Opinion
Sordid History
I simply cannot describe my feelings. The word Rape, recurs in my thoughts as a totally de mystified entity. I associate it with the worst kind of demonic attacks, as devout Christians would call it. Twenty three years old Damini after waging a relentless war against death, incarnate in her assailants finally caved in. To say that I am feeling terrible is just an approximation to the truth. Even tears do not come into my inert eyes, as I think of the rod piercing her body.
Anger is hurt transformed at times. Anger is something which makes us go to primal atavistic ways. Here anger is not enough, laws will not help, the worst has come, death in its most primordial fashion. Did she or her family deserve this agony, this unmitigated barbaric behaviour, committed by people she never knew.
What did she do to deserve this immolation?
Even as I watch the television, with young women weeping, the tears are no longer idle. They are not deliberated but to expiate for our sins. They come down in torrents, because we know not why, why, why and how?
All these thirteen days, we deluded ourselves into thinking she will survive. A wrong after all has to be righted. There is after all a God in this evil ridden universe. But this did not happen, and the capital city of our country, where this happened, wears an eclipsed, fallen look. This surely is the Free Fall of Man, of civilization, of a Nation which boasts of a hoary civilization and culture. All this is reduced to an unsavoury truth or untruth, a bohemian claptrap.
All the protests which took place were an indication of sheer insecurity. But our leaders, read politicians did not understand the signifier: all that the protesters wanted were empathy and comfort, an assurance that such an incident would not be repeated, call it making new and stringent laws, fast track courts, whatever. Yet in their infinite wisdom our leaders refused to address the protestors, young, hurt, men and women.
What is the assurance now?
All kinds of suggestions are rife: fast track courts, non bailable offence, arrest warrant what have you. Theories will not explain away the fact that the worst form of atavism, took place in this hyped developing country, which is regressing, as an antinomy tp progressing, to limits of infinitude.
Her name is no longer a cloistered secret. She is dead after all.
We should hang our heads in shame, even as the tears do not moisten in her parents' eyes.
She may rest in peace, I pray for that, we can't. It is a collective responsibility and our capital city the historic Delhi is a witness, once again to a sordid history.
29-Dec-2012
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Ananya S Guha
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