Last year, I was in deep pain and anguish.
Every night I would get up with a noose tightened on my neck and my body hanging by a rope from a tree, which was ashamed to have branches strong enough to take the load of my lifeless body while allowing my soul to be taken away from the temple where it resided.
Every day I would open my eyes and see the images of my daughters and sisters going through the same agony, time and again, in the country of my birth.
My pain was immense and I did not have a night’s rest for weeks. But my pain was nothing as compared to what the families of the two little girls, younger than my own daughter, would have faced when they would have got up every day and remembered the savagery their daughters went through in their last few hours.
I wish I was there just to stand next to them in there hour of grief.
I wish I had the courage to shed the impotence I have gathered through my education , my upbringing and my attempts to be a good world citizen and could take the law in my hand and transplant the fear and distress in the eyes of the tormentors of those innocent souls.
Is this not one of the reasons that I left India?
An India, which can create a frenzy over any small religious act of intimidation including calling names to some pieces of stone and yet develop an apathy towards acts of violence towards human bodies and souls !
An India wherein people cringe at the benefits given to certain classes to offset the pain of centuries and yet at the same time use the same primitive methods to show these people their perceived places !
An India where the sons coming out of the wombs of their mothers, sapping energies out of their bodies by drinking their precious milk, use the same developed power to mutilate the bodies of the daughters of the land in the name of caste, religion, region or just plain lust !
An India where sex is taboo and yet the porn stars are the most googled faces on earth !
Today more than the Indians who have converted my Hindustan into Rapistan, I am ashamed of myself ! Ashamed of not being there for India in its hour of need when my mother wants me to put an end to this pain ! Ashamed of not being there to protect my daughters when the vultures scavenge on them ! Ashamed of the impotence that I have developed of being an educated elite, an NRI, who can enjoy the Bollywood songs, the Indian food and blow trumpets of his love for motherland and yet, cringe at the thought of belonging to a country where rape and murder are the important political tools to be used for success. Ask the UP politicians in power and they will tell you how all this is just a media creation and may even go the extent of telling that the girls got themselves raped and killed just to create bad press for their party !
What do we do sitting in our cocoons, in our safe shelters in various countries where we have hidden ourselves, covering our eyes lest we see the scars that deform India?
Nothing much, if we don’t want to ! Nothing much if we allow ourselves to forget this as yet one more story which came out of India, to be forgotten till the next song like “Chak De” again makes us proud of our roots!
And a lot if we think enough is enough ! For me, that point has come ! We need to make a start !
And now , this very minute. Not later !
Sulabh India has come up with a great idea of adapting a village and providing basic amenity of a toilet to our sisters in the villages so that they can relieve themselves with dignity without fear of the vultures that hover around ! Imagine 65% of our brothers and sisters do not enjoy this dignity ! Join such movements, contribute to them !
I do not represent Sulabh or for that matter any other organisation in India and in fact will do my own research to find establishments who can invest the maximum dollars directly. And that I have promised to myself, will also include a religious regular visit to India to be the change agent myself that I yearn my brothers and sisters to become.
The time is now ! Let’s forget the politicians ! Let’s stop the blames ! Let’s bring the change that we desire !
That is the only way we can remove the noose that that hangs our soul today !
Published in Times of India on 16th June 2014. Link below-
Devanshu Narang's 