And, what happened after they were raped

Harvinder Khetal

Tracing the lives of five shattered rape survivors, aged eight months to 40 years, and their families whom she had befriended as a journalist and has been interacting with even years after the horrific crimes ceased to make headlines, what stands out in Urmi Bhattacheryya’s rendition of the tales is the equanimity in her tone and tenor.

A conscious effort is made to project the unfortunate victims (names changed) as normal wronged children/women valiantly trying to overcome the stigma unjustly attached to them; that rape is not the ruination of their lives, an end to their desires and wants. The brave survivors exemplify whether it is easy to slip back into the delight of their mundanely routine lives of before.

Smita’s simple query to the author in this context is particularly telling and deep: “Most people, when they know I’m a survivor, want me to fight. They don’t care whether I’m happy or not. Why can’t it be the other way round — that I be happy, whether I fight or not?”

Such heart-to-heart candid conversations and a peek into their lives upended by that one heinous act emerge from Urmi’s sustained endeavour to bond with the victims. It’s an emotional roller coaster as she leads us to a day spent at the sprightly eight-year-old Nidhi’s home. At four, she was raped and brutalised in her private parts by her neighbourhood ‘bhaiya’ and left for dead with a deep blade gash on her cheek.

Accompanying Dalit women Ranjini and Meera to the police stations, who are determined to get justice though they are up against powerful upper-caste rapists and are unfairly placed in a society that looks down at them, underscores another harsh reality. One is made privy to how a rape can gnaw and tear up a couple’s relationship and how a sensitive and caring husband can make the difference.

One feels the pain of the infant Pia, swathed in bandages as her innards were torn into, during her treatment in the hospital and the agony of her parents’ hope-tinged wait for the court verdict.

Here, the points of law — both the existing and newly minted Acts as well as the archaic practices — outlined by the author as she fleshes out each case minutely, are enlightening. It is heartening that the intrusive and medically inconsequential two-finger test that amounts to a double violation of the victims — as both Meera and Ranjini were subjected to — has now been banned. Or, that crimes against minors must reach completion of trial within six months of the FIR being filed.

As one tragic tale unfolds after another, the oppressively patriarchal and misogynistic cultural and social mores that doom the rape victims to a guilt-ridden hellish existence are questioned. When will we acknowledge that the agency and autonomy of a female is much beyond the hymen (tied illogically to honour) and that there should be no shame in naming the rape survivors?