Skip to main content

A shivering voice


Loafing around most of my time at home, constantly blabbering non sense all the time, I strike a great chord with the girl at my place, I call her my friend and one really close to me as she sees me in all my moods; sad, happy, angry or crazy.

Staying  up late hours at night in the pretext of studying I mostly land up completing stages in Angry Birds or fighting with Gravity Guy, and on one such day when I completed Gravity Guy, I felt myself gravity less and let out a sudden shriek of joy. Without realizing it was 2 am in the morning I disturbed her in her sleep.

She jumped up from a bad dream, not being able to go back to sleep again, we both started talking. Night time is anyway a time when emotions are the weakest, what I did not know was I was not the only one who adhered to such a theory. The girl who smiled with me in the broad day light also felt the same and she slowly started speaking,uncovering her life.

She started asking me if I knew what was love or how would I choose someone I would marry? Not know the exact emotions that I was going through at that point and after a quick smile to myself I gave her an unconvincing NO, the tone of which she probably did not realize. Finding the second question a little difficult to explain I cut it short, saying ma deta would probably be the right person to decide for me.
But then she gave the conversation a different turn. In a shivering voice she started uncovering her life. She blamed it all on luck, not being totally convinced I asked her to explain.
She also wanted her parents to decide her groom for her. But at a tender age of 16 when her mother left her at her sister's place, she was raped by a 35 year old man. She screamed and shouted, gathering the entire community around her but not having a platform to voice her opinion or rather not knowing where to go, the community only thought about the image of the man and without her consent and without even letting her mother know, they got her married. She got married to a 35 year old man who was a rapist.
Not being able to hold myself back I asked her, what made her sit through the marriage?  The reply to which was, she thought who would marry a girl who was not a virgin. The sharp contrast of societies got me thinking.
 Her life after marriage was also not  peaceful, she was often beaten up by her drunk husband and thrown strong remarks at by her mother-in-law. Where I always had an image (which I mostly developed from bollywood flicks) of pregnancy being that sweet,pampered phase, she was beaten up and not given food to eat. On delivering her baby, she was sent back home without her baby in her lactating period. She was never again welcomed back to her in-laws place. She gave them what they required, a son.
Such stories, I thought only existed in sociology case studies. But the stark reality hit my face hard. I did not know that  in the middle of Guwahati city, girls get forced to marry a rapist and such actions are directed and supported by the community. She is probably just one example of such a case and there must be many such voices unheard. In one of the largest democracy, they still wake up to scary dreams and only speak their heart out during the night.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fading away

Are we forgetting one of our native industry? Pottery being an age old handicraft, the roots of whose date back to the indus valley civilization seems to be fading away. This very thought kept on disturbing me for quite some time when i finally decided to visit one of the pottery village in the outskirts of delhi called Kumhargram. Here, hundreds of potter families migrated during severe famine from Rajasthan in search for better living condition. Out  of the hundreds of families only a handful could climb a little high on their career lader and the rest remained deprived. Creativity is the life-line of the potters; their unique craftsmanship indicates the artistic manifestation of rural India. If implemented effectively, it could be a sustainable model of development that is artisan led is what got me thinking. Skilled potters have the potential throughout India for constituting a rich human resource base, and common clay, being one of the cheapest raw materials available, hold...
Post a Comment
Read more

Delhi is an emotion!

I just read a nostalgic post on Mumbai and it reminded me of my Dilli, my Dilli which must have changed significantly in the last 2 years since I last visited, my Dilli which I cannot imagine dull and locked down- I am talking about the Dilli and of the time when it was so busy that it was difficult to find Autos  to return from Select City Walk to Lajpat Nagar- most autos would prefer going towards Qutub and refuse to take the U-turn and therefore you had to cross the road and stand on the other side for good 15-20 min. The next question would be if he would switch on the meter (much before Kejriwal made it compulsory) and after he agrees to constantly keep looking out if he is taking a longer turn ( much before Google Maps) The familiar smile of the guard at 4S Defence Colony where you feel home and the familiar vibe. I remember the time when it was cool to know the best places with ladies night- I still remember Tuesday- Café Morrison, Wednesday- Urban Pind, Thursday- TC. That...
1 comment
Read more

Perspective, Ma'am!

A lot of my learning is from the didi who comes to my place to work. I genuinely look forward to the evening chat. It is a good way to come out of all the stress in your life otherwise and find similarities and dissimilarities in life and ponder. I come to know about the latest home delivery shop around the corner, the not-so-good uncle in the building and also about the flawed PDS system and how she is denied of her ration at times. Today was a dull day. I had a bad headache, fever and could not go to office. She came in the evening and sounded very depressed to see me. She told me ‘ In the last 5 years I have never seen you this sick’. The emotions in her eye made me want to hug her- various forms of love and ways of expressing it or maybe when you are sick you look for that extra bit of love and attention. What came after that left me stumped. She went about with her daily chores saying, you were looking so pretty in all your engagement pictures am sure ‘ tumhe nazar la...
Post a Comment
Read more