SHE NO MORE FEELS THE PAIN IN HER VAGINA
(DIARY OF A GIRL RAPED BY HER OWN UNCLES REGULARLY WITH FULL SUPPORT OF HER PARENTS)


This post is a part of Save The Kids Campaign. About a girl from North India repeatedly raped by her uncles (maternal and paternal) within the family home with full support of both mother and father who allowed them to do so for money. She is now a young woman, who has left home, pursuing her career and about to be married to a man who has loved her beyond her body. The following is an excerpt from the interview taken by a reporter of that girl.


“It’s been years. I don’t feel the pain in my vagina anymore”.

“But why didn’t you tell anyone?”

“I was shocked. Ma used to see my vagina bleed, she never did anything. So, I thought it’s something to be done regularly. I was 7 then. I am 20 now.”

“Since then? Till you moved out? Every day?”

“Almost, till I planned to move out.”

As we were enjoying tea, I looked into her eyes. She had no expressions. She didn’t really care much about it. I grabbed her pack of smokes. We shared one. I noticed a faint smile on her face.

“You know, every man in that family tried to touch me. Mama, Kaka, Masa.
but Baba…”

“What? What did he do?”

“He didnt stop them!”

She opened her pursue to buy Candy Floss. I could see condoms in her purse. I didn’t ask anything, I knew she’d tell me everything. After all, she was going to be engaged with my brother.

“He didn’t stop them because he wanted to earn without working and I was the only option for him, even though he didn’t let any other man touch me BUT my relatives and he claims that with pride.”

“Why the hell didn’t you go to the police, Shruti?”

“Because when I tried doing something, I was asked how were my boobs grabbed and I was asked to demonstrate and then…”

“AND THEN?”

“I was asked to strip and show them the marks.”

I noticed tears rolling down her eyes. She is one of these over excited women you’ll ever meet. Always smiling and always jumping, and always smoking. Always with no gaps.

“And then?”

“Regularly hota aya hai na. Hota gaya. (It happened regularly). I crossed my puberty. My school was very strict and I had no friends. My own parents betrayed me. You think my school would have helped me?”

“Look, I am going to write for this site that’s going to publish this story. I want you to tell me everything so that we can stop another Shruti.”

She paused. Lit another smoke, gave one to me.

“I was 7 when I was raped. My mother served him tea in the very room. My dad took money from him, I was in pain. Something below my stomach was paining and I couldn’t understand anything.

Next day, mama had come over. I was so happy. He entered my room with Nutties and raped me just like kaka did. He held my breasts so hard and then he put fingers in my vagina, and it was hurting me so much.

I wanted to run away, I was crying and screaming, he penetrated something and I felt like I was dying and then I was lying on the floor, naked. My pet, Tito, licked my head and arms and sat there, without barking. This continued. Just because they wanted to derive pleasure, I was raped by Kaka and Mama on the very same day just before my Exams. My vagina bled, days after days. I didn’t feel the pain anymore. Their penises were so familiar and so friendly, yet so unwanted. I was always ready with my legs spread, with my clothes off my body. Baba and I hardly spoke then, I couldn’t tolerate them, in fact, I was pregnant and I was asked to choose abortion, obviously!”

“How are you now?”

“I am awesome. I am getting married which was something I always wanted to avoid. A man fell in love with this torn body which has been used in every way by many men. SEX, not love. Now, I am getting the love I deserve and that makes me smile. I have left them now, I live with my friends and I am happy.”

“Why don’t you file a complaint against them?”

“I can’t. Baba is involved. Let them be. I am strong enough to stop another me, Police kya karegi? Just like you are penning down and recording, others will too and this will spread. Laws in this country will not help you, you can help yourself, you can help others, and authorities will not do anything.”

“What are your plans in the future?”

“I am going to complete my degree here. Get married, continue my studies abroad and then work with Raj.”

“How many babies do you want?”

“I will never have kids. I have complications. I have been raped more than 30-40 times, I can never have babies, but I want to adopt so many dogs and so many cats and live happily”.

A pack of smokes got over. We exchanged a very deep look. I hugged her and she left for work. She has grown up with men in her family exploiting her breasts and vagina in every possible dirty way. No, not that she isn’t raising her voice against them, she is doing the necessary by talking to people who are willing to share her experience but she doesn’t wish to penalize them because she loves her parents. She works with NGO’s now and studying Psychology.

She is smiling but do we really know the intensity of the “help stop, help me!” behind her smile?

WRITING THE WOMAN'S LIFE:

(DALLAS BASED AUTHOR AND POET LOPAMUDRA BANERJEE'S THWARTED ESCAPE TOUCHED EVERY CHORD WITH MY OWN LIFE AS AN INDIAN WOMAN)

When I first met Lopamudra at her book launch, I thought her latest book Thwarted Escape was more about the journey of a middle class Bengali girl from the suburbs of Kolkata to the grand dreamworld of USA that became her adopted home. I was expecting something of a Jhumpa Lahiri kind of memoir. In fact, the author herself told me so, that she was trying to fathom how far one can go away from her ancestral roots. I thought thus the book is all about the self identity of a woman far away from her hometown.

But once I started reading (and I must say the poet in Lopamudra has expressed herself in every word she uses, like a lyrical melodrama) I realised the book is more about an Indian woman's journey and her experiences on her way right from childhood to adulthood through the so called shames of puberty. I viewed the book from an angle that I could relate to. Kolkata of the '80s and early '90s when we were all in school and the various characters of an extended families, convent schools, the yearning to be convent educated, the child molestation from within the family. It's like the author takes us on a journey of flourishing womanhood and never forgets to shout and tell this world as a woman we indeed had to fight our way through at every crossing of our growing up years.
She explores the Durga, Draupadi and Sita in every woman. For her "Goddess Durga or Mahamaya is the Supernova created by the omniscient, omnipotent male trinity Brahma, Vishnu and Maheshwar. Sita and Draupadi, the two pillars of epics Ramayana and Mahabharata, fuelled in me the desire to enquire the essence of patriarchy." What strikes a chord with me is her curious mind since childhood and how she questions every step of even subtle challenges that a woman faces in her growing up years through her puberty, through her first crush, her school days, even slapped by her father for faking the report card grade. Yes, we have all lived it at one time or the other. That's why Thwarted Escape is so real and brings forth emotions, that every reader can relate to.

And yes, Lopamudra is bold enough to speak out at last through her words against child molestation, a subject that was usually a hush hush in those days. How she was molested by some from within the Bengali community she had grown up in as a child, on a Kali puja night. And the trauma that still haunts her. Even the way a dark complexioned woman is treated in the marriage market and how the author keeps her heart above all these mundane happenings in life she had to go through, just by seeping in he splendours of nature and her love for words. She calls it the 'pretty looking prison of my blossoming womanhood.' That's where the rebel in the woman gets expressed. Lopamudra is undoubtedly a rebel. She not only questions what goes on around her, but she also tries to criticise it in her own words, bringing down the age old traditions of the Indian society that primarily aimed at awarding the woman a second class citizenship. "The sunlight sits tight, over my skin, my face, my arms, preventing me from being the coy woman, the forsha or fair maid." A typical example of how a woman is weighed in the marriage market.

So rather than calling Thwarted Escape as just 'An Immigrant's Wayward Journey,' I would surely love to call it the Walking Woman's Tale, a woman who has crossed continents, walked miles and miles through roses and thorns and yet a woman's mind that still loves, still cries for the loss.