We live in a dark and depressing world where 8 month old infants are raped and brutalised
An eight-month-old baby had to undergo a three-hour-long surgery for injuries she sustained when she was raped by her 28-year-old cousin. The baby is now in the intensive care unit recuperating from her injuries. Doctors say she is stable. However, the same can't be said of the society that we have built around us through everyday sexism and all-pervasive misogyny. We sure have lost our stability.
This society, too, needs to be put into an intensive care unit, which can heal it of its perversions and hatred for women.
Stories of what we are doing to our women or for that matter baby girls have become so routine that they fail to make it to the front pages of our newspapers. Crime stories don't warrant that space when they have no element to shock the readers. This means rapes in India are part and parcel of everyday living, breathing, walking and talking. They happen every day, every minute, in every nook and corner of this country. We have accepted them as part of life and that exactly is part of the problem.
This eight-month-old baby, who would have barely learnt to stand on her two feet, has been subjected to life's worst and given a taste of what it means to be born a girl in this country.
Police said that the baby was assaulted at her home in west Delhi's Subhash Nagar when her parents were both out for work. The child was left in the care of a relative in the building.
When the baby's mother returned, she found the child crying on a bed, soaked in blood. The family told police that they suspected the child's cousin; he was soon nabbed following which he confessed too. While a Hindustan Times report said the rapist is unmarried, a report from NDTV said that he is himself the father of a boy.
This should worry us all. As parents, as guardians, as relatives and as friends of people who have baby girls, who we dote on, we should all be alarmed.
Case after case, it is proved that the perpetrators of most victims are known to the victims. They set their eyes on their prey, biding their time, and pounce on them at the first opportunity. Mostly, they succeed.
It is baffling to realise that they are not fearful of being caught because, mostly, the circumstances are such that the needle of suspicion would point at them. Overridden by perversion by virtue of being brought up in a society that trains them to reduce women to their vaginas, to see them as "things" and not "beings", men are attacking women anywhere and everywhere, of any age and in every situation.
In 2013, a five-year-old girl, who came to be lovingly called "Gudiya", was raped in the national capital of this great country. When she was examined by the doctors, it was found that her perpetrators had left traces of candles and bottles in her private parts. These pieces left in her body were proof that rape is not about sexual gratification, it is the kind of punishment that many men feel women deserve as a part of their fate. There can be no gratification in forcing yourself on someone, least of all children as young as five years and eight months.
It is hard to imagine how this incident will shape the life of this eight-month-old, what medical complications she will suffer and endure, if she will even remember what she has suffered. We hope and pray she lives a full life and all these scars are healed - that they don't leave the slightest trace behind, but this society of ours can't afford to forget her story.
We must keep this memory alive to remind ourselves what we have become and also ask just where we are headed.