Of Vacant Eyes, Fragmented Bodies And A Soul-less Society
Motihari is a
non-descript town nearly five hours by road from Patna, the capital of Bihar. It
is near the border with Nepal, the border being just hardly fifty kilometers
away. The road is dusty and paved with many a ‘gaddhas’ or holes that our
driver told us, “One has to avoid if one has to avoid a back pain early in life
and I have to drive endlessly on these roads. That is why the Netas (politicians)
come here by helicopter.”
“Gandhi came
here hundred years ago,” he reminded me, “to start his movement to fight for
the rights of the landless laborers because of the very nature of the people of
this area. Then this area was more popularly known as the East Champaran.”
When our
forefathers started their movement they may have imagined that a hundred years
from now there would be a fair and just society from the very soil they were
trying to arouse the conscience of a nation. How would it strike them to know
that the very place where they started their movement for freedom and it took
roots would itself one day turn into a den for criminals, human traffickers and
a society that turns a blind eye to young girls being sold with impunity in the
name of entertainment. The entertainment that people of Motihari and whole of Bihar,
and now large parts of Uttar Pradesh want is called the ‘culture of orchestras’,
or dance parties that have now become integral part of every kind of function ranging
from marriage functions, birthdays, in schools and even political gatherings that
scream against anyone and everyone. ‘Entertain us with young girls dancing
before you get our attention’, seems to be the new mantra.
I was going
there with a team as we had got information that two girls were smuggled across
from Nepal to be made to dance in a party. Her aunt, an old woman of eighty hadn’t
received her call and had got worried and told her friend who told a man from
our organization that the last call from her was from Bihar where it was
abruptly cut by someone. In the background she had heard loud garish music
going on with the laughter of people but her niece was crying.
We rescued
fifteen girls with the help of a police team that made a raid in the early morning
hours at several homes of traffickers. The village was still sleepy as the team
descended upon the homes and got the girls out. The team had expected only two
girls being kept in there but it came out that there were fifteen girls with almost
a third of them being minors. Full credit goes to the team who planned for
weeks, doing surveillance and planning the raid at times risking their lives.
As the girls were
brought out one by one, the one whose going missing started our search looked at
us with a vacant eye. “Last I was sold for ninety thousand rupees.”
“No, we have not
come to sell you. You are free now.”
“Free?” she looked
at us vacantly. The word had no meaning for her.
“No, we have not
come to sell you. We are police and you will go back home.”
As the meaning
slowly dawned on her she at first went silent and then began to speak. “A man had
said there is good job in India for me. It is about catering and I will earn
enough to get a good meal but when I came here, they locked me up and beat me
and said that I will have to dance and pay back the money with which I was
bought.”
“No, human
beings cannot be bought and sold.” An inner rage came from nowhere as I and the
woman counselor started talking to her. “Cattles can be sold, a house can be
sold, a human being cannot be sold,” we explained. She gazed vacantly at our
display of rage.
“But so many
girls are sold everyday and have to pay back the traffickers,” she answered.
“It is wrong,”
we stumble for an answer knowing that she and I come from different universes
and a reality that is not shared.
I noticed her
hands as we talked. Sangeeta (name changed) tried to cover her frail hands. I
asked the woman counselor with me to gently pick up her hand and show me. Her eyes
were vacant and a little terrified as she took out her hands from the under the
‘pallu’(part of sari draped over the shoulders) and showed us. It was full of blade
marks. Slowly the reality unfolded. “I did it because I didn’t want to dance
and the man beat me with a broom.” The reality had become intolerable for her
to bear. In her village she was not getting enough to eat and her parents had sold
her but showing off her body in front of men, the idea was more intolerable. “The
‘ghagra’ (long skirt) they asked me to wear, the top I was asked to wear, I can’t
imagine doing it.”
I was reminded
of a statement I had heard long ago from a feminist scholar, “The dignity of a
woman is inherent and more fundamental than even survival.” For those who
believe it is poverty that makes people do abominable things, these girls are a
proof that the human spirit is resilient and human beings have a dignity that
transcends class and every other barrier.”
There were atleast
fifty cut marks on her forearm. “You have a find a space that is empty. I did
it on every inch of my skin, over many days. Most of the girls do it,” she told
us. “Each time I felt miserable, I cut myself.”
“So, did it help
when you did it?”
“Yes, it felt
better for a while.”
I noticed the
first sign of tears as she was talking about it. I nodded my head. They don’t
talk about it amongst themselves, it is so banal. “When everyone does it what
is so unusual.”
I was again
reminded of a statement by Ellie Wiesel, the Nobel laureate, “In the
concentration camps the abominable became banal and the banal became abominable.
So what was the big deal anyway? Who amongst us would dream of talking about it?”
The pain that
comes from self-cutting makes those facing an intolerable reality feel alive
for the moment and is a better option than slowly getting dead inside. Trauma
psychology tells us about the inner experiences of women who are assaulted and find
no route of escape from that inner prison.
“Will you
promise that you will never do it again?”
She smiled
ruefully at me, her silence having a hundred meanings saying only if such a
reality is not presented to me again.
I was extremely
careful while talking to her. There was a wisp of a memory, a guilt that I have
still not come to terms with after all these years. I didn’t want to remind her
of any pain that was unbearable for her and a recollection that may bring in a
flood of memories that she may find it difficult to contain. Years ago, once while
taking a therapy group with young girls in a shelter home, one girl had started
talking about her experience of torture. Unknowing to me, the girl sitting
opposite me had kept her hand hidden below the table and cut herself with a blade
that she had been carrying. There was no pain on her face during the whole
time. She had looked at me and even smiled a few times. “I can do it anytime,
doing anything else at the same time.” Multitasking but with a poignant
reminder how the human mind can dissociate and hide an intolerable reality
inside while pretending to be normal.
Since that
interview I had made one rule that I follow till this day. I will never
interview survivors with a table in-between us.
My attention was
brought back to the present as the girls one by one began to tell us about
their dance. They often began their dance late in the night wearing skimpy
clothes. They shared that they gyrated to Bhojpuri, Haryanvi and Hindi songs. The
songs have highly suggestive lyrics that cover a wide range of physical
sensation of sexual feelings that arise in the body and the way a teenage girl
deals with those rising sensations in her body. No need to say that they are
all written from the viewpoint of a man, of what his fantasies are about what a
teenage girl feels.
And it is young
teenage girls who are smuggled to dance to bring those fantasies alive for men all
over Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. As one police officer told me seeing my anger, albeit
smilingly, “There are two conditions when a marriage happens in these parts. The
bridegroom’s party must raise so much dust while coming for marriage that no grass
can grow on that path again for generations and a dance of ‘randis’ (prostitutes)
that goes all night and makes every man at the marriage exhausted with desire. But
now it also happens in school parties, in political gatherings.
This is the
culture, you see. They all want to see the half-naked bodies of teenage girls
at these gatherings gyrating to music. And there are hundreds of such orchestra
parties running these shows at thousands of marriages and parties all over Bihar
and Uttar Pradesh. The number is staggering.”
I saw their eyes
as they talked. They looked dead to me. If you try to look deeper in them, you would
feel you come across what we psychologists call ‘a praecox’ feeling as if you were
talking to a wall. Their bodies looked fragmented as if in a million pieces and
like a glass piece shattered and lying scattered all over. Will they become whole
again, mentally and physically and get therapy to find meaning in life again? I
doubt. The world they come back to is as insensitive as it was when they had left
it.
I saw it as we took
them to the court. Hordes of men gathered around them as our team and a few
policemen tried to keep them away. “Saari randion ko uthake laye hain,” a man
next to me had told his friend as they started counting the number of girls. And
the girls sat huddled up covering their faces and waiting for an insensitive criminal
justice system to begin its proceedings.
“I have got
hundred other things to do,” the Judge told us as the girls waited surrounded
by people all around in the corridor. Their chance to give their statements came
in the evening after waiting for seven hours.
“You know after
we ate food in the police station, one of the staff got the whole room washed
and cleaned.” Her words had a poignancy that belied her maturity of sixteen
years. She had begun to understand the way people looked at her, notwithstanding
the ideas of freedom and all esoteric words we had used in the counseling with
her.
“You know men leer
at me when I dance. There are policemen, judges, teachers, everyone who comes
to watch us.”
“How do you know
he is judge?”
“I have heard
the host say ‘judge saab ke liye kursi lao’ (bring a chair for the judge). There
are even grandfathers holding the hands of their grandchildren who point out to
me. The children see the way their grandfathers look at me and they start doing
the same to me. My boss suggests that I do more gyrations looking at them.”
Is it any wonder
why the number of rape cases in our country are growing and intellectuals don’t
find an answer, I wonder.
“Would you ever
allow your daughter to do this? I asked Suneeta (name changed). She vigorously
nodded her head saying she would rather die than let any girl come into this
profession. “You think these hands are weak,” she said showing her cut marks
with pride. “They helped me survive. I once even beat up an old man who tried
to get on stage and dance with me. I pushed him hard and he fell down,” she
said giggling.
Several years
ago I had gone to the marriage of an acquaintance’s son in Delhi - Uttar Pradesh
border. Proudly he had told me, “My son didn’t demand a SUV but said that he
wants the best orchestra. It’s a once in a lifetime thing anyway.” As he brought
me to the front row I had noticed some elderly men sitting with their families.
Then a girl came garishly dressed in a small ghagra and blouse and danced to a
song. The words of the song were ‘one by one, sabko milega (everyone will get
it), one by one’. As she danced and gestured the crowd clapped and roared and
threw money at her. I had walked away, feeling ashamed at being part of such a
crowd even momentarily but what had surprised me the most was the acceptance by
the crowd of this vulgarity. No one including whole families said a word and
watched with glee.
So when did our
society become so soul-less? How is it that places which were once the origin
and reverberated with the cries of freedom and justice turn into hotbeds of
debauchery and insanity of seeing teenaged girls almost children as sexual
objects? Why do sixteen year olds like Suneeta have to dance in front of leering
men in marriage parties surrounded by their sisters, wives and children who say
nothing to their men? How does a society permit such a blatant violation of the
bodies of its teenage girls, who have hundred dreams in their eyes?
It is time we as
a society ask our conscience collectively and individually some hard questions.
Is this is the culture we want to grow on our soil? Should we be passive
onlookers to the sale of human beings and that of young girls across our back
yard? If we don’t stop it now then a day will come sooner than later when we
will wonder why it became the problem it did……Till then the vacant eyes of Sangeeta
and Suneeta will keep looking at us for answers.
Rajat Mitra
