Scandal

A few months ago, I went to visit a friend of mine who was admitted in a hospital for her messed-up sexual life. Naturally, I had to deal with her flabbergasted parents as well. I am no counselor and worse still, when it comes to parents. Anyhow, I tried. “See, I sincerely feel that the prurient mindset of today’s adolescents and youth regarding sexuality can be attributed, in some cases, and in some extent to apparently isolated incidents of sexual abuse in their childhood. It may appear to be distant but, it does have its impact…” I was going to blabber more in my flow of gospel-of-sex-education-and-awareness, being poked on and on by vexing questions of their daughter’s sexual life. But her mother interrupted-

“Yes, I know. There had been one such incident”. Instinctively, she lowered her voice to a faint whisper. “She was then in class four. Her music teacher did ‘things’ to her. And just to think of that! She didn’t even tell me about it!” (OMG! Your eight-year old daughter didn’t report to you immediately after she was molested by her music teacher in your absence! What a scandal!)”Just think of the nerve of that” she went on, as if the entire fault had been the child’s.

“Now of course I understand” she said, “Why didn’t she tell me? Because she too was lured. She too was attracted towards the man! What else could be the possible reason!”

Flames shot through my spine. Ugh! How can a mother say something like this of her daughter! To think that an eight-year old child, who knows nothing of sex was sexually attracted by a middle-aged man and gave in to his desires! Even for one who likes to think of herself as progressive and liberal, like me, this was too much to take in! And here was this lady, who believes premarital sex defiles a girl, putting forward such a toxic-progressive statement(if you allow me to coin a new term for context’s sake)! And for what? Only but to establish the ‘tarnished’ character of her 20-year-old daughter. Is this what they call bourgeoisie hypocrisy – I could not help but wonder.

Now, living in a metropolitan city, belonging to a privileged social class, incidents like these are trivial to me. Why, I hear and read of things far more outrageous and embarrassing than this! But this was the first time, I stood face-to-face with such an incident. It shook my grounds. It made me wonder – what a world are we living in?

Yeah, young people these days, mess up, big time. They consume way too much alcohol, drugs than they can handle, have multiple sexual partners without any safety or support system, without protection, and even engage in sex immediately after abortion. It goes without saying that the risks and stakes are always high for girls. Yeah, there are a lot of blunders involved in these but premarital sex is not one of them.

In my friend’s case, she didn’t use protection but to her family, this was hardly the blunder, or rather the ‘scandal’. 

What happened as a result of the ‘scandal’ she caused was that she was put under house arrest with complete psychological isolation from the family. It’s hardly any surprise that this unexpected turn of events ruined her. Now, I know that she is strong enough to cope with this situation but everyone is not.

Currently, there are thousands of such girls in our country rotting in their solitary cells, deprived of air, sunshine and rain.

Growing up in a family where parents have no respect for each other and themselves, in a family of constant violence and abuse, it is natural for one to develop a reckless lifestyle where violence and abuse is the norm. Added to that is the trauma of childhood sexual abuse. Without proper counseling, guidance and emotional impetus, this ends in a complete disaster. Countless lives have been destroyed and are being destroyed in this never-ending cycle of death and disaster. Who is to blame for that? And what good does this blame-game do to anyone? The damage has been wrought and there is no system to control the havoc.

No matter how they blame circumstances or society, giving birth to a child is always a matter of choice, at the end of the day, but, taking birth is not. Yet we are here. Certainly no one deserves the baggage of the messed-up lives their parents have landed in! Every child is entitled to a fresh and airy childhood.

Yet, my friends, this is the generation we are growing up in.

Even if you leave alone the mild to moderate depression (people do not even consider that as psychological disorder), the cases of major depressive and anxiety disorders, schizophrenia (though it is believed to be hereditary, I have reasons to believe, socio-economic and cultural environmental factors also have a significant contribution), bipolar and mania, are shooting every year. With this traumatizing picture, now readily boosted by the Covid-19, I don’t know, rather I am afraid to even imagine, where we will land in a few decades.

Let me end with a story. Recently I wrote a story in a workshop – ‘Red Hibiscus’. It was about a girl, trying to come to terms with her elder sister’s suicide. After the literary criticisms, a participant asked me a rather personal question.

“I didn’t quite get the message of the story.”

“Well, it shows what a hollow world we are living in. How empty and unfeeling the society has to be, so that a person does not want to stay here anymore!...” I replied.

“So, is this supposed to be a recrimination of the society?”

“If that is the case, I think you could work a bit more on it.” Another commented. “Because we do not always know when another person is feeling like that… so even if we want to help we cannot always come around…”

I leave the part, where an experienced writer asks me the ‘message’ of a story. Rather, let me move to the next part of the question.

It surprised me how easily they generalized a complex statement and how easily their voices rose to a defensive pitch. Is this how everyone thinks of depression and suicide, I thought. Recrimination of the society! Seriously?

How could you not know when your closest friend is going through a tough time? If most of the people in this world don’t even have a close friend, then where exactly is the problem? In the fact that you are not concerned enough, empathetic enough or compassionate enough! (Here, by ‘you’, I don’t mean a single reader of course but the vast majority of us, including myself.) Isn’t it?

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