Had resolved not to end the year on a glum note but find myself heading exactly in the direction I was to stay clear of; December, for the most, with the air tinselly with festivity, my favourite month of all but…but (yes, the big ‘but’ that changes the entire course of things) see not fizzing with energy lit by the Christmassy spark that sheens in at the start of the last month of the year. 2020 has a fine ring to it, and even looks rather prim-’n’-propah when you jot it down, but the way things are, can one re-eally put on one’s party cap and don one’s dancing shoes while pouring endless bubbly into flute glasses and blissfully savouring over hors d’oeuvres? Is it too late in the day to retract the New Year’s invites pinged via WhatsApp by the significant-other, with me going along to reaffirm my glass half-full perspective. At this moment, ‘hosting’ is the last thing I would want to do. In case, one of my guests-to-be happens to read this piece, and decides not to attend New Year’s dinner at my abode, would, in return, be rewarded with a lifetime’s supply of brownies or whatever pastry of one’s liking.
The nation is haemorrhaging—if one happens to survey the statistics of the rape rate it would not, by a long shot, be surprising if India ‘topped’ the lists of rapes occurring every minute, in every nook and corner. What kind of madness, perversion has descended upon us? Two year old babies turned upside down, hung in the air by their pint-sized feet, for being raped by a teenager, a hulk of a man, a male who pales the deeds of the devil. A 60 or 70 or 80 plus woman dragged by the hair to be raped by four or five teenagers living in the neighbourhood… A 16-year old in the metro groped, pawed by a grandfatherly man, to be then followed home after she gets off at her stop; her residence noted for the day when he can go in for the kill. An uncle, the mother’s or father’s brother, at an ‘opportune moment’ snuggling into bed with the niece—the beginning of an appalling tirade of endless abuse, mauling violation, threatening her that if she uttered a word over, ‘their sessions’ she would be in the dock for possessing a high-libido, and coming in at the dead of night, on a-deep-in-slumber man, mistaking the girl for his spouse. (That is, if medical tests determine some contact of sorts.) His wife had not accompanied him for the ‘family get-together’ since the ‘bachchas’ back home were preparing for the pre-board exams and the mother’s overseeing presence imperative, for her to make them piping hot cups of coffee, with extra sugar for that double-shot of energy, to keep them studying single-mindedly nightlong. After all, what future does our country hold—lungfuls of pollution, a daily intake, sky-high inflation with a plummeting economy?
Canada has it all—oxygenated air, medical care, jobs that at the drop-of-a-hat air-lift into a career, crime-free precincts and if an offence is committed justice is, at once served. Nothing but a round of applause for such rock-ribbed parents who had laid their live’s sole stock, for them to cash in on the blue chip. (Neither nothing left to say in the face of this well-planned incestuous defilement!)
2018—the little shepherd lass in Kathua, all of eight years, abducted in a temple, a bottle of whisky forced down her gullet, and for eight long days, gang-raped, each of the six or was it eight monsters, fixatedly looking on when one was tearing into the innards of the girl, while waiting for their turn, a policeman a part of this team of beasts. A girl set aflame by demons, who had some two years earlier, tormented her in the vilest way. With 90% burns, she died at Safdarjung hospital managing, thankfully, to name the perpetrators before breathing her last. Funny, why I say ‘thankfully’. Are these brutes going to be publicly pelted to death, crying out for mercy in their dismembered state?! Will they even go to trial?! And if so, will manage to go scot-free for want of tangible evidence. After all, dead men tell no tales, and the charred girl was further consigned to flames on her funeral pyre. Then most recently again, an MLA in Uttar Pradesh rapes a teenager and for a long while went about his business of being an integral part of the ‘Sarkaar’, until God knows how, the indignant murmurs become louder snowballing into a furore of fury. What about the 26-year old veterinary doctor in Hyderabad…the parents go to the police to lodge a complaint for their untraceable daughter and are sneeringly told that the chances of her running off, eloping with her lover, the more likely storyline… Of course soon it was discovered that she had been gang-raped by four savages after which her brutally bruised body was burnt alive. In this case, however, in a space of a week, the unbelievable happened. It may be about the police wanting to redeem itself but…but that is quite irrelevant. The cops ordered the ogres to take them to the scene where the young lady was ‘preyed’ upon. Once at the ‘spot’, the police gunned them down. Immediate justice! A hefty-handed message sent out to future rearing-to-go-predators. Circa: 16 December 2012, Nirbhaya and we, hair growing grey, still wait seven years on, for snail-paced justice, to at last, show the light of the day.
2020 has a simple symmetrical sound to it; so on this note let us wish for a fresh new year bestowing us with 20/20 vision to act on the enormity of this epidemic.