*Only if…* She kept staring blankly at the ceiling. She wondered if she could do anything other than that. She couldn’t. Her world had come to a standstill. She remembered complaining to the college authorities about the eve-teasing. They had said, “They are not inside the college campus, you see. We can’t extend our authority beyond these boundaries. But rest assured, we will do something about it.” They never did. Only if they would have provided another bus… Her left cheek and neck still burned. The acid those people used was very concentrated indeed. It had left behind nothing but those protruding bones. Her friends knew about the teasing incidents. Not all, but the close ones definitely did. “Ignore, yaar” was their default reply. “Why pay heed to those filthy animals?” one of them had said. Some good friends accompanied her home, but at best only tried to indulge in gossip to cover up the hooting and howling as soon as it started. Only if any one of them had gone out of his way and taught those guys some manners… The ceiling slowly faded out as her right eyelid drooped. The left one couldn’t close. The acid had claimed her left eye too. She recalled the sudden rain that day. Clouds had appeared out of the blue on a sunny day. She hadn’t been carrying an umbrella, and was forced to take shelter below the awning of the grocery shop. Not a soul was to be seen in the street. The shops too were closed because of the weekly holiday. All of a sudden, a black Maruti had materialized in front of her, and a group of guys smiling through their betel-stained teeth had descended. Only if a single resident of the colony had responded to her screams… Even as she thought of the dreadful act, she clenched her fist in anger, but had to soon let go. She couldn’t do much with her broken limbs. The idea she had been thinking about for days but not implemented, assuming it to be too courageous a task for her to do, now seemed completely rational. She regretted not doing that when she could have. Only if she would have taken them on someday herself… She remembered how the passers-by had found her after a few hours, and got her admitted to the hospital. The reluctance of the police to lodge an FIR was not hidden from her. The accused were not arrested even a month after the incident - she knew that. She also knew that all of them were residents of the town but no one was courageous enough to point a finger at them. But the billion-dollar question here is what would have happened even if the police had arrested them? The best case scenario- they would have been tried in the local court and found guilty. Within a year they would have appealed to the high court, found guilty after another two years, appealed again in the Supreme Court, and found guilty after another two years, and finally been sentenced to less than ten years of imprisonment. Only if the government would have been stronger, the law harsher and the police more fair… But everything else would have worked only if the common people like the ones reading this post, watching a news channel, listening to the radio or reading a newspaper would have done more than the ‘Ppcchht’. Only if they understood that a large number of rapes are a result of constant molestation, eve-teasing and verbal abuse, and that they can be prevented by curbing these activities. Only if they knew that they had the power to pressurize the government to take bold steps towards eliminating this evil, and that the only thing that was keeping them from doing so was their own cowardice. Only if they knew that it is the time for them to act before they are forced to lament. Only if… ~Kumar
Posted on: Thu, 25 Sep 2014 13:30:01 +0000
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