September 1 - 15 Issue

We don’t know who they are... but can they face themselves? Who were the men who sat in that ignominious compartment where a mentally-challenged minor girl was raped by a drunk? One of them, we know now, is a reporter. Who were the other four?
What went through their minds when they sat quiet and unmoving through the entire time the girl was being molested?
Were they really unmoved? Or were they too scared to let their emotions move them to action?
What kind of human being can be so scared for his own safety that he can let a girl cry out in fear and pain, and not forget his own fear?
What kind of human being thinks he is so helpless even though he is not alone, that he cannot motivate the others with him, to act and overpower a drunken, sickly-looking youth engrossed in the act?
What did the men think as the train rushed along? Did they feel relieved that there was no one to incite them to anger and action?
Did they hope that by not looking, not hearing, the deed would fade from consciousness as not having happened at all? That the incident would not touch their lives?
What did the men do on returning to their homes? Did they tell their women about what had happened? Or tell other men - a father or a brother or a friend?
Did they look one another in the face as they stepped off the train? Or did they avoid eye contact by walking out with lowered eyes? What did their women say to them if and when they heard what had happened? Did they berate them for being so unfeeling, so unmanly?
Did they keep quiet because they had not realised till then the calibre — or lack of it — of the man who lived in their home? Were they aghast, did they worry that if the same thing happened to them and a man accosted them, even a little wimpy stranger, their man would not try to help, but put his personal safety first?
Or did they think, thank God you are safe... why risk your life for a demented girl who will be abused anyway, who will die the death of a pariah dog, some day or the other?
What did the women say...if they said anything.
What will they think the next day when the man they know did nothing, sits across them and eats his breakfast before going off to work?
Will they see him differently? With a blank where his face should be? With an empty space where his brain should be, with a piece of rock where his heart should be? Will they see him like that?
And the men. Will they be able to sleep at night, every night, without hearing the screams again, without feeling trapped in a situation they can never come out of?
I Think again and again of the night, that ignominious night, and I wonder. I Look at the men who walk the platforms, and take buses and drive their cars and wonder.
Would they have done the same? Are they all like that?
Are we all like that?


The Editor


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