18.08.2002 | 10:57 p.m.
I'm too self-involved.

A few days ago, a 12 year old, mentally challenged girl was raped on a train going to Borivili. It was only around 9:30 p.m and like always in Bombay, the trains were sufficiently crowded. While her bewildered body twisted and burst into flames, five adult men looked on and pretended not to. Among them was an ex-policeman and an eminent journalist. Compassion was taken hostage by middle-class sensibilities as they sat glued to their seats watching this little girl's life being snatched away from her. "The guy was drunk. He could have hurt us." they rationalised. In their heightened realm of morality, they committed a far more heinous crime than their conscience could admit. Being "upstanding citizens", they reported the crime as soon as they got off the train. They wrote an article in the newspaper. They warned young girls against travelling alone. But it was too late. Another life has been reduced to forlorn bits of carbon. Another child will grow up estranged from her body. Another child consumed with naivete will try her damndest to chase it away. Nightmares will converge with reality until life converges with purgatory.

As I closed the newspaper and sunk into the matrix of my sofa, platitudes angrily dampened the headlines. There is no such thing as an innocent bystander,assholes. Hatred flooded my memory; imagery stabbed my eyes. He looked at me unflinchingly and said "Tera rupaiyya". I handed him two tens and didn't bother collecting the change. Why couldn't he hear my silent screams? Why couldn't he trust my flailing arms? I tortured myself. The present faded in hazily as my mother asked me if I wanted any breakfast. I shook my head distractedly and placed my thumb on my lip for comfort. I hate him more than I hate my assailant. I hate that he didn't stop the cab. I hate that the climactic moans didn't unsettle him. I hate that the road ahead of him was more important than the life of a seventeen year old girl.

How does the taxi driver sleep at night? The same way I do knowing that later victims were progeny of my incompetence: tossing restlessly and attempting to sing self-deluding lullabies. It doesn't work for me. I hope to hell it doesn't work for him.

deja vu? | jamais vu?