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Till our daughters come back safely, we are forever tracking them with GPS. When reporting every single moment is the only norm, where is the time left to live her life?
Dear Godji,
Do you exist at all?
Sometimes, it feels as though you are truly heartless. Or some of us are children of a lesser God, and so suffer these unending atrocities.
Definitely, a mother has lost all faith in you, considering what her dear daughter went through in Hyderabad. One wouldn’t wish the same fate on even one’s sworn enemy.
As a mother of a daughter whom we have raised saying a career is imperative, sleep won’t come to me today.
How carefully we mothers look after our precious daughters, killing ourselves with hidden tension while putting out a brave smile, praying the world outside wouldn’t be ferocious but would be as gentle with her as we have been?
We spend multiple nights sitting next to our darling daughters, attending to them, quickly anticipating their every need while they burn the midnight oil trying to ace the race of life, or cracking those difficult exams.
How many deaths we mothers die tackling the bloody dichotomy of teaching her to soar high, follow her dreams by giving shape to her passion yet almost immediately curtail her movements or curb her venturing out because there are animals which are prowling around, waiting to prey on the gullible or less-than-watchful?
Wait – calling these demons as animals is an insult to those creatures because even they wouldn’t be so beastly.
Because the entire onus is on her! So to remain safe and alive she has to dress decent with no overt skin-show, not calling any untoward attention to self, not trusting strangers, and arming herself fully with pepper spray, speed dial numbers, data plan and maybe a rod too.
Every day is a battle for survival.
Till our daughters come back safely, we are forever tracking them with GPS. When reporting every single moment is the only norm, where is the time left to live it up?
Did I say live it up? My girl has to be careful, indulging only in Sanskaari fun, else she is the slut 🙁
How many background checks we do before we give our precious princess’s hand in marriage, hoping the man who chants the holy vows today will always stand by her, with her and will always be her prince and not a horrible toad?
My core burns.
The searing pain that a parent is undergoing is unimaginable.
If the hot lava of anger of that mother was to spill over or if she could have the power to will castration upon those mongrels who burnt her daughter or if she could give a shape to the rage that torments her very core…
True, there is a law, true there are courts and true for everything.
But if the outrage of a mother whose daughter has been harassed, pawed, ogled at and pinched, was to find an outlet, the predators wouldn’t be left with a phallus to flaunt. Wishful thinking eh?
Now, wait for the victim shaming to begin.
How she should have dialed 100, or how she should have been more circumspect, or how waiting at the toll-plaza would have been a better choice.
And those beasts? well….
We wait for your next act Godji
Because truly no one deserved that fate.
And no such ghastly perpetrator should go scot-free or be the guest of law unendingly while law takes its own course, while the parents die every second, wondering if only they knew how to avert this horrific tragedy.
If!
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Anupama Jain is the author of 'When Padma Bani Paula', a breezy novel about second
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