Date: 29th December, 2012
Dear Spirit of the Delhi gang-rape victim,
I deliberately refrained from addressing you as Amanat, Damini or Nirbhaya for that matter. Neither I know what your name was nor do I want to borrow the editorial creations to refer you. To me you are the most unfortunate symbol of our collective failure to protect the women of our country. No name would ever get you back to us.
I chose to write you this letter since for the first time in life my heart wants me to believe that there is a life after death. For the first time my heart wants me to wish someone not to rest in peace after her demise. If you start resting in peace, a possible opportunity to reach out to the minds behind your very early exit, from the wonderful life that you so much wanted to live, would be lost. I sincerely pray that you get enough strength to haunt us all till the time we learn to forget the very thought of raping someone and raping our society and system around.
I can’t really even say that I’m sad since my feelings are numb. I’m too much shaken since the time I read about the brutal incident that lead to the tragic end of your life. I have a daughter who is too small to ask any question. What would I answer if she ever asks for reasons to suggest her to return home early, not to go out in the late evening or to dress up in a particular way! Should I tell her men are a weaker species with lesser control on their specific desires or should I tell her our protectors and administrators are a worse species to keep these men under control! My thoughts are getting completely nowhere. I already have told you, I’m shaken beyond your imaginations!
I took some time out to browse through a few webpage before settling to write this letter. I was taken aback to know that every 20 minutes a girl is raped in India. What baffles me further that not all the rape cases are reported. I wonder how the statistics would look like if all the cases start getting registered! This certainly is not an appropriate time for you to concentrate on the numbers but I just can’t stop thinking what fails us so miserably and a heinous crime like rape takes place! I guess it’s the mindset and lack of ‘proper’ education. I refer to the values of life by ‘proper’ education.
I must talk about the action plan you may wish to follow before you get bored with my long trail of sentences.
I would sound insane and too cheap to suggest the following. Trust me this is the only option that a spirit can try and we the people of India can’t – make the offenders feel scared before committing a crime and start behaving. I think only the ghostly panic will refrain these disturbing elements from committing such mistakes they are not supposed to.
a. It looks like the government would not take any chance and the six rapists will meet the destiny of rendezvous with the hangman soon. You should rather concentrate on Mr Sushil Kumar Shinde, Sheila Dikshit and Abhijit Mukherjee to begin your action with. Enter their room in the midnight and pour buckets of chilled water on them. One such wet experience in a cold December night will surely bring their senses back to act. Oh yes, they will surely think twice about using water canons in a peaceful protest and carefully choose words and not refer to denting, painting unnecessarily.
b. The night of 30th is crucial. You have to travel to every direction into the rooms of all the studs on the earth. If possible, wear a white sari as we see in the Bollywood movies and hold a candle in hand. You must wake them up and tell them that they’ll be bobbitised if they ever even think of touching a woman on 31st night and days after.
c. You need to pay a visit to Kolkata after that. Appear in front of Mamata Banerjee, Madan Mitra, Kakoli Ghosh Dastida, Arpita Ghosh and Shuvaprasanna, waking them up from their mid-night sleep. A gaze of you would be good enough. They surely will aplogise next morning, unconditionally for their derogatory comments about the Park Street rape victim and attempt to justify Didi’s remarks. They would possibly have the pain for a rape victim and would behave like a human and not a politician. You may wish to mention “I’m not a Maoist-spirit”.
d. Next, you’ll have an uphill task to reach out to all of us and probably just a sudden sweet smell, that surely your spirit will have, would remind us that we have mother, sisters, daughters, female partner and other female members in the family who make our lives complete. We should protect them till our last breathe and not otherwise. We should be sensitive to them if they ever come across any odds and not lecture them on so called ‘morality’.
I may sound bizarre and I don’t mind that as I am starting to lose respect for even myself. It troubles a lot when one has that eerie feeling. I feel frustrated at my inability to punish people who deserve them the most, I feel annoyed at the silence of the people of my time. I hope you understand the intention of the letter is not to make the seriousness of your demise light by suggesting such apparently funny plan of action. They are nothing but helpless expression of my anger. I hope the spirit that is shown in Delhi by thousands of peaceful protesters do not die so easily and remain restless till we bring about the real change we desire to have. My heart goes out to your family and friends. I pray that they get enough courage to fight the trying time. I pray their tender emotional bruises are healed as fast as it can.
My dear misfortunate sister, you rest in peace and let the spirit of change for a better and safer tomorrow continue to remain restless. Let it remain restless until our female members of the family stop feeling unsafe amongst us, the male members of the society. The spirit of change should keep us alert and determined unless our protectors/law makers/administrators stop fooling us and start taking proper care of their business.
Take care.
Sincerely ashamed,
Pratik Tarafdar
N.B. The spirit of change that we deserve should remain unfazed even if the media loses interest in it.
