Thanksgiving

I am about to spill more ink over a topic, the possibilities of which are so exhausted by constant discussion that there remains almost no angle of it that is to be explored - Rape.

Everyone talks about laws and the victims and their experiences and keeps playing the blame game and the cover up game when it comes to crimes. When the issue in question is a rape, the voices particularly strengthen up and have a tone of specific solidarity, rage and revolt.And, what is the demand? Kill the perpetrator they say. That seems to be their silver bullet to put an end to the happening of the act.

After all the candle lights burn out and the temporary political hullabaloo settles down and the silent protestors disperse, there comes to surface a silence. A silence so cold that it has the same inertness of the winter snow. And then, well who bothers!

Everything and everyone moves on but what about the fear that seeps into the minds of a sensitive few? There seems to be no remedy, no help, and sometimes no escape. The possibility of a sexual assault at any moment becomes as inevitable as the possibility of death. If the probability of death seems to be at par with the probability of a rape, then I shudder to think what the relevance is of a government and an organised citizenry. 

Our lives sure have no guarantee but our safety ought to have some assurance and the reason is simple - we are human beings who live in the most technologically advanced, culturally evolved, politically mature era. The state cannot be callous. It has to let go of its shackles of colonial slavery and stop chasing the ghosts of superficial development and vote bank politics. People have issues, grave ones that ruin their sleep and mental frame.It is hard to live under anxiety. It is hard to read about the most crude forms of sexual perversions in the newspapers and forget them and get back to routine life. It is hard to stop thinking of the agony of the affected and focus on individual goals. It is hard to live with a sense of helplessness and guilt about not being able to do anything to change things.It is hard to sleep and hard to kill the fear. It is hard to empower the self because the rat race for success leaves no time to spare. 

These hardships seem especially hard when no one acknowledges,no one listens and no one consoles. These thoughts they say are trivial and not worthy to disturb a sound night's sleep for.

Thanks be to whoever and whatever, because, because of you we can no longer trust, believe or give in. We can no longer put faith in those happily ever after fairy tales. We no longer have childhood.

Suspicion rules our lives and so does apperehension.

Thank you government, thank you schools and colleges, thank you religions.

And,never the least, thank you gentlemen.