Yesterday morning, I was reading about the Thai cave rescue and it warmed my heart to start the day with such positive news. All 13 people survived two weeks in pitch darkness and they came out alive. From a cave. Miraculous.
Ten minutes later, I read another news, this time from our own country, about a rape of a child, by other children. It chilled me.
Is this really the world that we are living in? Have we gone so wrong as a society, as a people, as a country?
Sadly, THIS really is our truth.
Today, it was reported that an 11-year-old hearing-impaired girl was sexually assaulted by at least 18 men over a period of seven months.
A 66-year-old lift operator took advantage of the girl and later, other men working in the building including the plumber, watchmen, and water delivery boys became his accomplish. Some of the accused have admitted to the crime, which came to light after the child complained of stomachache. They had also filmed her and threatened her to keep quiet.
I’ll give you two minutes to process this. It took all morning to bring myself to click on the link and actually read the gruesome details. I never want to see another story like this again; it’s just too hard to even write the words.
But we need to talk about this and we need to talk about this urgently. We have created this cruel, horrible, hell-like environment for our children, for our women, and no number of tweeting and signing petitions and holding marches is going to change this.
Have we become so used to such stories coming out in the newspaper? Or have we turned a blind eye to it, like I did when I stopped reading the paper? Are we so indifferent that nothing makes our blood boil anymore?
What the f*&^ is happening and how do we stop it? How do we make our country safe again? What does it take to make us stand up and say, AB BAS?
If we think that the work is done because we held a candle march for Nirbhaya and got the judiciary to change the laws, we are wrong. We should be outraged more about these instances than we are from a movie title or a movie scene. We need to demand more from our governments, our judiciary, our police, and each other.
It didn’t stop with Nirbhaya.
