodity...something they can use and destroy makes me question everything i used to be proud of....my country...its society...its laws and above all its people.

its a blot on our collective consciense and so it should be. it should stay there too,to remind us that we are wrong when we say its about the women. its not.... its about the concept of maleness in our society....the concept of men being men. so as we grow up we are instilled with the belief that men by the very virtue of being male... are stronger.....have less restraint and are conditioned to treat women apart from the ones they hold sacred....as commodified anatomies. so where mothers will teach girls to behave in a certain manner acceptable to the society the boys will not be taught anything because they will be themselves.accept it. case closed.

and we have never ever questioned this. why treat the boys as if each of them has no character, no self control, no respect towards others?

i blame myself for living in a society that teaches me to put myself before others, i blame myself for buckling under every rule that it lays out. for refusing to question when we were told to mind our business. for looking the other way when  i saw someone in trouble. for convincing myself that if i laughed out, smiled or exhibited any amount of carefree spirit i would be attracting attention and that it would all be my fault. i blame myself for teaching my girls the same....for making them weak and selfish instead of the proud strong women they should be.