In next few hours from now, Kolkata : the city of joy will
be all lit up, the beats of the drum will allure everyone with the chants of
Durga Durgati Nashini Shlokas and whoa, that intoxicating aroma of incenses....
The essence of Durga Puja captures the very heart and soul
of Bengal and its festivity - the emotional and cultural loyalty to plunge into
one's love for life, the warmth and unbridled joy to get together, celebrate
the brighter side of relationships, the pride in artistry and aesthetic
penchant - none of this is just about religion and worshiping a mere clay
idol. It is more than what meets the eye. It's about the cult of the goddess,
that redefines empowerment and signifies 'nari shakti' in a universal sense. As
the country gears up for the most opulent time of the year for our benevolent
Mother Goddess, can we turn a blind eye to the trauma of a four-year old Delhi
girl's blood-curdling sexual assault that has hit the headlines recently? Every
time a brutal rape takes place in the heart of the national capital region or
any surrounding site of crime, the nerve-wracking account of Nirbhaya's tragedy
flashes back into the memory bank.
Quite similar to the disturbing fate of Jyoti, who succumbed
to her sufferings three years back owing to a barbaric sexual attack that
occurred in a moving bus in the wee hours of the winter night in Delhi, this
little girl too was brought up in a slum and her family is undergoing
tremendous financial crisis to fund a series of medical treatments that are absolutely
mandatory to help her recover from the current torments. She is just four year
old, and was heinously raped and thereafter slashed with a blade and abandoned
near the railway track last week. One wonders how her tiny body might have
sustained those bruises from a gang of cold-blooded beasts. The child's
intestines have possibly been damaged so much so that the Safdarjung hospital
has been recorded to seek an emergency surgery for her. Researchers have revealed that India happens to be the hub
for child trafficking, and nearly 40,000 children are abducted every year for
child labor, beggary and sexual exploitation, out of which 11,000 go
unreported, according to the findings of National Human Rights Commission of
India.
What if Ma Durga could articulate her concern and respond to
the prayers of her children? She perhaps wouldn't wish to indulge in spending
lakhs on lavish mandap decor while someone else's home is dimmed to eternal
gloom as their little baby shall never wake up to her cheerful smile once again.
It's not only her body, but it's also her soul that has been abused and
crippled forever. Those extravagant lights illuminating the grandest of pandals
will fall short to drive away the darkness that has overcast her eyes those possibly
used to sparkle with big dreams in them for a sound future. We may not be able
to find the right spot to hide our faces in shame as we deck up in those ostentatious
garments for the occasion, while the victim's diminutive body must have been
ravished off her little dress.
It is observed and believed in the ancient Indian scriptures
of Devi Mahatmyam or Chandi, that the goddess occupies a small portion within
every female living being on the planet. The sacredness of her chastity and
virginal piousness is to be preserved and safeguarded as that also symbolizes
the blessed womb that we all are born from. But the paradox lies in the hapless
miseries of all the mothers of our nation, who are literally shaken to conceive
a female child. That pound of flesh inside them is often destined to an early
termination, or if brought on earth, is sooner or later bound to be subjugated
to infanticide. In case the girl is fortunate enough to survive, she is raised
to bear the burden of her share of price that she is forced to pay for being
capable of menstruating, impregnating, and finally delivering another life. The
unbreakable silence around this ugly truth scars every mother goddess inside
each one of us, who, at some point in time of her life has been victimized of
eve teasing, sexual harassment or molestation. She fails to immerse that lump
of ignominy and despair into the hallowed water along with Durga Mata on Vijaya
Dashami every year. As the deity departs for her voyage back to the Kailash in
the secure folds of her benign husband, we still continue to be encumbered by a
crude reality, that the majority of the female sex coming from various
socio-religious backgrounds, at no juncture, are safe in the hands of their
fellow men. They are not safe with their brothers, uncles, husbands, even
fathers. They are neither safe within their own urban suites, nor those remote villages
that claim to protect their as well as their family's honor at all times.
There are numerous incidents of children in India,
noticeably young girls getting kidnapped mysteriously in the darkness of the
night and sold in the market, for commercial sexual slavery.
Contrarily, there
are still rituals of 'Kumari Puja' prevalent among some of the country's
Hindus as well as Nepali Buddhists (for more than 2,300 years now), practiced
to venerate the virtue of a young girl's chasteness, who hasn't yet reached her
pubescence. The priests are meant to recite holy hymns and conjure up the deity
in disguise of this rich silk embellished and bejeweled toddler. She pretty much
stands for the embodiment of the 'Mahashakti' of Goddess Durga, and her other
form of 'Bhaavini', (The beautiful woman), that is glorified as 'Devamata' (The
Mother Goddess), garbed in the hue of vermillion as 'Paatalavati' (One who
wears red-color attire). She is known for conquering the world with her 'Nitya'
(Eternal) and 'Vaishnavi' (The invincible) aura. She also personifies the
'Mahishaasura Mardini' (Slayer of the bull-demon Mahishaasura), who ultimately
diminishes the evil with her supremacy and shields the mortals from those
vicious snarls and wrath of the demon. 'Mahodari' (One who has a huge belly
which stores the universe) epitomizes that ministering angel in her, who holds
her children closest to her existence as a raksha kawach from the satanic
perils of the world, and is the most powerful avatar of Durga. Ironically, she
is the same potential Divine energy, that manifests in the depiction of a 'Kumari'
(The beautiful adolescent) who is later made to surrender as the weak and
compliant 'Sati'.
So, when a two and a half year old girl is raped in the
Western Delhi suburbs, left unconscious and bleeding to death from her private
parts, when a five year old is gang raped in a next door neighbor's house in
East Delhi, and dumped to rot thereafter, we invariably lose some amount of
blessing from an exorbitantly constructed effigy of our compassionate Maa Durga. Unless the vortex of salacious male deviance stops gripping us, until the day our
honorable leaders of the society cease to believe that 'How is it a gang-rape
if two people rape?' we hold no right to revere the Divinity that is incarnated
of a mother figure. In our attempt to self-console by recompensing heftily for best
idol competitions, night-long concerts and swanky celebrity appearances, we
somewhat tend to also compromise with our morals, principles and basic
humanity. Only if our Devi could talk, we would have known the degree of her dismay
and resentment in a culture that can go broke in order to endow her with the
most ornate and regal treatment during her annual visit, but simultaneously
doesn't scruple to so mercilessly mutilate, castrate and at times disembowel
the purity of its youngest natives.
