I have always felt I am such a misfit compared to my siblings. Those guys would just smooth sail over any kind of social circles that involved interacting with people. But for me, I would stick out like a sour thumb in every single circle.
Yet, I never needed any of these circles, since I am an introvert who prefers her own company. Best way to be socially right, at least for me, is to shut up, to paste a polite smile on my face, and to bear it up. For silence is divinely beautiful and nondescript!
I always felt wanting and less than normal human being when I am in the presence of others. I don’t seem to understand what I could possibly do differently to make me at least normal in their judging eyes. When I am by myself there is no such rush to prove anything and it is all about taking that next breath and nothing else. I feel less stressed out and more myself.
The only other time that I feel comfortable is when I am writing something. I don’t know why, but I become bold when I write. I am never sorry for the thoughts that I hold or held in my mind. Sometimes the old thought would get a complete 360 degree turn and become the truth of the future.
I would remember Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay ‘Self-Reliance’ which spoke of being true in the moment and not fear to be contradictory in reflection. Because the current state of truth is truly what the mind understand of the emotion ridden and riddled situation.
There have been many instances when the world view and my view had come up to a moot point where there is a great stress to know which one is right. I remember my Higher Secondary class days. I had no friends and I was quiet alone doing my regular school things as if out of compulsion.
Around that time my character got settled and came together. It was during those days that I started to put on a personality when I wrote my diary entries. I always wanted to know if I were in someone else’s shoes, then how that life would look and would feel like for me and my sensitivity. I would record those thoughts almost as if it were happening to me.
The past few innumerable boring weeks, I have been taken over by a series running in Star Plus channel “Kya Qusoor Hai Amala Ka?” which is Indian version of the Turkish Series “Fatmagul”. This series gets telecast at 12:30 pm. I am glued to the telly watching this series. I am captivated by the topic which I have seen some social movie makers handling it. But to set it up for an entire soap series that is pretty much daring.
Being in Amla’s shoes was quiet easy given the natural shyness that I have for people. I am phobic about people too, which kind of breaks up my inner strength. Of course, I don’t see the series regularly but whenever my break from writing collides with the series airing, I watch it.
The writer is moved beyond emotional repair. It is hard to see the series without tears rolling down the cheek. Yet, I force myself to watch it and wonder about the unrest within me. It is like someone has placed a hand on my mouth and no amount of kicking is helping the situation in any way. It is a noiseless scream in my head that makes me feel that I can never get clean and fresh again.
The world’s best perfume cannot obliterate the stench of testosterone and the fear that it induces cannot be removed or replaced. This series really hits my sensitivity to the very core. The fear of the four letter word ‘rape’ was a reality since, I first discovered my period spots.
I thought I had the world’s worst disease and had a short time to live. My mother didn’t explain anything to me but, said I should stay away from all family members. I don’t blame her because that was her reality and in Indian setting you don’t even talk about the physical and psychological changes that happen during the transition from girl to woman. I don’t know if the present day mothers are doing it differently.
Even the fact of my physical change is going to be negated and set me as an outcast, it is no wonder that woman are treated like discarded untouchable when they are raped. The point is not to get emotional but the point is to dissolve within the being and become invisible being haunted in a strange nightmare of reality.
Whenever I watch this series, I am filled with questions that I still seek and they are left unanswered in my mind. A rape victim is raped so many number of times that even letting the world of law know the incident seems too much of a trouble. To relive a bad incident and be terrorized while breathing in the foul air of injustice, makes the person filled with horror that will shatter the inner identity of the victim.
Details of the series are not as important as the feeling it evokes on viewers. Will this series change the way world views rape victim is still an unanswered question mark.
Image Source: Kya Qusoor Hai Amla Ka?
Itinerant Storyteller 