Miscellanea/Kamala Das
Let us invade the brothels and rescue the children!
Perverts are on the increase in my home state, Kerala. Newspapers
are no longer squeamish about reporting indiscriminate rapes.
The victims are invariably children.
Parents of young girls have become nervous wrecks, living in perpetual
anxiety. They are not sure if the girls will return from school,
unscathed.
Till recent times we were not acquainted with crime. During feudal
times I was a little child and could not connect the death of
any poor girl of the locality with crime. The rich men threw them
into wells when they became conspicuously pregnant.
Morality in those days meant the effective concealment of crime.
But those pillars of society spared little girls.
Perhaps I was the only writer to write of a child prostitute.
The editor of The Illustrated Weekly of India was an Irishman.
If the editor's chair was occupied by an Indian my story would
not have been published. Years later the story that offended the
sensibilities of the so-called virtuous was made into a film.
The producer went bankrupt. He could not find a distributor for
it. Smug society-women declared that their husbands would net
let them see a film set in a bordello.
Child prostitution was not
to be discussed. Seventy per cent of the inmates of Indian brothels
are children below fifteen. It is still not time to discuss the
problem.
It was brave of the People's Council for Social Justice, UNICEF
and the National Women's Commission to organise a seminar in Cochin
to discuss the problem of child prostitution. There were more
men than women in the auditorium. Some years ago I had been invited
to a symposium in Delhi organised by UNICEF. I had handed
over a video cassette of my film Rukmini to the chief who was a
foreigner. Something has to be done, quickly, I told him. But
afterwards there was no response, no communication of any kind.
No one seemed to care.
At last week's seminar there were papers read, speeches made all
with appropriate passion and fury. But is the child prostitutegoing to benefit from this verbiage? Would it not be wiser to
invade the brothels in a strong group and rescue the children
from their humiliating bondage? Is it not wise to punish the rapists
by making him impotent for life? Hormones will be effective for
such transformation, if one is squeamish about using the knife.
The law of the land do not permit sexual assault except when the
man has his marriage certificate to prove his proprietorship.
But very few people in India heed the dictates of law.
The tortured bride might scream aloud and cry out for help. But
the neighbours will shut their windows and go to sleep. A marriage
certificate permits a man to perpetrate perversions on his bride.
There have been cases where the bride was found dead in the nuptial
bed.
Until recent times children were not taught the facts of life.
At the time of marriage the bride-to-be is not told what kind of
a contract she would be entering into. She is not told about the
duties of a wife. How does society expect her to be an exemplary
wife?
Feminists are a strident lot. They act as if they dislike men.
In disliking men they tend to lose the gentle bliss of being loved
by a man. Even as a young wife I wanted my man to be strong enough
to protect me. Being protected physically and economically was
a desirable stare in my opinion. Perhaps such requirements vary
with the hormone level found in each woman.
Dr Pisharody of Texas told me that a tablet named Melatonine which
had a hormone content rejuvenated the old and the decrepit. It
was available only in the US. Every middleaged male clamoured
for it. I had met Dr Pisharody exactly a year ago in Houston.
Last month he came to Cochin and seemed incredibly young. Reasons:
Melatonine.
Dr Pisharody recently invented a small device that would
revolutionise the surgery for slipped disc. It would fill the gap
and cause a fusion with the bone, he said. He was to
hold demonstrations and slide shows for the benefit of orthopaedic
surgeons and neuros. But Indian doctors are a smug lot. The
more ignorant you are, the more complacent you seem. This helps
one to measure ignorance and fix its level.
Illustration: Dominic Xavier
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