Saima Azim

India

The money was not an issue, but I really needed to remain busy, or else the relatives would start hovering over my head to settle down. I had nothing against marriage, as long as I was not at the centre of it, but a very big part of being an Indian was everyone in your life pushing for you to settle down. I said a silent prayer, thanking God for my parents as I sat down to fill
out job application form.

The last job I had was with a newspaper, that I had left to pursue my masters, now post my masters, I just wanted to start my PhD, but I knew that the couple of months in between were enough for my relatives to stir the debate of my marriage. So here I was just trying to save myself from people who claimed to love me.

I finally found an organisation that I liked, to my luck, it had a job opening, as I downloaded the application form, I drifted back to the conversation with my father the previous night. I remembered how he constantly kept saying how proud he was of me, my choices. I remembered how he was silently apologetic of all the other people of his family who were just after me to settle down, that too at the age of twenty four. A smile broke on my face, thinking about him and I made a mental note to call him once I was done with the job applications.

I started filling out the form with hope and optimism, and obviously an underlying urgency, fueled by the fear of relatives. In India, it is such a task to live your life on you on terms, for the young men it is a struggle, and for women, well for those women, who are able to break through the primary shackles of being a woman in India, it is almost nightmarish post the age of twenty. The gossips never die, either the woman is a slut, or has deformities or is a lesbian or plainly a disgraced rebel. I shuddered at the thought of name-calling, obviously, I was not alien to it, yeah my super supportive parents had been able to shield me up to a certain degree, but one would think that living in society like this, I would be immune to all the derogatory treatment by now. But alas that was far from true.

I reached the section of the application asking about my qualities other than relating to my job, and paused for a minute. I had always found it to be the trickiest part of any application. How could I answer this question but still keep who I was to myself? I thought of writing compassionate and warm but that was just non-corporate for team player. I struggled with different words but none could convince me enough to put it in the application. Suddenly a word came into my mind out of nowhere- Survivor; it just popped in and caught me of guard. I thought how innocent the word looked, how simple and maybe a bit patronising, but to me, the word had the deepest significance, these words had helped while I went through hell and back.

I didn’t even realised how soon the memories had flooded in and moistened my eyes, and I had a lump in my throat. I tried to calm myself by focusing on my breathing and thinking good thoughts, but it all seemed in vain, and soon I was crying with proper tears rolling down my cheeks. I couldn’t help and went back to the time when I was just eleven and was constantly molested by a boy, who for the longest part of my life till then and since then had regarded me a sister. I thought of that year, that horrifying, degrading, disgusting year, when I was not aware of my body much, and had so much of trust in him that initially the first couple of times it was just confusing, but it became clear in my head that his touch made me feel uncomfortable, I did what an eleven-year-old girl in India could do best, I tried avoiding him. But we came to school through the same vehicle and it was impossible to convince my parents to switch the transport, without mentioning what was happening with me. I never thought that my parents would not believe me that the boy was constantly touching me inappropriately, I just mostly felt that my father might kill him, or his mother might say that I was party to the act. For four months, he had his way with me in whatever capacity he could, every time I could not come up with a good enough reason to excuse myself. I cried my eyes out every night, but never dared to tell my parents, I turned towards God thinking this was happening to me because maybe I was not religious enough. I tried my best to not hate myself, but the constant thought in my head was that I had led this on, I didn’t know how, but I was almost convinced that it was all my fault. After the four months, he started coming to school via a cycle and the touching stopped, he went back to old behaviour, as if nothing had happened and everyone just kept saying that I was being unnecessary hostile towards him (as much as an eleven-year-old, polite person can be.) Soon I caved in, with the fear of being outcast and started talking as normally as I could, the jokes were back, games were back, everyone had fun, and I felt like a liar, who had killed something pure, skinned it and wore its skin to fit in, I never felt like a child again. I also never slept peacefully again. But though I never told anyone what had happened, I made sure that the negativity of it would never define me, at least to the world. I never let it affect my grades, once I was able to compose myself, I worked my way through every obstacle thinking of it as a victory over him, and though I am not a bad person, but when I saw him throw his life away, I felt at peace. It was not a bunch of emotions along with peace, no just plain, simple, proper peace. It made me feel content that here I was filling a job application, and he was living of the mercy of his family. I knew, I could have done more, but still I was glad I survived.

For a second I felt infinite and invincible, I almost picked up the phone to tell my father, but for the millionth time I failed. I knew he would understand why I had kept it to myself for so long, he would believe my story without question, but I was sure that as a father he would feel unworthy of protecting his daughter, and that was something I was not ready for. I kept staring at the words on my screen and thought of my cousin uncle, whom my mother loved so dearly, she regarded him as nothing less than her real brother and since he was just five years older than me, he was always the part of the kids circle, despite being an uncle to most of us. I was a fourteen-year-old young woman, my body was evolving, it was confusing at times, mostly because of the built up of emotions from when I was eleven, but I was doing okay. The cousin in question was kind of our leader, he was the oldest among us, the youngsters looked up to him, I was never a follower and found it hard to toe the line, especially since he never treated the kids with respect. I was a girl, he was an older man, the consensus was always in his favour, so even though people felt the mistreatment by him, no one came behind me. I decided to go rogue. I didn’t indulge in the activities where he treated everyone else like a minion. He saw that but there was not much he could do about it. One day he needed some help with his college assignment, I was the studious one in the group and my mother asked me to help him out, reluctantly I agreed, he gave me an assignment to copy from. It was just seven-eight pages and so I agreed. An hour later when I was done with it, I called him to have a look at the assignments, I was standing at the door and the moment he stepped into the room, he forced his body on me, startled, I let out a fake laugh thinking of it to be some kind of joke, but I realised soon what was happening, I tried to push him away as his hands roughly manoeuvered through my body, the violation I felt can never be summarised into words. It was like being pierced by thousands of poisons laced arrows, while being lowered into an erupting volcano. I almost passed out of shock and embarrassment, but as my body was giving up I told myself I can not be a sorry story, I can not let this happen to me, in that moment I gathered all courage I had, mixed it with all the hatred and disgust I felt for that man and used it to push him as hard as I could, and the next second I was out of the room. Panting I reached to my mother’s room, seeing me she just asked me if had been in a fight again, when I shook my head in no, she just asked me to take a shower and dress up like a human. There, I felt it was useless to tell her what had happened, it was her maternal home, her safe house, the thought of a beast living there, who had just molested her daughter would never cross her mind. I fought hard to not cry till I was alone and left to take a shower. When no one came to ask him anything for a couple of hours, my uncle knew he was safe. Our paths crossed in the evening, I looked up at him and he knew it was not just hatred, or me saying he was dead to me, he knew if he so much as thought of repeating the heinous act with me or another person in the house, I would rip him open. The anger I had for him, made me a radical feminist. The first memory I have of doing anything remotely feminist is when I was six and fought with my cousins to let the girls also have equal number of chocolates. But post that incident, I was a man hater radical feminist for good two years. I was a teenager who hated men, I was angry, I felt betrayed by the world, especially by men and I was adamant on taking my anger out on them. I struggled with various emotions, it was only when I realised that my hating men was just making me insensitive that I decided to rethink my ideology. I did end up going to the better side with views more inclusive and understanding, and it always humbled me knowing I had come through so much of filth and still had a heart which could care for others. I felt like a survivor. I never forgave my uncle, nor am I planning to do it anytime soon, but I have done my bit to make sure that the kids of the house never look up to him for inspiration and that has been a very satisfying process.

My thought ended, but I still kept looking at the screen blankly, I knew that I had made it in the world, despite bad things happening to me. I had been compassionate, helpful, kind, independent, brave and everything nice, but a thought I often found myself with was, I was what I was today despite all the bad things that happened to me, or because of all the bad things that happened to me. I had taken professional help when I started working initially because the casual sexism was everywhere, rape jokes were part of work culture, women were either smart or slutty bimbos, the categorisation was too much for me to handle and gave me serious anger management issues. I did not continue therapy for long as I feared getting too dependent on it, but one thing that I did firmly take from my brief experiment with therapy was that whatever happened to me was not my fault, how I shaped my life despite all that was my achievement, but all the bad things were not definitive of who I was as an individual. I was strong, fierce, capable. I learnt that my choices in cloths, career, friends, literature, nothing would justify the way my body was violated without my consent. I understood that even though what all happened was not my fault, I did not have to live as a victim. I did not have to feel sorry for myself, dress ìaptlyî, speak moderately or put my views in a way that would make people think of me as a nice woman. I did not have to let the incidences of my teenage define how I lived my present or shaped my future.

I was overwhelmed with all the walk down the memory lane and decided to make myself a nice cup of tea. The kept the kettle of water on the burner and waited for the whistle to blow. While waiting I was drifted to the time I had brought tea for my maths teacher. I was in high school and was having some trouble with trigonometry, seeing how worried I was about my grades, my mother got me a maths tutor, or the best maths tutor in the city. He was not the regular teacher, he was polite, calm, very understanding and accommodating. Despite being an introvert, it did not take me more than a week to get comfortable in his company. Soon I was destroying trigonometry, my confidence was off the charts. I felt so content, so useful, and then it happened. I had been a little over five months, since he started teaching me. I had given him star reviews and so my parents were also comfortable with him. One evening, my mother asked me to take my tutor’s cup of tea to him. As I kept it on the table, I felt a hand on my lower back. I immediately jumped, but he stayed blank and I just thought that I had imagined the whole thing. A couple of days later he touched my breast, but again without a reaction on his face, I just thought of it as an accident and brushed it aside, though making a mental note to just be a bit more cautions from my end. The following week as we were winding up our class, he pinched my left breast, smiled, got up and left. And there I was sitting, blankly, trying to process what had happened, trying to accept that at the age of fifteen, I was facing sexual violence for the third time. I could not believe my luck. I just kept sitting there thinking of what all a fifteen-year-old could do wrong to deserve this life, thinking was I not good enough for the world, did being a woman in this world meant always being on guard, was my life going to a long set of attempts to save my modesty, was it my destiny. I almost killed myself that night. The emotions were just too much to handle, everything was hazy, my mind was begging for a little bit of peace and I thought only death could give that to me. Years later I learnt in therapy that it was my first full-fledged panic attack.

The water was done, I took my tea back to my study table and kept thinking of all the times I had felt undeserving, unworthy, not good enough. All the nights I could not sleep because the nightmares were too real, all the social anxiety I had, all the panic attacks over the years, my incapability to connect to a man emotionally, because I did not trust him enough, my general discomfort in crowded rooms. But I was still glad, because despite all this I had parents who loved and accepted me without questions, I had friends who were warm, reciprocated my love and compassion. I realised that I indeed was a survivor, but not just because I tried, but because I had a nurturing and warm environment around me. I realised the privilege I had as an educated, independent girl from an upper middle class, where I could go to my parents if I wanted to, I could get professional help, I had friends who were sensitive to my issues. A lot of women had to survive without this kind of support and they were the real champions. Yes, my battle was no less significant, but their struggle was way deeper and tiring. I looked up the screen, deleted the word survivor, not because I was not one, but because I was still not ready to make my battle public. I took a sip from my cup of tea and continue my quest to find a word that would define my quality.