Lost In Translation

I love writing but sometimes as in the present times, it seems futile because nothing changes. It’s like we are caught in a time warp and the state of the nation doesn’t change. One thinks the pandemic would change the hunger of the flesh or the base desires of human but every single day, every moment they come back with something worse and leave me with a heavy heart that breaks again and again. Last week in the country that is next to ours had the worst rape committed where a lady was travelling back with her children at night. The petrol finished and she stopped to ask for help, two men ( obviously ) overpowered her and took her after hitting, looting her and in front of the children repeatedly raped her. Why does this bother me?

I am an Indian, it shouldn’t bother me. I should be oblivious of this, I am safe, it won’t happen to me and why did this woman travel late at night? Why didn’t she take this road instead of that? As my maid gave me her homespun advice, she said koi baat nahi , aurat ki galti hoti hai hamesha , yehi dastoor hai . It doesn’t matter where or what she was doing or what she was wearing, society here or there will always have a list of guidelines, instructions outlined for a woman. She will always be too provocative, too daring, she asked for it, she posted pictures online, she said no. I have cried myself hear imagining the horrors but what got my gall was saying this that this is an elitist crime, so that’s why it’s bothering me? I mean really? How the blazes do you call rape, elitist isn’t that’s why women are out on the roads? Our countries are not safe for women, for minors, for religious, ethnic communities, for corpses, for animals ( yes animals too). Anyone who has a voice isn’t safe either. She is brought down to her knees, I know physically they overpower her and they break her spirit and mutilate defile.

Our system is such that a woman who is raped, will shy away and hide her self, the woman said so too she said kill me and bhai don’t tell anyone. I broke down when I read this. Don’t confuse this by saying it happened in Pakistan, it happens here too in large numbers. It’s hushed up, or just a hue and cry and the file makes rounds and rounds, lost in the dusty shelves of the police station and mysteriously a fire breaks down just because the accused is high profile. I think we all deserve for the world to end, the bestial, animal nature of man has raped the woman who gives birth, cradles him to life, carries him for nine months and no amount of reference to the Holy Books that give us a sacred place doesn’t save us. The scriptures give the highest position to women but lost in translation, it is. I speak like Yoda right now, because maybe that might help us to solve and stop this rot. Public hangings, slow death chemical castrations seems what I suggest and I hope the day comes when this all is done and isn’t just a sop as always.

Rape, is a four-letter word, say it, say it aloud, its akin to hate, and all we need is love and kind ( ness ) for us to survive. Society always has this list to curtail women, why not teach boys and men that this is fundamentally wrong and against any grain. When animals don’t rape, what makes us worse than them? Why will you not spare the two-year-old who was wearing a diaper? The skirt, the burka all cry but the diaper couldn’t even speak. The next time you prostrate in front of the bir sahib , or at the temple, or sit in the pew of the church or even on your ceremonial mat to say your namaz remember it could happen to your mother sister, or daughters too.

_{Featured image: Quartz}

---