Nirbhaya

I don’t know her name. I know her as Damini or Nirbhaya, the name media has given her. She was 23, as old as me and maybe similar to me in many ways. And now her battered and tormented body is a testimony to all the faceless and nameless women who were raped and left to die, who are nothing more than mere footnotes in the left-hand column of the newspaper.

Often when we talk about the women in India, we speak in shorthand. The Park Street rape case in Kolkata, The Gurgaon gang rape, The Bhanwari Devi case, Pallavi Purkayasth murder case. Each of these women and places, map a geography of pain, of unspeakable and unimaginable damage inflicted on women’s bodies, on the map of India, where you can, create a constantly updating map of violence against women.

For many of these tormented women, amnesia becomes a way of self-defence: there is only so much darkness you can swallow. And then the tipping point comes, and there’s that girl. For some reason,  she got through to us. My heart shrivelled in the face of what she had to go through. The mental agony, the trauma she had been subjected to by the six men travelling on that bus, who spent an hour torturing and raping her, savagely beating up her male friend. Horrific, brutal, savage—these tired words point towards a loss of words, and none of them express how deeply we identified with her.

She had not asked to become a symbol or a martyr, or a cause; she wanted to lead a normal life, practicing medicine, watching movies, going out with friends. She had not asked to be brave, to be the girl who was so courageous, the woman whose injuries symbolised the violence so many women across the country know so intimately. She had asked for one thing, after she was admitted to Safdarjung Hospital: “I want to live,” she had said to her mother.

 Some cases stop being cases. Sometimes, an atrocity bites so deep that we have no armour against it, and that was what happened with the 23-year-old medical student, the one who left a cinema hall and boarded the wrong bus, whose intestines were so badly damaged that the injuries listed on the FIR report made hardened doctors, and then the capital city, cry for her pain.

She died early this morning, in a Singapore hospital where she and her family had been despatched by the government for what the papers called political, not compassionate, reasons.

The grief hit harder than I’d expected. And I had two thoughts. The first was: enough. Let there be an end to this epidemic of violence, this culture where if we can’t kill off our girls before they are born, we ensure that they live these lives in constant fear. Like many women in India, I rely on a layer of privilege, a network of friends, paranoid security measures and a huge dose of amnesia just to get around the city, just to travel in this country. So many more women have neither the privilege, nor the luxury of amnesia, and this week, perhaps we all stood up to say, “Enough”, no matter how incoherently or angrily we said it.

The second was even simpler. I did not know the name of the girl in the bus. I don’t need to know her name now, especially if her family doesn’t want to share their lives and their grief with us. I think of all the other anonymous women whose stories don’t make it to the front pages, when I think of this woman; I think of the courage that is forced on them, the way their lives are warped in a different direction from the one they had meant to take. Don’t tell me her name; I don’t need to know it, to cry for her.

The Battle Within...

"Put the gloves on otherwise you will cut and scratch your hands", says my mother. I do as I am told. Its a fine day. The sky has little wisps of clouds and there is a distinct chill in the air. I am standing in my garden helping my mother to remove the weeds. Besides me lies my weapon- its like a curved spear, almost the same size as the butcher knife. Its called a sickle. The object of my attack is right there in front of me- my garden.
I immediately bend down and start my battle with the weeds. I start remove them among the plants and the grass. I do this for quite sometime knowing that each plant I remove will die in a day or two. Suddenly a question pops into my head- Am I doing the right thing? What we call a "weed" is, in fact, a species which is trying to survive, a species which has taken Nature millions of years to create and develop. The flower was fertilized by several insects. Then it was transformed into a seed and scattered by the wind everywhere and because it was not planted in one particular place- but in many- its chances of survival are many. But all the effort put in the survival is cut short by my sickle which is mercilessly cutting the plant, uprooting it from the soil.
Why am I doing this?
My mother created this garden. It is in perfect harmony with the nearby tress, birds and the insects. My mother had thought long and hard and she knew what she wanted when she planned this garden. She tended this place for so many years. But she thinks the weeds spoil the beauty of her garden and destroy all her plants.  Should I respect my mother's choice or should I just accept the survival instinct of the weed?
I continue my war with the weeds. I pull out quite a few and toss them into a pile. You might think I am thinking to much, unnecessarily. But, then, every gesture of man is sacred, and that makes me think even more.
On the contrary, these plants have the right to live anywhere they want. But if I don't destroy them now they will destroy the other plants. In the New Testament, Jesus talks about separating the wheat from the tares.
But the Bible doesn't solve my dilemma. I am faced by a concrete question always faced by man - How far should we interfere with nature? Is our interference always negative or does it yield positive results as well.
I set aside the sickle and to give more thought to this question of life and death.
In the end the Bhagavad- Gita comes to my help. I remember the answer Krishna gives to Arjuna, when the latter loses heart before the great battle, throws down his Gandiva and says it is not right to take part in this battle because it will only result in the death of loved ones. Krishna says," Do you really think you can kill anyone? Your hand is My hand and it was already written that everything you are doing would be done. No one kills no one and no one dies."
Encouraged by this particular passage, I pick up my sickle and attack the weeds again. This experience taught me one lesson- when some evil or undesirable grows in my soul I ask God to give me the courage and strength to mercilessly pluck it out.

What Love taught me..

5 years in Pune has bought a tremendous change in me. This city has changed my thinking, my perceptions, my views and to some extent it has touched my life in many significant ways. Pune has given me the best and the worst to cope. It is in this city that I fell in love for the first time and this thing called LOVE taught me a few things about life and myself. It has not been a very pleasant experience but love helped me to know myself better and I am grateful.

It is possible to love someone who doesn’t love you back. It is painful and makes you sick. It makes you feel incomplete. But its very much there. Unrequited love is one of the most strongest yet the most painful forms of love I have known.

I have always been told that I have to love myself before letting anybody love. But I don’t agree with this notion. There are times when I hated myself beyond anything and there was still someone who loved me in spite of that. But it’s not healthy. Its not the best kind of love I feel.

Love is like a drug. Its a fixation. A fixation burrows into your heart and mind. Its stubborn and won’t give you peace and Love is the worst kind of fixation.

Its painful to have loved someone once and never again. Sometimes you regret it and wish that it never happened.

One of the most important things love taught me was that you can never love someone quite the same way you did the first time. For me that is a painful thought and something that I have to live with for the rest of my life.

Its a beautiful feeling when you realize that you are worth loving.

Sex and love should never be confused. Sometimes sex just brings out the weaknesses in the relationship.

Someone you love may betray you. Its the law of life and everyone has to go through it.

You cannot force yourself to love someone. If it’s not there it’s not going to happen.

Love is not always exciting. It can be felt subtly on a lazy Sunday afternoon when you are sitting with someone silently. You look around for  a second and realize that you can never feel safer or happier anywhere else.

Everyone wants to be loved. Everyone wants to feel wanted and relied upon. For most people its like Achilles heel. I am no exception.

Finding love is the most conscious motivator for a lot of things we all do. Love is the reason why we work out. Love is the reason why we want to look good, no matter what. Its why we talk to strangers in the first place.

If you love someone today there is a chance that you might hate that person someday. Yes it happens.

There will always be that one person who will stick in your mind. They will feel like a perpetual ache in your heart.

Love will bring out the best and the worst version of yourself.

Love is the reason why we are all here.