Rape - of what?

I was in class two when that man i called my grandfather(i respected him as one because of his similar age to that of my own grand dad) slipped his hands into my knickers while i slept. I ignored it thinking, as often a child does, that it was a mere mistake. That was repeated, oft repeated and continued being repeated. I felt angry and wept at my helplessness. I could not say this to anyone, not even my mom, for i felt shy. For i felt, even then, that somewhere i was wrong in what happened to me. That i might have mistaken his intention, unsure then, at that age, what exactly could that gesture mean. I was, in nutshell, scared. Years later, once, i broke down. I broke down in my mom's arms when she was trying to explain to me how as a girl growing up in a society like this, i needed to be extra cautious regarding my own safety, unlike people belonging to my own age but of a different gender. Perhaps she meant to give lessons on my fast changing body with teenage stepping up. She explained to me what it meant to be touched inappropriately, hugged unnecessarily, smiled lewdly, looked at with malicious intentions and so on and so forth. She shared her own childhood trauma with me that involved someone very close to her family, someone within her family etc etc to make me confide in her if at all a situation arose. I cried in her lap that day. After years of putting up with nightmares that made my sensitive self a dithering being, after years of being silent because i did not KNOW if what happened was wrong, after years of reluctant feet touching to that man and being caressed on my back by those very same hands, i let myself go. My mom hugged me and apologised. She assured me that none of that shall ever be repeated. She made sure my dad never allowed that man to pass the borders of our home. My dad convinced me that i was not wrong anywhere and that they love me for my courage. I knew that i was in safe hands. And am lucky that amidst most of my friends who have been molested by their own brothers, my own cousins who have been touched by their own uncles, i have a home that makes sure that i never feel like a victim, ever. Even when i was groped in a moving bus when i tried to get down, even when i abused vociferously at that unmanly bastard who tried to caress my body, even when some arbitrary guy tried to touch my thighs while i walked past him with my brother, my dad made sure that i did not lose out my cocky confidence. I don't know how to thank him. But amidst all this, incidents like the one that make the hot debated topic today make me shake with fear. I eagerly wish to wrap up all work while it is still day. I wish that there is someone who can drop me at places i need to go. And it is then that i feel ashamed. I feel ashamed that i begin to behave exactly how those men who raped the girl wish me to behave. A coy, shy girl who should lower her eyes when a lewd comment is passed, and not protest and slap. It is then that my dad and my mom come to my rescue. I love both of you, really! I was talking back home a few hours ago, visibly shaken after i heard a news clipping describing the follow up of the entire incident. I was transported to the trauma i once experienced. I can perhaps never imagine the girl's plight. But i am more angered at the show she is supposed to become for every goddamn newspaper and media house. The men are incognito, with black cloth adorning their faces while they are chaperoned to the legal temple while the whereabouts of the girls make it to every drawing room's discussion snack. And who are these rapists? The driver, the fruit vendor, the conductor? They have a class, and please no Marxist leanings intended or meant, but would they be as speediy tracked down as they have been had they been some Rahul Vadera or some Neelesh Malya or some Chintu Advani and Rohit Ambani? Not that i am not happy that these brutes have been tracked down, not that i am not proud of the Delhi Police's alacrity, but that i am ashamed at the glorious way in which this 'professionalism' is hailed by some. I mean how many of the women receive the same pat on the back when they avert a rape attempt? The police have done what they were supposed to do. Good job! But the applause ends there. Catch that bastard .....Yadav who raped scores of Brahmin gilrs in Bihar before they got married because he wanted to reek of holy vengeance on an upper caste. Catch those affluent Brahmins and Rajputs and Bhumihars and so on and so forth who would not drink water touched by a Dalit girl but would pound her to death for their rapacious pleasure. Catch those IAS ofifcers who openly rape Nepali girls crossing the border and go away scot free because they make the doubly marginalised women, a feast of their power. "Rape is a comment on the systemic scum our system has accumulated over generations," says a very dear friend. I could not agree less for he identifies the machinations of power dynamics of the act rape is. Sex, intrinsically, is an act of violence. But with patriarchy clutching its tentacles over every system that defines THE society, this act has identified gender dynamics as a deeply problematic phenomenon, very subtly but deeply. My mom wanted me to hide any trace of my femininity because she deems it her responsibility to transfer me to another man, unscathed and unsullied, so that he can sully and scathe me later on. It is a scum of a system to dictate girls to feel ashamed of her natural bodily function when she is groaning under pain during her periods. Because if she says she is chumming, a man could calculate the onset of her fertile days and make advances on her, accordingly. It is a scum of a system which produces pseudo-feminists who would want to dress up like a man and behave like them to assert their equality. I am tired of these slut walks and pink lingerie campaigns where every 'feminist' move of baring one's cleavage and midriff is an act of defiance for a male stare. I am sick of waxing and threading and peeling and flinting my skin because some male, Vatsyayana, identified what beauty is, in Kamasutra. Why does feminism have to be male centred, defined, and defied by men and around men? This indeed, is a systemic scum. I am too angered at the moment to indulge in any kind of facebook activism. I take this opportunity to convey my apologies to all those who expect such token gestures from me. I am neither comfortable nor too important to go out for candle light protests, signing petitions, making a black dot my FB profile pic and so on and so forth. In my own way i shall make sure that the cab drivers who pick me up for my night duty at All India Radio behave as they should and not as they want, that i work at my office as early and as late i want and walk out with confidence and reach home safe, that i pester the police in PCR vans to ensure my safe arrival at a bus stop when i lose my way back from some press conference, that i make a guy shut up when he dares pass a lewd comment on me in the metro or anywhere else without thinking twice what people would think to a spray of my choicest abuse, that i get back to my flat convincing my land lord that my arrival and my departure is not their but my lone concern, that none in the world except my parents have the legitimate right to seek explanation of my conduct. This, i decide, shall be my way of putting up my strong face to the world. More than the incident, i am pained at such symbolic forms of cocooned 'protest', painted pains, scribbled sarcasm etc etc. I know words are powerful and all that, but my contribution would lie in convincing my father and my brothers that as i am a potential victim of rape by some potential pyschopath, i need to be cautious and alert all the time, they too are potential rapists like all testosterone storing males and hence need to behave and control their primal urge. I am sorry to have hurt sensibilities, but i refuse to be part of this grand show of solidarity when tomorrow all of us shall have a different issue to tweet, facebook and faff about. I wish to make this a silent yet a consistent and resilient struggle which needs no chronicling on a wall but a sustained etch on my heart and a pat on my shoulder each time my brother comes home and tells me how beautiful a girl in some short skirt looked and how he genuinely appreciated her and confidently asked her out for a cup of coffee.