The Battered Body

“Were you wet?” asked the lawyer to her in the witness box. She had her ‘odhni’ covering her, but her head was not lowered. Finally she said, looking straight into his eyes, in her dialect, “A woman gets wet when she is intimate out of choice, but when it is forced on her she bleeds.” (From the film ‘Bawander’)

There has been the recent case of a starlet accusing director Madhur Bhandarkar of rape. Preeti Jain is being made out to be some kind of shrewd pile-on. A television reporter said after recording her views, “She is making a noise in the media but she does not know that the media is not going to judge her, it is the courts that will.”

Bhandarkar has become cocky: “Initially, yes I denied knowing her because when the so-called news broke I didn’t know who she was. So many girls come to me with requests for roles. Am I expected to remember them all? Besides her identity was initially being kept hidden. I’ve a family, a wife, and a name to protect. I guess I’m paying a price for who I am… She told me to sign her for my new film Page 3 . You should read the SMS that she sent me. In December, after my marriage, she threatened she’d accuse me of rape if I didn’t sign her for a film.” He has preserved SMS messages from someone he did not know? And then he contradicts himself when he says, “And you won’t believe this, but in the application sent to me by her lawyer it says I’ve to sign her for a film within 48 hours. Unbelievably, in her entire application there’s no rape charge at all. No rape charge at all!”

The additional public prosecutor, R.V.Kini, citing sections of rape from the Indian Penal Code, said, “Bhandarkar had committed rape as the law clearly stated that a person committed rape with the consent of the victim if the consent had been obtained by putting the victim or the victim’s relatives in fear of death or hurt.” Kini said it was a crime if the consent known to be given was under fear of misconception.

“I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve this,” says the accused. We do not know who deserves what. It is only fair: So easily we utter these words. Do we know what fair means? What justice means? I wonder how many of us really know when our rights have been trampled upon, and even after that why do we screw up our noses at the very idea of a ‘fight’ when the person at the other end has been exceedingly irresponsible?

Because we are women. Our bodies are easy game for comments and more. Our emotions are raw fruit, waiting to be ripened and plucked and then the seeds that gave them birth spat out.

An interesting question is being posed in the TV serial ‘Astitva’ where a call-girl has been raped by a minister’s son. Can such a woman cry foul? And this question is asked not only by men, but by a few women too who speak aloud, “Aisi aurat tau samaaj mein kalank hai.” (Such women are a disgrace to society.) The sensible view is that what a sex worker does as a part of her profession does not naturally make her available at all times and under force. It is true that during her ‘dhandha’ time she may not have a choice as to how she is treated, but she is also a woman. She can go to the market, buy toys for her child, wash clothes, fall asleep on a makeshift cot – does this give anyone the license to treat her like a slut at all times?

Why does society give the benefit of doubt to the man? It is said women have a natural advantage, but my experience and observation tell me that it is a façade. Why do men manage to fake innocence so easily? Maninder Kohli is an accused in the rape and murder of Britisher Hannah Foster. After being on the run, managing to beguile a woman in India into marrying him, he has finally been trapped. After several denials, he has confessed to the Punjab Police, which has no authority to try him. He has to be extradited to the UK.

I watched his televised confession and the man had the audacity of saying that he was too drunk. In that state he managed to accost her, rape her and even hold a conversation in which he said that he was not a bad man, he had a wife and children (this automatically seems to exonerate EVERY man, and they say women look for security in relationships) and he had to meet his ailing mother. Hannah had already said she would complain to the police and had dialled the number, which is when he strangled her. Had she understood his predicament and gone along with his love for his wife, kids and the rest of his family, he would have spared her. Oh, he also said he was feeling guilty at that time. I suppose killing someone takes away the guilt. Once the person is gone – dead or alive – there is no reminder of a crime.

Wheels within wheels

It is sad that we begin to be thankful for small mercies, so if someone takes on the ‘challenge’ of portraying a realistic story, we shower hosannas. ‘Bawander’ – Sandstorm, is a not-so-recent film based on the true story of the gang-rape of Bhanwari Devi, a “saathin”, in a Rajasthan village, and her subsequent fight for justice. I wish to dwell on it here at some length because many people in the West, including women, have been impressed. When I saw it at a film festival in Mumbai, short of throwing up, I was thoroughly disgusted. It has been a well-documented case, but the producer-director, Jagmohan Mundhra, had fallen into the usual trap of trappings. How different is he from the urban social workers he parodies, who go syrupy about the “gobar finish” of the village houses and want their pictures taken against the sand dunes? Wasn’t he too impressed by the “picture-perfect landscape”?

Think about it. Sanwari’s rape in the movie is depicted quite graphically, in that we see the men moving over her, and there is a visual vicariousness to watch them in their “in-out” movements. Then there is the incessant probing at the courts and the police station, where the cop is later shown smelling the victim’s ‘ghagra’, swirling in it and finally masturbating. There is also the lasciviousness of the MLA who asks the culprits whether they enjoyed it or not.

I am not suggesting that these things do not happen, but it is these so-called portrayals and cries for justice that make her a cliché, and ironically even more exploited. There is something so bloody patronising about the director’s statement that he was “intrigued by this seemingly contradictory image of feminism and tradition, co-existing in her expression”. Why then was he harping so much on her “laaj” (shame)? Why did he make her mouth the words, “I am fighting for ‘nyay’ (justice), I don’t need anything else” after she gets a cheque of Rs. 1 lakh from the prime minister? Why rub in the point that the money is for her further fight? Are we being told that any woman who gets monetarily compensated becomes less in any manner if she were to choose to utilise the money for things of her personal choice?

There is absolutely no doubt that such stories when they are in the hands of men become a convenient ploy to be marketed as per their value system.

Every female character is a caricature. The writer from abroad was an embellishment, merely a manner of telling us that the West will go out of its way to expose the truth – so it is from her precious lips that you hear about sati, child marriage, infanticide as perversions, and even the ghastly evidence of tampered DNA is her brainwave!

Shobha, the social worker, could have been a genuine personality, but she is shown as a frustrated woman at home, with a husband who does not care and drinks with his buddies in her absence. This only underlines the fact that she is a shrew, when his friends scamper away the moment she enters the room. Come on, now. Can’t a social worker be a happy woman? Would it not have been better if she had a stable married life with a supportive man? This looks like she is channelising all her unfulfilled desires in her role as propagator of the “saathin” movement.

Anita Kapur is a Delhi socialite type who believes in causes. I am aware such people exist, I know some of them. But I think her bit was over-done. If she was exploiting the situation, let us not forget that it was she who brought it out in the larger forum. As for listening to loud music on the way to the quaint village, carrying mineral water, marvelling over the clean air, I think most people living in the cities would do that. Besides, surely the filmmaker isn’t screening the movie in a ‘chauraha’ in the village; he too is taking it to film festivals internationally. To say that he is doing it to expose the rot is worse than the social worker doing the same. At least she flaunts the Bisleri water and her ‘jhumkas’.

Then there is the woman police officer. She is so crude, using the imagery of pots and sticks to discuss rape and even makes the amazing assertion that while the victim had so many men, she has had to live with only one. Heck, this stinks.

The husband stands by his wife in her struggle, but it does appear that he is used just as juxtaposition and, worse, a noble creature. He takes off his turban so that she can wrap it around her waist, the message being that a man has to lose his honour to save the woman’s.

I think men get away too lightly with this ‘magnanimity’ business. It is time we told them not to bend backwards and display their acrobatic skills, in any arena. Do your job well, and understand the meaning of true partnership, licit or illicit. And then go and tell the world that you can be a real man only when you stop feeling sorry for yourself.