It seemed just like another one of those infuriating forwards that 'friends' flood your inbox with.
It seemed just like another one of those infuriating forwards that 'friends' flood your inbox with. The subject line was: a woman's fight against sex slavery. Another of those NGOs looking for contributions, I thought as I was about to hit delete, when the mail popped open and a sentence caught my eye. "... a man who put chili powder in the vagina of one girl..."
I opened the email and it led to a site that hosted videos of popular talks. I was still searching for the line that had caught my eye, when I heard the gritty voice of a woman. The video was that of a small woman dressed in an unshapely red salwar-kurta on a stage decorated more like an exotic Gujarati haveli.
She was addressing a disciplined gathering with a spattering of blonde and silver heads.
Sunitha was not hiding. There was no shame. She wasn't a victim, she was a survivor.
As the woman spoke, her voice clear, her words powerful, and accent emphatic; and as the camera panned her very ordinary but unusually bright face, I couldn't look away from her piercing eyes.
"I don't even know Pranitha's background. We found her on a railway track. She had been raped by many, many men. The indication was that her intestines were outside her bodyu2026" And the camera zoomed in on a photo of a smiling girl, hardly four years old. The woman in the video was Dr Sunitha Krishnan, a 'not-so-famous' social activist who has been silently but relentlessly fighting against sex slavery through her organisation Prajwala.
And she says she has already saved about 3,000 girls. The problem, as she pointed out, was not the rape alone but the inevitable boycott by family and friends. "It's the shame of being exploited that hurts a rape victim the most."
I was already thinking about ways in which I could contribute, when she said, "When I was 18, I was gang-raped. But I don't remember the rape as such, what I remember is the anger I felt," she said, her head held high, her eyes meeting every pair following her under the spotlight.
She was not hiding, there was no shame. She wasn't a victim. She was a survivor. And then I realised what she wanted from us as au00a0 society. She wanted us to help every victim of sexual abuse become a survivor. And as Sunitha said, her biggest challenge was "the civil society. It's you and me; it's your blocks that prevent you from accepting these victims as your own. ...it's nice and fashionable to talk about human trafficking but not nice to bring them to our homes."
And I was ashamed that I had almost deleted the mail. I am trying to remove the blocks. Will you?
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