Tell Me If You Know The Answer...:-(

Internet, news channels, newspapers, everyone is debating over the safety of women in our country after the incident of molestation of a girl by around 20 people took place. It fills me with shame and anger, helplessness and tenacity towards the attitude of the people in this country. Who is to be blamed? The girl who stepped out of her house late at night in a wild country full beasts? The men who have been brought up with the notion that no matter whatever they do, they will always have the authority to turn the tide to themselves? Or the society which has succeeded incessantly in keeping the gap between the two genders? Or the authorities who could not care less?

This takes me to an incident which keeps giving me goose bumps even after 10 years.

I remember playing on the terrace with my sister on a sunny winter day. A friend of mine came upstairs in a hurry as if someone has stolen his new pencil box and whispered something into my ear which I did not understand. “Jules has been raked” were his words. Jules was 5 year old, a daughter of a worker in our locality. She was one of the most beautiful girls I have ever seen. Golden locks, deep brown eyes, rosy complexion and everything else you would never imagine on a poor worker’s child. After that day, I never saw her again.

I tried asking my mom about her but my inquisitiveness was always put to rest. A 10 year old will never be interested in what “being raked” means. So I let it pass as easily as it came to me.

Jules was raped by a man who was 27 years old. Her parents left the place after filing the police complaint and watching the bastard being freed in just a week of judicial custody. On what grounds you want to ask? I will tell you...The man was proved to be mentally retarded.

A five year old was raped, of her childhood, her innocence, her free spirit...

I was ten and my mind was fickle. But why did the world around me behave like 10 years old?

Why did not my parents do something?

Why was the man easily forgiven by the court and by the society when the poor girl had to be taken away by her family?

Why?

Tell me if you know the answer.

"i stood up"

Being You!

You are practical, insensitive and emotionally drained!

I grew up hearing these compliments (I choose to take them that way) from every soul who was close to me and over a period of time I started believing in them too. Acting stronger than I was, being a loner when all I wanted was a long conversation over a cup of coffee, getting on without support when a little help would have actually made it better and being someone else when my inner self was dying to surface above.

  In short, I screwed up and I am happy to admit now. I took refuge in somebody else’s perception and let it take all control. I took the practicality as my perfection and thought that any kind of attachment will cause me nothing but pain. And I actually went through a lot of pain not because of attachment but because of lack of it. The shell of loneliness that I created has left a void in me which I find difficult to fill now.   

  I can no longer fill these voids as they have become big enough to engulf me but I hope to peacefully coexist with them. Living with them every moment will make me surer of who I am and who I was being.

This reminds me of these very beautiful lines by Janis Joplin

“Never compromise yourself; you are all you have got”