Another Rape in the Vishwa-Guru.

August 20, 2024

It’s been one of those days where not much makes sense. The feeling probably began last week. 

I’m still happy to be writing again, but today particularly the feeling that the stories I am currently engaged in are meaningless is all-engulfing. Why write about personal journeys and failings and fears when so much is happening in the world. 

My heart, like the heart of many Indians and people of Indian origin, is repeatedly drawn to the vicious rape and murder of a young doctor in a Calcutta college, and what feels like a deep cover-up around it. 

Imagine… The woman is raped and killed after 36 hours of duty when she slips into a seminar room to get some rest. Imagine that her hip bone is shattered, and there is blood flowing from her eyes, besides other violent injuries. Imagine the parents being told that girl committed suicide, and her body being cremated suddenly, some say to destroy evidence (the same has been done before with another young woman in Hathraas). Imagine sudden unexplained renovation in the vicinity of the crime which might further destroy evidence. Imagine a night march organized by women doctors to reclaim the night, joined by men and women, doctors or otherwise, being overrun by a crazed mob that threatened the peaceful protestors and vandalized the hospital. Imagine the principal of the hospital, described as corrupt and involved in many rackets, not being dismissed by the government but being transferred to a good position in another hospital — which luckily was opposed by the students of that hospital who sent the man  packing. Imagine the courts having to come in at all this outrage since the police seemed ineffective or unwilling. Imagine further that the one rapist, who has been apprehended for committing this crime, going to some police barrack to sleep peacefully after committing the vicious rape and murder. What was he thinking? What made him feel so safe? Imagine not being able to even confirm that this could not have been the work of only that man and probably more were involved. Imagine the Bengal Government saying something as stupid as women should not be given night shifts to prevent such crimes. 

This isn’t dystopian gender fiction. It is reality. It happened last week. And now imagine how this is being used politically to try to bring in President’s rule or Governor’s rule in the city or the state, I don’t know if this rumour is true. 

India calls itself a Vishwa-guru, but cannot solve a crime like this. Cannot be transparent about it. Cannot provide security to women in its cities, and towns, and workplaces. This to me should be one of the indices for a Vishwa-guru. The Nirbhaya gang rape of 2012 was solved quickly. It happened in the night streets of Dehli, a city that once was considered safe for women. Soon after a woman was gang raped in Mumbai. The safest city for women in India at one time. The perpetrators there too were found quickly. But here there seems to be no movement towards solving the crime. I can't Imagine what the parents must be feeling, or I can but not completely. 

It astounds me, us, daily. I search for news of a breakthrough, of some more information about this, but the same old, same old is being recycled. 

In the midst of this I am writing stories about the personal. I am happy that a goal I set for karate around 2016 feels realized and I want to write about it. I know these stories too are important but I don’t wish to do just this. Yet the political, the global, feels so vast that I don’t know where to begin. Not yet.

I recently saw a video, made by a socio-political satirist, of people, Indian people, sitting in cars or trains, smiling as they scroll on their phones, and not looking at the ‘fires and storms’ outside the window. How do people do that? Wake up and smell the acridity and rot. India feels at the brink of something explosive, a bubbling volcano. Maybe I am wrong.