The mirror was broken into a zillion
pieces, and in each piece, she saw reflected a part of herself. She realised
that she was not really asleep. She occupied an alternate reality. She carried
her loneliness even in this temporary realm. Finally, after what seemed an
infinite, indefinite length of space, she was awake. At least the many gazes
were gone.
Rukmini
sat in front of the mirror, and her image, with its large, limpid eyes, like
that of an intelligent and loving cow, was reflected in the glass which was
swimming in the dusk light pouring in from the window. There was no-one else in
the house. Her parents had not yet returned from work. And the old grandfather
clock, which had been crowded into a corner along with several other knick
knacks and wasted objects waiting for the garbage dump, went tick tock, tick
tock, for the one last time, bravely playing out a tune till the very last
moment of its life. Instinctively, Rukmini thought of her own grandfather,
living out the final days of his life, in a dusty, obscure district town. She
had been there a few times with her parents. The approach to the house was dirty
and sordid, but the house itself was a neat and cheery little oasis, a place of
companionship. She wanted to meet her grandfather again. She wanted his warm
embrace, and the smell of tobacco. She wanted to hear stories of his childhood
under the large Mulberry tree in Delhi.
The computer was reflected in the mirror
as well. The computer was black, and sleek and smart. She walked towards it
hypnotized by its lure, switched it on, and in seconds she was drawn into its
algorithmic universe, bits of information were minted out of its pages, like
leaping sparks of gold. She raced through a hundred ‘likes’, and then come to
that familiar thread of ferocious conversation that had been raging on the cold
screen for some days now. Jatin was
at the centre of the storm.
It all began with one small intervention.
Jatin is a molester. This was the comment Mukti posted suddenly, without
warning, on her site.
Whazzat? A joke?
No. Dead serious.
Dead as in what?
No. I’m telling you, it’s serious.
You mean Jatin molested you?
Yes. He molests many girls. He has been.
For ages. No one has the guts to say anything.
And then, one by one, the voices began to
chip in, some with an urgent sense of involvement. Others just for the heck of
it, irresponsibly. Just a few days ago this had been a friends circuit where a
song had been playing.
“A year from now we’ll all be gone.
All our friends will move away.
And they’re going to better places.
But our friends will be gone away.”
There were crazy guides to Ph.D. seekers,
and loony memes on campus interviews. But then this happened, and this gnawed
into everyone’s brain like a worm. Everyone included some new topic, according
to his or her sensibility, irrespective of whether it was relevant or not.
“What is your definition of molestation?”
“To make it perfectly clear to you, it
need not be restricted to groping with sexual intent. That makes things too
simple, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah, it actually means anything that
takes away my agency as a woman.”
“What the fuck was Jatin doing anyway in
the front line of a women’s movement?”
“Is this amnesia, Jatin’s organization
was invited to participate, remember?’
“So that gives him the leave to thrust
himself forward and shout ‘seena taane halla bol’, ‘Sidhu ka beta
halla bol’ and hijack the movement?”
“Yes, we were disgusted by it. Disgusted.
Period.”
“And the sloganeering was an excuse for
the groping.”
“Pardon me, but can this be an elitist
backlash against a Dalit, daring to be on equal terms of comradeship?”
“Mate, you have peculiar ideas of
comradeship.”
“I think Jatin needs to be thrashed
publicly.”
“He is a lecherous misogynist who thinks
my body is accessible to him because I have protested alongside him. Pseudo –
leftist.”
“There’s no difference between these
pseudos and the Alt Right.”
“These are the bastards who think there’s
only one entry point into a subject. Pun intended.”
While, in the beginning, there had been
one or two voices in support of Jatin these gradually faded away as the tide
began to turn with irrational ferocity against Jatin. And people who had never
seen him or heard of him began to demand that his penis should be cut off or his
balls smashed.
Rukmini knew Jatin from a distance. She
had seen him several times on the university campus, and that was all, except
for one evening when he had recited a self-composed poem standing in the centre
of a circle of students. That evening was different because of the quality of
the poem. When she returned home, she had translated the poem into English,
whatever she remembered of it, perhaps filling in with her own lines.
My eyelashes burn
But my gaze is steady
Each leaf has woven a pattern
And the horizon is on fire
I would like to live
My life as if it were the last night
Those who die alone at midnight
Those who have lived half dead
Through each dreary day
On that last night, the room fades
away
Vast spaces stretch ahead
On that night, the truth stands bare
I would like to live my life
As if it were the last night.
Today when she entered the gates and
walked towards the U.G. building, she understood that the broth was thickening.
There was going to be a demand for an investigation committee to be set up.
There was going to be a demand for Jatin’s mother to step down as head of the
department of Comparative Languages.
Rukmini entered the building and saw at
once that the corridor had changed. The slabs of stone and cement could not be
broken down, but the corridor was no longer a normal place. The friends of Mukti
and the friends of friends of friends stood lining the walls on both sides. The
eyes of some were glinting like waiting for the kill. A student with a man bun,
and a stick thin, stern looking girl dressed in stridently flagrant “ethnic”
clothes were the ostensible organizers.
No one knew much about their origins. The conversation grinded to an
unseemly halt, when a slight woman in a starched sari, and a nondescript boy
with curly hair walked in. The only thing striking about the boy was the shiny
ebony of his complexion. This
was the infamous Jatin. The two figures had stopped for a moment in the door
way, and had appeared as outlines against the sunlight, with auras surrounding
their heads. Having taken in the scene they advanced slowly, superficially
defensive, internally pugilistic. The members of the vigilante committee smirked
in unison and began a slow clapping of hands that ran down the entire length of
the corridor, and pursued the retreating backs of the two, like a corrupted gaze
or a fecund smell. A clapping that would not let them be, a persistent,
relentless, inimical phenomenon. Rukmini who stood outside the formation
indeterminately, suffered an out of body experience, and the faces of everyone
present took on a sinister hue.
That evening, Rukmini once again sat and
watched the ever expanding deluge of comments, and suddenly felt that she must
climb out of her non-committal shell. She climbed out mentally, and stood nude
and rough and raw at the edges. Then this passive onlooker made her little
intervention.
Hi, this is Rukmini. Excuse me, what are
we all doing? Why are we doing this?
Sorry sister. Can’t understand.
I mean why are we shaming him? Why are we
judging him?
Uh-uh. Here comes one of those. Welcome.
Post-truth, alternative ethics shit poster.
Rukmini or whatever, am I to take it you
are validating molestation?
No, no. I mean we haven’t heard his side.
Why would a woman expose herself on
social media if she didn’t feel insulted?
I think the age of liberal toleration is
fucking over.
Yeah, given the fact that we live in a
patriarchal society with unequal power relations between men and women, we
cannot simply present ‘versions’ of the incident.
No, no. You are misconstruing me. I don’t
belong to the post truth party. I do believe we need to come to some sort of
conclusion, but ………….
Oh God, these are middle class yuppies
mouthing tiresome platitudes.
All I’m asking for is some rational
investigation ………….
The assertion of rationality is banal.
Look Rukmini or whatever, this works for us and sweaty donkey balls to anyone
who makes us feel bad about it. Leave your shit stain somewhere else.
Rukmini, who had never entered a
controversy on social media before was not prepared for this voiceless, faceless
disgust. She withdrew from the turgid whirlpool which was spinning with
gathering ferocity and irrationality, until it had arrived on the shores of
vastly differing topics and links to huge, erudite articles, interspersed with
sudden vicious comments, lightened from time to time by some kind soul.
Somehow, though this incident was not
personally important to her, it became a kind of symbol of her mental state. She
lay on the bed feeling mauled and battered. It was as though she had been made a
leper on social media.
When the verdict came out, there was
jubilation and smug satisfaction all round. Several girls had testified to
feeling uncomfortable in the company of Jiten during the students’ movement. He
would bang into them on purpose, or trampled over their feet as though he had
not noticed. He would laugh incomprehensibly when they objected and say that
someone had let an elephant into the garden. Sometimes he would ask a girl out
for coffee and would glower at her from a distance on being refused. He would
tie a blue ribbon around his head, and be laughed at for his scrawny figure when
he tried to dance in front of the women. But with Mukti he had crossed
acceptable boundaries. He had actually come up very close to her and held her
hand.
Jatin was publicly indicted and suspended
from attending classes for the next three months. According to some, it was a
very light sentence for someone who was a stalker and a potential danger. He
should have been expelled from the campus.
That evening she came across him sitting
on a cold bench under the shade at the Jadavpur 8 B bus stand. She had come to
catch a bus. He was there aimlessly. Behind him could be seen a dilapidated
house with a shattered aquamarine window. A dirty plastic bag was fluttering
along merrily. There was chaos on the streets. She said hi! to him and sat down
on the bench beside him. She was inclined to believe that he was innocent. He
didn’t speak a single word. There was a caramel coloured sun in the sky. It
softened the dazzle of his ebony.
After a while she moved out of the shed.
The sky was now abruptly hyacinth. He startled her by coming up behind her
unexpectedly with a panther like movement. His eyes glinted in the dark of his
face. “Did you come to show me sympathy?” he asked. He flashed a smile, the
meaning of which was inscrutable. “Look! Look! Look at that predatory bird
piercing through the sky! Can you see it flying through the abyss? Well,
sometimes the sparrow holds a magic wand in its claws and shazam! It flares its
big eyes and turns upon the predator and says “don’t give me life advice type of
SHIT” and pecks the big bastard bird all over. No sympathy, right? No sympathy
from you.”
She is walking away from Jatin. Tears are
pricking her eyelids. What is she to make of this morass of information? What is
she to make of the sludge of her emotions? Were the butchers of Facebook
justified in their rant then? Why was he picking on women? Didn’t he have the
balls to take on men? Where exactly was his perversion coming from? Did being a
Dalit excuse him? But what had he actually done? Held the hand of a woman? No,
held the hand of a woman against her will?
She sat down at a streetside tea stall to
calm the hot flushes of her anger. Gradually her breathing became regular. She
felt the restlessness subside. The tea lady did not disturb her. She kept
stirring her pot on the fire. The canvass over the makeshift stall was torn at
one place. Through it she could see a patch of navy-blue sky. On it was embossed
in brilliant calligraphy some simple words from Rumi.
Out beyond the ideas
Of wrongdoing and right doing
Is a field
I’ll meet you there
When the soul lies down in that grass
The world is too full to talk about.