The pink tightrope

I carefully gathered the flare of my clothes and stooped down to inspect the third bottle of sanitiser from the lower rack of a fumigated store. The stench of disinfectant made me dizzy. I could not settle for anything with less than 60% of ethanol. My painstaking Google research, after all, had to be put to good use. I have been fastidious with diapers and rash creams too, typical of most urban mothers. My ‘supermom moments’.

However, now I am too anxious and disturbed to savour this inconsequential obsession. The Hathras victim was no less a daughter.

My angst is fuelled for the umpteenth time by macabre images of a family not powerful and upper-caste enough to claim its dead. Shopping cannot distract a conscience or silence or guilt. A naive effort. My N-95 mask made me flinch at the thought of being gagged, of losing not just my voice but my tongue, too. The lump in my throat got bigger.

Though the dolorous Hathras episode will soon be expunged from the media to make room for Bihar’s ballot boxes and the horse-trading circus, it will continue to ghost our psyche and forever linger in our hearts. Nirbhaya can never be forgotten. Kathua was never distant.

If only our scars had not numbed us but fired our rage. The collective reaction to crime, rape or otherwise either works as a deterrent or emboldens budding rogues. If only we were angry enough to scare them. We grieved, shrivelled, and took cover, allowing them to strike again with unpardonable monstrosity.

A rape every fifteen minutes, with 90% going unreported and a very poor conviction rate, indicts an entire nation. This is not a women's issue but a human and universal one. Placards should have changed hands to be held not just by feminists but men and women alike. The Hathras girl lost not just to her gender, but to her caste and class.

Her story made me miserable. Its denial and cover-up made me furious. The connivance of the police and administration dishonours an entire population. What are millions of impressionable minds (exposed to the media) to make of such a fiasco? By not handling it with the enviable fervour of decoding Bollywood drug parties, we end up desensitising an entire generation to crimes against women. Today, rapes run the risk of going the groping and eve-teasing way... sexual violations that have fallaciously lost their gravity. Even a rapist is not bashed up like the eve-teasers of yesteryears. As a society, if we do not address the easy access of our children to sexual content and pornography, aren’t we guilty of being partners in crime?

My helplessness getting the better of me, I dashed to the billing counter and embarrassed myself yet again with the pinkness of the stuff I bought. Can someone like me who enjoys the luxury of affording painless vaccinations share her pain? I want to reach out to her. How?

On my drive back home, my eyes searched for posters of protests and candle marches. None. Isn’t it scary that from Nirbhaya to the Hathras girl, our reaction to gangrapes is relegated from street protests to mere drawing-room regret?

I shall not lose hope because movements like charity should begin at home. The fact that casual conversations of children are peppered with sexual escapades from the neighbourhood or out of a movie warrant a proactive involvement. Sexual memes of classmates going viral speak volumes of the rot. The rise in child sexual abuse by insiders and outsiders alike is propellant enough. The key lies in not just teaching my daughter to stand her ground but also in teaching my son to lower his gaze. In sanitising our hearts along with our hands, we can surely make a difference.

No worries. Unlike ethanol, less than 60% sensitivity can also get us start.