Character Sketch Of A Violation

I imagine a story. A story where my truth exists, but I do not. Where my word🍃s exist, but my name does not. The pain should be felt, but whose pain it is should remain unknown. Then I wonder, aren’t all stories like this?

I also wonder why I don’t want my name in this story? Perhaps there’s a fear of the name being tarnished. But it could be celebꦚrated too? When I speak, it’s not just my name that gets tarnished, but also the names of a few close ones. And why not? After all, they were the ones who wronged me. But there’s still a part of me that wants to protect even those who wronged me. There is no explanation. Perhaps even those who benefited from my silence wouldn’t be able to explain too. Because they don’t even know that I didn’t speak. Nor do they know that something bad happened to me. They never told me to shut up. They just did what seemed fun in that moment.

They have no idea that that moment stretched into years for me, years that turned into depression, depression that turned into a nervous breakdown, and now, during treatment, that very moment stands before me as a question, a sigh. Like my scared, trembling body, 𒁃whimpering, trying to tell me something, givinཧg me a hint, waking up a dormant memory, and afraid that this time too I might tell it to stay silent.

They have no idea how many such burdens my mind has suppressed to protect itself. It took me years to understand that, even then my body remembered everything in the form of numbness. Like a child who stops talking to their mother in anger, hoping she’ll understand and come to apologise, my body did the same. When memories were buried, my body’s abil💜ity to feel was also buried, and it kept sinking deeper.

The result is often that if you don’t feel fear or anger, the possibility of saving yourself diminishes. My therapist once said that most victims of abuse have experienced a lack of affectionate relationships and trust in their families. To protect the young mind ෴from this pain, their brain deliberately suppresses their🅺 ability to feel. In that state, when something bad happens, they remain confused.

The ability to feel our emotions, to sense our body’s sensations, helps us define our safe boundaries. If that boundary wall seems broken, it should be understoo🃏d that someone at some point has forcibly entered. Not being able to speak, or not being able to feel are signs of that violation.

Our emotional and sensory numbness also affects the relationships we form in our youth. It becomes a significant reason for not being able to properly define the necessary (mental and emotional) boundaries. The seed of violation planted in childhood grows like a tree inside you. With time, it bears flowers of fear, hatred, anger, confusion, regret, sorrow, inferiority, lack of confidence, lack of trust, loneliness, and countless others. We become accustomed to this weight. We don’t even know what life could have been like without it. How would our emotions, our personality, our relationships have been if they weren’t nourished by the roots of that tree? How would our existence feel to us, and to ot☂hers?

Perhaps every woman walks under 🦩the weight of such bundles of memories. I can say this because many women have ♓shared their stories with me. What a unique inheritance!

Now the time has come where I must open my bundle. The whole life till this point has been the preface. But before opening it, it൲’s essential to clarify one thing. I am shꦬowing it to you but don’t assume it’s entirely visible to me even. It has many memories with sealed envelopes. What’s inside, I don’t know.

My body has only told me as much as 🤪I have the courage to bear. This deterministic world is supposed to run on cause and effect, but in my story these two don’t align. The effect suggests that the cause isn’t just a moment but like the waves of an ocean. These waves aren’t just from my memories. They also include echoes of waves that have been crashing for centuries. Psychologists call it generational trauma.

So, the story begins with a girl in 3rd or 4th grade. She had a friend who studied in the same class and lived in 💯the house next door. That friend’s younger sister was one grade behin🐲d us. The three of us would go to school together and come back together.

It was summer vacation. My friend’s mother would travel with her two daughters to her maternal home. Uncle would be alone at home in the afternoons. I don’t remember how, one afternoon I ended up in their house, in their bedroom. What I can recall is that I felt myself beneath him on the bed, his weight heavy on me. After a while, I felt the need to urinate. I went to the bathroom but couldn’t pee. I felt a burning sensation inside. ‘I can’t pee,’ I told uncle first. I just wanted the burning to go away. At that mo✤ment I wasn’t angry, just confused. I don’t remember what happened after that—when I came home, what I did, what I told my mother, or why I didn’t say anything. There’s just fog in that place. I don’t even know how many times this happened to me. I have a faint memory of it happening twice. This chapter of the memory ends here, and the wound of violation begins.

The second incident is from a night ﷽when we had too many guests in our two-room house. There was not enough space so someone had to share a folding cot with the visiting uncle or cousin (there’s fog here too). My brother was still a baby so he needed to sleep with our mother, leaving me to sleep on the same cot as my relative. In the middle of the night, I woke up feeling something solid, like a rod, behind me. I turned and saw that the uncle/cousin was presumably asleep. I didn’t feel good. I probably couldn’t go back to sleep. But I couldn’t leave that cot and go to my mother either. Even today, I ask myself why I couldn’t move away from that place even when I felt violated. I have no answer. No one tied me down, but is it really true? Being unable to read your own emotions is like being tied down only. Additionally, this fog leaves you with a sense of guilt. In such a confused state, you fear that raising an alarm might be a big mistake. You start imagining the grilling afterwards—how will you elaborate the violation when you don’t even have the vocabulary for it?

The third incident is from 5th or 6th grade. Again, a story from a friend’s house, who was in my class. Her elder brother was in 11th grade. I called him bhaiy🔥a. One evening, I went to her house to call her to play. My friend was taking some time to get ready. I was waiting in the narrow passage between two rooms. Just then, bhaiya crossed the passage, brushing against me. So close that I felt something like a rod again. It felt bad but I still couldn’t gather the courage to run away. I thought what would my friend think? What would I say about her brother? How can such a thing be said? Forget a voice, do we have the language to explain certain violations?

The fo🌃urth incident is from 9th grade when a cousin sister of mine got married. She visited our house with her new husband. They were ca🀅sually joking about the phrase (mindset?) ‘saali aadhi gharwaali’.

As they were leaving, jeeja ji put his left hand on my sister’s shoulder and the right on mine. His palm was hanging right near m♕y breast. Just ꧅before stepping out, he squeezed my breast. I was stunned. To preserve the family relationships, I couldn’t say anything to anyone. But after that, I always stayed very cautious around him. But even today I wonder who taught me to carry the burden of preserving relationships? Didn’t it come to me on its own? Not just to me, but to so many women I know. Isn’t this also an inherited reflex?

It’s also essential to mention here that during high school, my mother called me aside one day and said: “Beta, if anyone ever har𓂃asses you or even touches you inappropriately, smash their head. Even if that person dies, I’ll take care of the aftermath.” In my mother’s words there was a mix of trust, fear, and protection that felt very reassuring that day. But that feeling never gave me enough courage to tell her the things that happened to me afterwards. In my mind, I was protecting my mother from pain. But it took me many years to understand that her protective words were actually the cries of a survivor. It was a warning from the past to the future.

The fifth incident was when I was in college. My maternal uncle was visiting our house. I had a fight with someone and was a bit emotional that day. As he was leaving, we stepped out to see him off. Uncle hugged me to console me. Probably my emoti𝄹onally fragile state gave him aꦛn excuse. As he hugged, I felt that at that moment (never before, never after), I wasn’t his niece to him, just a grown-up girl. That touch, under the guise of consolation, didn’t feel right. Even though I knew what had happened, I couldn’t say anything. How to classify that—an accident or a deliberate violation?

The sixth incident could well be the ♕six hundredth incide𝄹nt.

Because it’s something that happens so frequently to us women on the roads, in trains, buses, in cinema hal𒊎ls, and almost any public place by any stranger. Catcalling, brushing past you on♐ a bike, screaming obscenities, staring, stalking, flashing—there’s no end to it.

I remember clearly how much disgust and anger I felt in my💧 body whenever someone catcalled me.

Initially, the anger was directed at them. I wanted to pick🐷 up something and throw it at them. But I never could. Gradually, this angꦬer turned inwards. It would linger in my mind for days and months.

The seventh incident—I was working in Delhi after college. Delhi buses are infamous in this regard. Men there are often found with ‘rod♍s’. And they press against you in the crowded buses. One day I was standing in such a bus. The sensation of a rod from behind infuriated me. I knew that if I didn’t react today, I’d have to whip myself later. I decided I’ll hit back, no matter how insignificantly. I tried to find a sharp object like a knife, needle, or a blade in my bag. I found nothing. My actions must have alerted the man. He moved ahead of me. I couldn’t see his face, but the disgusting sensation of the rod stopped. The bus stopped. We got off. I had filled my mouth with a lot of spit. I went ahead of him and tried to spit at his face. He was much taller than me. Still some droplets reached his face. But then, a very confused expression came over him. It struck me that maybe he wasn’t the abuser on the bus. And suddenly, all my anger turned into guilt. Did I just do this to an innocent person?

Even today when I think of that incident, I fee𒈔l guilty. Whenever I was violated, I was innocent too but this realisation never compensates for the guilt.

But there’s also a sense of♍ relief that I did take 🍨the first step towards self-protection. Is seeing, feeling and protecting oneself the lone responsibility of the little girl?

There are many questions and very few answers. But perhaps the existence of the questions—asking them, writing—hearing-understanding and𒐪 sharing them, is the answer. Such a hope still remains. Such👍 a hope should remain.