Where did it start?

It is not with James Joyce’s Ulysses or Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species or Sigmund Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams that we’re ushered into the Modern World. It was with the occurrence of one of the greatest feats which were thought of as impossible: Women’s Suffrage – The right to Vote for All Women.

I’m not going into that, but there are a few things that are in a need of mentioned: That honor, that didn’t happen easily to them. That wasn’t gifted to them. That was denied. Denied for decades irrespective of constant pleading, reasoning, and substantiating the fact that, in logic and reason, women are not less in any way in comparison with men.

After proving their strength in a way that cannot be presented with a blind eye by taking up responsibilities in World War 1, they earned the honor in the hard way. Though Finland provided the right to vote in 1906, the U.S granting it to its women citizens in 1919 is undoubtedly terrific milestone.

In the next years came The Wasteland, Ulysses, The A Room of One’s Own and Mrs. Dalloway, The Age of Innocence, This Side of Paradise, Siddartha, and of course The Prophet (not exactly in that order). Nothing as important as the one mentioned above: Women’s Suffrage.

Where do we want to go?

Recently, I was rather enthralled at the idea, the idea that The Supreme Court of India has increased the minimum age for a girl’s marriage. From 18 to 21. Oh, what a decision it is! In simple words, it is to protect the fundamental rights of all girls, that is to give them time to have an education, to be mature enough for making decisions, to have a chance to explore the world as much as they can, and yeah, the sprouting advantages are innumerable. That is an opportunity for all our girls.

Kudos.

Way to go living up to the dreams of the first fighters for women’s freedom and opportunity!

What has followed, as they say, is history. What is happening to women and their exhibitions of prowess is a well-discussed, frequently exalted, and thoroughly inspirational story. But, that is, as a very less number of girls know/bother, a one-sided story in India.

In India, what girls are achieving is remarkable. The number of girl admissions in schools, girl seats in colleges, and girl hostels in the vicinity of coaching centers is booming. The number of campus placements and their gradual increase is booming, and now we see them fearless and free, going about their way, chasing their own dreams, and telling themselves what to be and what, not to be. For the sky is NOT the limit, there is an infinity to go for them. For all of us, actually.

But.

I will tell you three stories.

1. Korlamma

She was in her ninth class. She loved to go to school because all her friends were there. She also loved to bunk the school, and when she did, she liked to go about with her mother, mess around, and do everything else but study. But she was terribly afraid of her Mathematics sir, for he, once, made her stand and asked back-to-back seven questions, for which she could not answer at all. She trembled and cried after the teacher left the class. From then, she stayed silent in class and tried to attend school every day. Well, the afternoon food of the school was good – the government was providing well, and she liked the egg curry, and tried not to miss her share. She used to wash her school uniform with lots of love. The baby pink dress, dark pink dupatta, oh, she loved to be clean. When someone said her bag was new, she proudly says, “It is two years old, and still looks new.”

One day, her mom said, “You are not going to school from tomorrow.” Yes, she did. I know it for a fact. She did not say, “you can go to school till the year’s end,” or “Enjoy your last week week at school,” no. She said that Korlamma should not go to the school from the next day.

Was she panicked?

No.

That is the sad part.

In Korlamma’s ninth-class holidays, she was married to a man. The age difference was 14 years.

The village president attended the marriage, blessed the couple by saying, “Bear a mango-like healthy child, you,” and ate the season-special watermelon pieces.

Korlamma was all shy, smiling. Her friends came, and with a new phone, her husband bought, had awkward selfies. They made jokes among themselves about who was going to get married next.

Korlamma was 13. She bore twins when she was 14. Her husband was celebrated as a superstar for that.

2. Swathi

She was the brightest among her friends, and if you can understand, she was the fairest among everyone in the class. She wore these long frocks which were embedded with stones and glass chips, she was taken to the town by her family to watch newly released movies in the theatre, which was an opportunity only she has got in the whole college. On the first day of her college, she bought a new bag that had photos of strange men and women in iron masks, green color, blazing eyes, and so on. She was thrilled. She kept her own names to them. Mask Man, she called one and called another as Mr. Long Fingers, Green Face was another and the names went on. Her friends too believed they were the real names of theirs. That day, that is, the first day, she wore a yellow t-shirt, which was an instant sensation. Seniors and juniors (her parallels) alike talked about her dress. Everyone else was either in faded and neatly pressed dresses or wore dirty clothes. She shone. Swathi.

Naturally, Swathi, in the initial days, was a fire that was going high and high in the college. Every time she wore a new dress or a new bangle, or a new anklet, it was all well-known to almost everyone in the college. Boys were divided – many called her “super beautiful,” and the remaining called her “arrogant”. But all the girls were united (except her two or three friends), they all called her, “a slut who wants to lure boys into her room at night,” and that was settled. No one argued. But what she really was, no one really tried to ask or find out. Of course, still children, so yeah, fine, I guess.

With time, like an object, Swathi lost the mysterious or eye-catching aura of hers. She was repeatedly embarrassed by the teachers, who said, “wearing pricy dresses is not enough, pay attention to the class,” or “No one cares about in which bag you’ve stuffed your books, did you stuff books in your head?” or worse, “if you don’t study, you should go and work as a maid in your t-shirts and glittering dresses.” But No, she need not. Her father’s got a rice mill and reputation preceding himself in the villages around. But for the same reasons some boys hated her and most of the girls did too, teachers also hated her – the reasons being, not at least trying to know her. Anyway, at last, after the first six months, she was dragged down to normalcy by everyone, and Swathi, subconsciously, was happy about the simple life she has got now.

Yellarao always liked her. He liked her bangles, anklets, her walk, her smile, everything pretty much about Swathi. When everyone discussed Swathi, he did not participate. when someone commented about her chest when she bent, he did not tolerate, when some said he kissed her in the movie theatre, he did not believe, and when someone said they can follow her to the clothes showroom and squeeze her accidentally, he did not co-operate. But yes, his first erection was for her, and he did it like a sacrifice binding him more strongly with her.

Yellatrao, one day, squeezing his heart, wrote and letter and gave it to her. It was crude, straight, and not at all sensible, which Yellarao thought was honesty, which a movie star has recently said in his cinema, was the most important ingredient of love. Swathi took the letter, read every line twice or thrice, enthralled; enjoyed the oo’s and aa’s of her friends on the way home. After reaching home, she put it on the table, went to the bath, and when she returned the letter was missing. Swathi was dead afraid thinking her father or elder brother had found it. But nothing had happened for two or three days, so she relaxed.

On the fifth day, she was taken, all along with her family, to the coconut plantation of her uncle. They said it was a picnic. A family party.

After going into the middle, she could see a marriage set up. Her hands trembled. She, frightened, asked her brother what that was, and he said, “Bitch, your marriage.”

Oh, the commotion! She wailed, cried, begged, pleaded, what did it that Swati did not do? She did everything. “You father-seeking bitch! Sent for studying, what are you doing?” someone screamed, “She needs boys! She can’t stop herself from having sex,” someone else hit her on her head, “Drag her!” it sounded like her father’s voice.

She held her father’s legs, her mother’s saree, and pleaded with her bridegroom, who was her cousin, eleven years older, and always plotted to have Swati in his bed somehow. She wasn’t heard. She was painted red with kumkum, yellow with pasupu, and brown with gandham, the auspicious colors of an Indian marriage.

Her cousin, that night, did not leave her. She was raped by him, over and over, after the night of her marriage.

She did not go to college after that, and her English notes still remain with her friends.

3. Abadam

I do not know how to tell her story. To tell hers, maybe, I should pull out all my sadness and pour into this tale. Stale. Black. Broken. Congesting. Pitiful. How many adjectives should I list down? Maybe I can write a musical on the story of Abadam.

Abadam.

The name has always been a problem for her. An obstacle. The meaning it implied – A lie – did not make any sense to her, but she got by with it anyway.

Another thing that did not make sense to Abadam was why people flinched at her sight or her presence. They seemed to move away. Take a step back. Even teachers seemed to answer her in one-liners and wanted her to disappear. With time she observed that the same was true with her mother. Slowly, she realized she was living in the last house of the village, the outskirt of the village, and then she understood that she had not been living near the green farms and pure water, but away from something – life. She was thrown away. No one asked her to come inside the houses. When her mother worked, she played outside, on the burning veranda, without any shade. No one offered water when she sweats. Whenever she was filling out forms for her mother, father, or herself in the school or at the offices, ticked something she did not understand. S.C. It was at the bottom of the list. And when they ticked that, they looked up at her face, with distaste. “What happened?” she always wanted to ask. But she was also always afraid of the answer.

“What happened?”

Abadam was in her eighth class when attacks against the S.C women started in her village. Her parents could not go away. They owned a little S.C land nearby, but at the same time, they did not want Abadam to stay around.

What was the solution?

They decided they would marry her to someone.

In the meanwhile, Abadam made friends with a newly appointed teacher in the school, and one day she asked, “What should I do to be equal and to be respected?” Maybe she did not use the refined diction I a user, but the teacher understood what she was asking better than she did, and he replied. “There is only one way. Only one thing no one can disprove. Only one thing that no one can look down upon. No no can steal. No one can ignore it. Study well, Abadam. Study.” May be he did not say it as dramatically as I did, but Abadam’s heart swelled, her eyes filled with tears, and the teacher looked like a God to her. He showed her the path.

The path.

When her parents talked of her marriage with her, Abadam was already entering her ninth class. She was terrified. She told her teacher. He said that she should not let that happen. Abadam tried to plead with her parents. She wanted to tell her parents that she had found the path. But her words failed her. There was so much in her heart, but she could not speak in words. She did not know so many words to tell it all. In whatever she said, they had not seen her message – I found the path!

It went on for more than three months. The struggle, the turmoil, the crying, the talking, the tossing of utensils, the drunk-beating, and so much more. And. They fixed the marriage.

Adabam did what no one could do.

She went to the Panchayat office by herself and cried at a woman telling her that she did not want to get married. The woman talked to someone, and that someone to some other, and a few police came, taking her home, and the police talked very harshly with her parents and warned them of something about her marriage. She knew it had stopped at last.

After the police left, her parents trashed her ruthlessly. her mother wreaked herself by beating her breast and wailing, and her father broke a dozen sticks beating Abadam, and started to drink more and more. Abadam spent complete days crying. Day after day it was hell for her.

But she knew it had stopped.

After a week of facing such senseless trauma, Abadam was taken by her maternal grandparents. They said they would take care of her in the nearby town, and Abadam could attend school as usual – The path!

When she went back to school after ten days break, Abadam grew more than she would ever in life. And when she saw her teacher, she broke down into tears and told him the whole story. The teacher told her how brave she had been, and presented a bar of chocolate to her, and she saved the wrapper of it.

“What will you be when you grow up?” he asked.

“I will be a police, sir.” she said.

“Oh, and why so?” he enquired.

“They helped me. I will help others in the same way.”

She was in her ninth Then.

Now, Abadam is studying her intermediate second year. The group of H.E.C., ever reminded of her goal, was ever hard working. Even now people flinch at her, move away from her, and segregate her, but. . . She is living on her terms. The way she wanted. But that did not come easily to her, still living in her grandparent’s house, their parents denying to meet her.

Where are we going?

In the story of Korlamma, was she happy to have a cell phone? In the story of Swathi was it a mistake to be allured by a beautifully written poetic letter? Does the intentions of Abadam’s parents to save her justify their intentions to marry her off?

The answer to all three questions is no.

When I look at a film star opening up her bosoms for everyone to see, or an Instagram model doing what she is good at – flaunting all her makeup – I feel sad. I feel sad for the likes of Korlamma, Swathi and Abadam. What are these people doing? Why are they doing it? So many others are suffering! It leads to one more question, that, where are we living? Most of us do not even now these things are happening. Not even once an year we hear of these, and when we do, (for the filmmakers made full use of these to make money) we listen and think of them as movie scenes. But they are not. The wailing. The crying. The innocence. No cinema can compensate. But we, in all our comfort, just go on about eating our pizzas and pastas, scrolling about memes and learning about films and film stars.

Pity.

India is irrevocably torn into two. One belongs to the lights, glitters, dark colors, curves, and hell-bending laughs. There is another India too, exactly the opposite.

Hm. Save your girl child, India. You need her as much as you need the boy child. Maybe, more than the boy child. Save her.

I do not know what is my intention behind writing this article. But, I am undoubtedly affected by writing the three stories – however brief I wanted to keep them. The sadness seeped into me. When you witness something like these, they change you forever, I guess.

Hm.

Whenever you can, save them. think about them. Don’t fall into your own life, or get conjured up by the pseudo-life of the internet or TV, think of them too. Hm. If we are all one humanity, half of humanity lives in the aisles of darkness.

THINK of lightening it up even if you DON’T. (Can’t is an empty word, and all your YouTube motivators say that. So,) Even if you DON’T.

THINK.

If we don’t, we are letting the other slide of the see-saw to sink away, for us to go higher and higher. We cannot live with that moral ambiguity, can we?