“Hush everyone!” The English teacher of the third standard of B.H.
Public School silenced the noisy class. Rimi, sitting in one corner of the
classroom, oblivious of her surrounding stared through the open window, gazing
at the trees. The leaves dancing in the mild breeze calmed her inside.
“Open your textbooks.” The English teacher said. And after around
forty minutes the last lesson of the day was over. The last bell rang and all
the children rushed to their respective buses, cheerful, shouting and laughing
aloud. Rimi tip-toed towards her bus. Among her friends in the bus she felt
like the marooned sailor in an island without a game to score.
After lunch she heard her uncle in the other room laughing aloud
to a joke that her father cracked. The afternoon nap with her mother beside her
makes her feel relaxed and protected to a great extent. And after the badminton
sessions every evening she often comes tired but she is bound to study with her
uncle while her mother watches her favorite TV series and her father manages
his accounts or goes to the market. Deepak uncle hasn’t married yet and lives
with their family as he is the closest cousin of her father and his business
partner. And Deepak uncle is the one in the family who takes care of Rimi’s
lessons too. Almost every evening. But the little girl has been silenced to a
great extent since a few days. She does not understand that touch on her
shoulders that slips down to her underwear while her uncle teaches her. His
hand stops only at certain places in her body. She felt some kind of an unknown
agony and her heartbeats became faster when she felt that intimidating thing
between her uncle's thighs. Now her vulnerable soul was at the mercy of a dirty
sensation almost every evening. Her innocence housed within her vulnerable soul
was getting more and more acquainted with her own body that she had never
explored before. Her uncle's hands threw her body shivering in a furnace of
burning fear. She felt exposed to a merciless being, felt bare in a sense that
she had never felt. If only she could cry, if only she could understand what
the touch meant. If only she could ask her mother about it. Why is she stopping
herself from asking her mother? She does not know any of these answers. She is
terrified. She looked for god, but her god had deserted her. Like a bird that
flutters when its wings are cut, she fluttered in her uncle's dirty gaze that
penetrated deep down her soul.
Years went by. She reached high school and learnt what womanhood
is. She understood what it means to be a woman in the society and even today
the lamp within Rimi flickers with fear, the tragic marks of a strange fire
burn her still. A gush of pain leaves her heartbroken even when she
laughs. Many a times she feels haunted by a powerful stench of terror, a brutal
hand and a dirty face that she loathes from her heart. The heaviness that she
carries within has turned out to be the biggest burden of her life. The sobbing
never helps, maybe screaming will. But after so many years? It seems like
yesterday although it happened ages ago. When she was a little child. When she
played with dolls and flowers. When she did not have the courage to let her
mother know or when the words 'rape' and 'molestation' were not in her
vocabulary. Today if Deepak uncle had been alive she would have made him answer
for her tears. Maybe she would have screamed, maybe she would have lodged a
police complaint or maybe she would have cut his dirty hands. As she chops
vegetables she imagines what it would have been like to chop off her uncle's
hands or that strange thing that penetrated her mind deep down!
