Your candle burned out, your legend never did

Tanay Singh

It was an unusually windy Thursday evening in April when the call for a candle march at Sukhna Lake stirred me out of my evening siesta after school. As a 16-year-old, it was my first protest against something that shook me like nothing had before, the rape of a eight-year-old girl at Kathua. I took a cab to reach the Garden of Silence at the lake to be part of a public outpouring of anger through a candle march. I saw it as a candle of hope in the darkness. Hope for changing the system, changing a culture where rape is still a victim’s shame.

After the crowd had assembled at the garden, we were arranged into queues of three, with candles, placards and banners in our hands. I felt important in having a voice, albeit through a silent march. The march got underway in all its serenity and I was sure our country’s future lay in safe hands, as many of those marching were school students like me. I was pleased to see that these youngsters understood the gravity of the situation and the significance of the cause they were standing up for. However, it was only a matter of time before I would feel differently.

Within minutes of the march getting under way, the silence turned into soft murmurs and then open chatter as students sneaked out from their queues to meet and shake hands with their friends. It didn’t take long for the protest to turn into a social get together and people could even be heard giggling and conversing loudly with scant regard to the solemn occasion. It didn’t help that the very winds I hoped would be the winds of change kept blowing out the candles resulting in even more commotion to relight them. Owing to the sincerity of the organisers, conscientious adults and a handful of students, the cause was not totally lost on the assemblage.

I had managed to keep my head over the water before I heard something that really got on my nerves. Some boys, who were roughly my age, while referring to the victim, passed derogatory remarks about the incident. Why were they even there? I wondered. The jokes were cruel and the words insensitive. I was more distressed than angry, for the boys hailed from a prestigious school. My friends too later shared similar experiences of such candle marches that did not proceed as they had expected them to.

When we returned to our starting point, it felt like the Garden Of Silence had lost its very essence. But as the evening concluded, my candle of hope was flickering. The recitation of a compelling poem on the victim by someone enveloped the gathering again in complete silence and redeemed the occasion. There was again a silent wave of condemnation. It did not matter anymore if I had made a difference. Every candle in the wind counts. 

For you, once more

— Seerat Sandhu Gill