Daily Times

December 16. It was a typical cold Delhi night. The Life of Pi ended and they stepped out, talking and laughing. Life awaited them with its most warped script. As they stepped into a bus to travel a few kilometres home, the longest evening of their lives unfolded. The men in the bus saw an easy target — a young couple — and thus began what was standard time-pass for a boring evening. The teasing began. And it did not stop. The quiet requests to leave them alone were ignored and the voices grew louder. The resistance grew stronger as the comments grew lewder and the boundaries more blurred. She was the target, he was the protector, and the men were in no mood to retreat. The first ‘no’ went unheard and the ensuing shouts cloaked all others into nothing. They attacked the young couple. The man was beaten into almost unconscious. She was beaten too. And raped. Not by one but by six men. The rapes were so brutal she was almost dead when they were done with her. They threw her out of the bus to die. Stripped of all she held protectively as her own, she was left to die. Her body broke. Her soul survived. Her spirit survived. Her instinct to live survived. The world did not stop its motion while time became her biggest enemy. She died a thousand deaths in that journey on that bus on that typical, cold Delhi night.

December 29. She died. After a fight against her failing body organs, she succumbed to her injuries in a hospital in Singapore 13 days later, where she had been transported after her initial treatment at a hospital in Delhi did not seem to work. She was 23 years old. Six men and a bus ride ended it all for her. India went into a state of outraged shock. India had been praying for her. India wanted her to live. India wanted justice for her. And India still does. As millions prayed for her all over the world, she became a symbol of what many had lost, what many never got the chance to fight for. She remained nameless and faceless as she fought for her life, but for many she personified the loudest protest and the clearest picture of what should happen to no one yet has happened to too many since times immemorial. Rape. A four-letter word that has become so commonplace that the enormity of what it stands for has become entombed in the trivialities attached to it by those who think it is no big deal.

That is what it is when the act is stripped to its bare minimum. It is ‘no big deal’ to rape a girl, a woman, a child — male or female. The attitude is universal, the veneers masking it may be varied. It is ‘just a body’ that is attacked, and an act that is purely intimate in nature is to be carried out, notwithstanding that the touch is unwelcome, the grasp is a vice. The no does not amount to anything. The louder it is, the more ‘fun’ the act is. The body may be clad from head to toe. It could be the still-developing slender one of a teenaged girl. It could be the desirable form of an athlete or an out-of-shape body of an ailing woman. The face could be a deformed one of an acid victim. The desired one could be a skinny, pre-teen boy. All are raped and no one explanation works. None works because there is no explanation. A rape, even it is not brutal and life-threatening, takes away the most precious part of one’s being, that part which is not even physical, that part where one says no and it becomes the loudest word in the universe. It is one’s body. When it is touched unwanted, attacked, brutalised, it fights, with all of it. And more. When it fails to do so, it recoils into an inner sanctuary so deep, curling itself into a fetus-like ball, it sometimes refuses to come out of it for ages, for life.

Imagine being touched against your will. Imagine being beaten for that. Imagine six men brutalising all that you knew as simply your own. Imagine the violence of being beaten like…no, you can’t because you have never been beaten like that. Imagine being so viciously handled each finger feels like a hammer, each stinking breath on your body feels like the shadow of death. Imagine being so brutally raped your body becomes the hell you cannot get rid of despite the most intense struggle of your spirit. Imagine your body being ravaged sexually while you are being beaten like a lifeless sack of flour. Imagine hearing your friend’s weakening pleas as he is being beaten, begging for you to be spared. Imagine losing consciousness and then more barbarity is unleashed on you. Imagine iron rods being used on you by the youngest, the most vicious of the perpetrators, the 17-year-old who does not even spare your almost lifeless body, brutalising it more. Imagine being thrown out of a bus on a freezing night in a crowded city, left to die. Imagine lying on the side of a road, bleeding profusely, next to your friend, who is using his battered hands, arms to cover your unrecognisable blackened-with-bruises, blood-oozing form. No, you cannot imagine, because it all happened to that one 23-year-old who happened to get on a bus, laughing, with her friend, one dark night.

Then the new hell starts. As she bleeds and he holds her head in his lap, he screams for help. His screams are incessant but no one stops. Not a single vehicle stops to help the brutalised couple. People peek out with sympathy/compassion/curiosity, but no one stops. The cold dark night envelopes the couple while the scared-of-getting-involved-in-someone’s-mess city looks the other way. Delhi cried for her later. Delhi mourned her ordeal. Delhi stood for hours in the cold, fighting with the police for her. But that night Delhi looked the other way. Not one person helped. Not ONE. How do you let someone suffer on a road, helpless, naked, just because you are afraid of your police system defies me. I live in Lahore; I know how Delhi works because that’s how my city works. Could that have stopped me from stopping my car and helping that woman, that man, that night? The instinct to help is natural, not arbitrary as and when it is convenient. I have stayed awake at nights since I heard what happened to her, and after she was thrown from that bus. I see her unconscious, bloody body on the side of that road, and I go cold. I see her lying there cradled in his arms and I want to scream. I see her face in the girls/women I see walking on roads in Lahore now. I mutter a silent prayer for them as I blink my tears away for her.

Then there was another hell. The bus went through five police check posts while she was being raped by those six men. The police took 30 minutes to get to her. The police did not give her, her friend, anything to cover their bodies. The police argued among themselves under whose jurisdiction the ‘case’ would be filed. The police refused to pick up her bleeding body. The police instead of taking them to a hospital took them to a police station. The police did not give the man any clothing. The police took two hours to take her to a government hospital. The police did not protect her even then.

She is dead. She fought. She wanted to live. But her body failed her spirit. She will remain alive as long as the protest for her continues. He is alive. He has spoken. What will happen now? Will India do justice? According to the National Crime Records Bureau, a woman is raped every 20 minutes in India. In 2012, 24,206 rape-cases were reported. How many were convicted? Will Delhi do justice? With its 41 percent conviction rate, will it do justice to her? If one got conviction out of the 600 reported in 2012, will she be the first one to get justice in 2013? Will the courts do justice? What will her people do for her? Is she watching from wherever she is? Will her India fight for her, and many more like her? Will it stand up for her so that there are no more like her? Will she be the last one to die because her NO was heard all over India?

Her name is Jyoti Singh Pandey.

The writer is an Assistant Editor at Daily Times. She tweets at @MehrTarar and can be reached at mehrt2000@gmail.com