I imagine a story. A story where my truth exists, but I do not. Where my words exist, but my name does not. The pain should be felt, but whose pain it is should remain unknown.
I also wonder why I don’t want my name in this story. You must wonder this too. Perhaps I am afraid of my name being tarnished, you must think. But it could be celebrated too, right?
When I speak, it’s not just my name that comes up, but also those of a few close ones. And why not? After all, they were the ones who wronged me. There is still a part of me that wants to protect them, the people who wronged me. I cannot explain why. Perhaps those who have wronged me will not be able to, either.
They know very little. They don’t know that I didn’t speak. They don’t know that something bad happened to me. They never told me to shut up. They just did what seemed fun at that moment. They have no idea that those moments stretched into years for me – 40 years of my life that turned into depression, then to a nervous breakdown, and finally with treatment, a question, a sigh. All through, my body was trying to tell me something and 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 repressed to protect itself. It took me years to understand that my body remembered everything. Its numbness was testament. Like a child who stops talking to their mother in anger, hoping she’ll understand the sentiment through the silence, my body did the same. When my memories were buried, my body’s ability to feel was also buried, and it kept sinking deeper.
The result was that I lost the ability to look out for myself. If you don’t feel fear or anger, the possibility of saving yourself diminishes.
Studies now say that most victims of abuse (both girls and boys) have experienced a lack of affectionate relationships and trust in family settings. To protect our young minds from pain, our brains deliberately subdue our ability to feel. And in that state when something bad happens to us, we are confused. Was this wrong? Whose fault was it? Was it ours? We think that we don’t matter much to anyone anyway, so maybe it is indeed our fault.
The ability to feel our emotions and our body’s sensations helps us define our boundaries. And if that boundary wall seems broken, it should be understood that someone at some point has entered forcibly, that a violation has occurred. Not being able to speak, or not being able to feel – whether in the whole body or a specific part – are signs of that violation.
Emotional and sensory numbness also affects the relationships we form in our youth. We cannot erect healthy boundaries. The seed of violation planted in childhood grows like a tree inside us. With time, it bears flowers of fear, hatred, anger, confusion, regret, sorrow, inferiority, lack of confidence, lack of trust, loneliness, and countless others. And 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 others?
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. Some big, some small, some immeasurably scattered, but so far, no one has been empty-handed. What a unique inheritance! An inheritance that we women carry behind the curtain of normalcy. Who knows since when, who knows till when.
Now the time has come where I must open my bundle. But before opening it, it’s essential to clarify one thing. I am showing something to you that isn’t entirely visible to me. Many of my memories are within sealed envelopes. What’s inside, I don’t know.
When we are young and our burdens are big, our mind learns ways in which we can lighten our load. Thanks to this, we can walk, talk, go to school, play, make friends, go to college, get a job, get married, have children and so on. As we grow up, this weight becomes so unbearable that even the most ordinary tasks of life come to a halt. I didn’t realize this until I chose to speak. I didn’t realise this until the sealed envelopes brought me to a point where my childhood was almost lost.
The body remembers, so tears stopped flowing from my eyes. After adolescence, even in the deepest sorrow, I could never cry. Doctors call it ‘dry eyes condition’, with no clear reasons behind it and no permanent cure.
My body has only told me as much as I have the courage to bear.
This 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. And 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.
This accumulated trauma perhaps explains why I couldn’t speak then or why I still choose to speak anonymously.
This story begins in the 1990s in a small town in Uttar Pradesh. I was a girl in Class 3 or 4. I had a friend who studied in the same class and lived in the house next door. The two houses were as close as two doors can be. That friend’s younger sister was one grade behind us, and we shared the same birthday. This trivia made me very happy. It felt like a special connection. 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. My friend’s father, whom I called ‘Uncle’, would be alone at home in the afternoons. I don’t remember how, but one afternoon I ended up in their house, in their bedroom. What I can recall is that I was beneath him on the bed, his weight heavy on me. And 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. I just wanted the burning to go away. At that moment 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 situated in a government colony. There was not enough space so someone had to share a folding cot with a 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 understand what happened to me but I was deeply uncomfortable. I probably couldn’t go back to sleep, but in my mind, leaving that cot going back to my mother was not an option then. Even today, I ask myself why I couldn’t move away. I have no answer. No one tied me down. But being unable to heed to your own instincts is like being tied down, isn’t it? Additionally, this fog leaves me with a sense of guilt. I feared that raising an alarm – when I myself was confused – would be a big mistake. I imagined the grilling afterwards – how would I have elaborated on the violation when I did not even have the vocabulary for it?
The third incident is from Class 5 or 6. Again, a story from the house of a friend who was in my class. And her elder brother was in Class 11 in the same school. He was a quiet and reserved person. I never spoke to him and knew him as Bhaiya, as my friend called him. One evening, I had gone to her house to call her out 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 past me. So close that I felt something like a rod again. It felt awful, but I couldn’t gather the courage to run away. What would my friend think? What would I say about her brother? Even if I could go back to that moment now, I don’t know what I would say. How can such a thing be said? Forget a voice, do we have the language to explain certain violations?
The fourth incident is when I was in Class 9, just after a cousin of mine got married. She visited our house as a newlywed, with her new husband. I remember a joke about that north Indian phrase, ‘Saali aadhi gharwaali (wife’s sister is half a wife too)’. I still don’t know what it means.
As they were leaving, my cousin’s husband put his left hand on my sister’s shoulder and the right on mine. His palm was hanging near my breast. Just before stepping out, he squeezed my breast like a sponge and left. I was stunned and once again couldn’t say anything to anyone. After that, I was always very cautious around him. But even today I wonder who taught me to carry the burden of preserving such relationships? So many women I know also do this. 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 harasses you or even touches you inappropriately, smash their head with whatever you can find. 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 of the things that happened to me afterwards. I think 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 rather than a mother’s promise to daughter.
The fifth incident was when I was in college. I wasn’t as scared or confused as before. I’d travel to college by bus or train alone. My maternal uncle was visiting our house. I had a fight with someone and was a bit emotional that day. As he was leaving, my mother, brother, sister, and I all stepped out on the road to see him off. Uncle hugged me to console me. He had never done it before and my emotionally fragile state possibly gave him the excuse. And 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. And even though I knew what had happened, I couldn’t say anything. Because what could I say about that one moment? How to classify that – an accident or a deliberate violation? For that one moment of weakness from him, should I separate my mother from her brother? I’ve already suffered so much. What was one more setback?
The sixth incident could well be the six hundredth incident. Because it’s something that happens so frequently to women on the roads, in trains, on buses, in cinema halls, 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 have felt anger whenever someone has 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 anger turned inwards. It would linger in my mind for days and months. I would plan how I’d do better next time but I never did better next time.
The seventh incident took place when I was working in Delhi after my graduation. Men press against you in crowded buses. One day I was standing in such a bus and a man poked me from behind. I knew that if I didn’t react that day, 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 stopped. The bus stopped, he got off, and I got off right behind him. 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 feel guilty.
When I look back now, I also get a sense of relief over the fact that on that day I did take the first step towards self-protection. By questioning myself, I brought into question a lot of people – both known and unknown. People whose actions shook my existence while I was left a spectator of my own life. So much so that no one around me even knew about it.
Does trauma speak only through words? Shouldn’t the body’s speech be visible? Aren’t women more deprived of this visibility? Has society, as a whole, ever learned to see and feel certain things? Are seeing, feeling, and protecting oneself the responsibilities of a little girl alone? There are many questions and very few answers. But perhaps the existence of the questions – asking them, writing-hearing-understanding and sharing them, is the answer. Such hope still remains. Such hope should remain.
‘Shanti’ is the pseudonym of the author who wishes to remain anonymous.
Published originally in The Wire Hindi, this piece was translated by the author.