CHENNAI : Before I sat down to write this, I was sure that almost every woman columnist in the country has written, will write about, or is currently submitting a file on the same topic at this time. We were going to repeat ourselves and each other, I thought, overlapping in our grief and our jargon. And we had to: we had to reinforce what’s important, spread the message in different circles, be a chorus of resistance. Then I sat down, and found my heart in my mouth and no words at my fingertips.
There have been years and years of words: words in whispers, words in affidavits, words in screenshotted conversations, words in editorials, words out loud (even scream-loud), words swallowed but turned to choices, words that echo. And yet.A few months ago, a misogynistic NGO in Karnataka organised what they called a “Feminist Pishachini Mukti Puja”, a year after their Kanpur chapter organised symbolic funerary rites for women who had left their marriages.
One organiser called the experience “cathartic” for the ex-husbands who performed these rituals. They consider themselves activists for men’s rights. Such events gave some of us well-deserved memes and humour breaks, but it was sadness that reminded me of them. Both to laugh at and to perform the spell-casting are to lose the point: no magic is needed to make women suffer in India.
For that, we have: patriarchy, politicians, police, people in our homes, people in our workplaces, people who are complete strangers, people in public, people online. They may be, and are, of any gender. They may be, and are, of any affiliation. What they have in common is that they hate us so deeply: women, other women, some women, women unlike themselves, any woman, all women. That hatred manifests as everything from protective measures to punitive measures.
I looked at the faces of the men in photos of that puja to eradicate women, and at the faces of the men in the photos of a celebration of the extrajudicial encounter in Hyderabad in which four suspects in a murder-rape were killed. Both sets motivated by the same violent impulses and beliefs. Any woman they had in mind was theoretically theirs to destroy, or avenge. The divorcees had been abusive, as their participation ascertained. Those cheering the fatal encounter — having left their wives, daughters, mothers, women co-workers and friends somewhere “safe” — were, statistically speaking, also more likely to be than not. Besides, violence is not only physical.
In the last few days, many women have managed to say — through the mire of renewed heartsickness and anger — exactly how this makes us feel. This is how we feel all the time. Each time something horrific happens, we aren’t reacting with shock. There’s a fear we live with constantly, a fear of something that’s like a pollutant in the air. We breathe it in every day. Some days, someone dies because of it. If there is a day at all in India in which that doesn’t happen (just because it doesn’t become a headline doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen), it’s still a day on which someone — no, many — survived an attempt.