by Durjoy Datta
He looked at the principal and then at me, helplessly.
‘I don’t know where we went wrong. We are so sorry,’ he said and threw his hands up in the air. The boy muttered another apology.
Sumit’s mother shouted at her son as he cowered in the corner, ‘Who would lie about such a thing? Are you a fool? Her life is destroyed. Why would she lie?’
‘No, Aunty, it isn’t destroyed. She’s still an intelligent, kind girl. Nothing is destroyed here,’ corrected Namrata.
A couple of parents walked to Aisha and her mother’s side and made her sit down, offered her a glass a water, ran their hands over their heads and comforted them.
The boys were given a week’s suspension but Norbu came up with a better idea. The boys were supposed to wear a placard around their necks for the next week that read ‘I’m sorry, Aisha’ if their parents were okay with it. The parents nodded in agreement; it was a fit punishment, they said. Aisha’s mother thanked the parents who asked her to feel free to reach out if she needed anything. I collected their cards on her behalf.
I saw Aisha and her mother smile after a really long time, and realized that it didn’t take all twenty-three kids to apologize for them to smile, just a little bit of support, that’s all they needed.
Later that day, Norbu designed the ‘I’m sorry, Aisha’ placard and got them printed. For the next one week, the eight students wore them around the neck all through the school day. A few people scoffed and called it a bullshit measure of the school while others took it more positively. The incredible thing it did—something that we hadn’t expected at all—was people now talked about it from both perspectives rather than just raging about how a girl reported a false rape case. Often, I would pass students in the corridor to find them aggressively debating the case, questioning the attitude of people who lynched Aisha right after the trial, and raised fingers on their behaviour as well. One day, I heard a boy passionately argue Aisha’s case with his dissenting friends in the men’s washroom. He said, ‘It’s not about who won the case or who lied. It’s an apology for the kind of behaviour we meted out to her. That’s the point of the placard. If I wear it, it’s not because I believe that she was raped but because it’s an apology for me calling her a slut before and after she reported the case.’
I think he nailed it.
46
Aisha Paul
A week had passed since my return to school and it was getting as easier as it was getting harder to be there every day—to return the smiles of people who had somewhat started to believe in me, or at least were trying to understand that there might be more to the situation than Vibhor’s side of the story, people who wrote little messages for me; to continue to bear the caustic looks of many who still labelled me as an attention-seeking slut or whore.
Norbu’s placard idea had worked. No one abused me openly any more and a few people who had bothered me earlier even came up to me and apologized. But still quite a few of them found ingenious ways to hurt and humiliate me.
Boy 1: So this girl totally sent me naked pictures and asked me to rape her! Must be some fetish.
Boy 2: Yeah, same thing happened with me dude.
I would try to ignore them, think about the other wonderful people who were by my side but I couldn’t push these incidents out of my head.
Vibhor would still stare me down in the hallways, spit on the ground when he would see me, flash his middle finger, thrust his pelvis towards me, which would often reduce me to tears. His posse of faithful men had decreased though. They were scared they would have to carry that placard again for a week.
Every day, a few new girls would tell me that they were with me. The number of chits I started to get in my desk every day started to increase. Sometimes the assurances ran into paragraphs, some of them recounted incidents from their own life when they had been judged and poked fun at in the past, and I often cried reading them. I had a little scrapbook at my place with all the chits pasted on them and I would read them whenever I felt low. Just having people believe me was half the battle won. I didn’t feel choked any more, just sad and scared.
Namrata and I were sitting in the canteen when Norbu came running to us. He told us there was a surprise and he asked us to close our eyes.
‘Just tell us!’ exclaimed Namrata.
‘No, close your eyes!’ he said.
We closed our eyes. He made us open our palms and kept something in each of them.
‘Open.’
It was a little round badge that said in bold white lettering on a black background, ‘I AM SORRY, AISHA.’ He spoke, ‘I have two hundred of them. We are going to give it for free.’
I don’t know why but I started crying again and Namrata tried to quieten me. It happened a lot those days. I tested their patience by breaking down every now and then. It was amazing that they were still friends with me.
‘You don’t like it?’ asked Norbu, scrunching up his face into a little ball. ‘I know the colour is a little dull.’
Between little sobs, I said, ‘I like it but—’
‘This is awesome, Aisha,’ said Namrata, thrusting my face into her bosom to shut me up, even as Norbu pinned one on his shirt and one on Namrata’s.
‘But who will wear them?’ I asked, still crying into Namrata’s chest.
I wasn’t crying because I felt no one would wear them, but to see my friends believe in me so much. In those moments I felt so loved, so normal.
‘People will,’ said Norbu. ‘Eventually. Here, put one on!’
‘Won’t it be odd if I put one on?’ I asked, now wiping my snot and tears on my shirt sleeve. ‘It’s in third person. I would be apologizing to myself?’
We all laughed. Norbu made the canteen guy, a buddy of his, keep it at the counter and give out only one to every person who asked for it and to keep it off limits to Vibhor and his friends. The canteen guy nodded, wore one himself and flashed a thumbs up towards me. I smiled back at him.
Till the end of the day, not one badge was picked up.
*
But the next morning, the entire canteen staff was wearing the badges, and by lunch time, a few kids from the junior section sported them, and by the time the day ended, one in every thirty people had a badge pinned to their chest, ‘I’M SORRY, AISHA’. Never had I been smiled at so often. The corridors of the school, once a hostile, thorny place, was now suddenly a happy place. People would smile at me and point to their badges and some of them would even wink at me. It would be so hard not to cry every time someone picked up a badge and put it on their chest. They didn’t need to come out and apologize. It wasn’t a compulsion. But they chose to pick it up and that meant the world to me.
I hugged Norbu so many times he almost regretted his decision. I felt like the most loved person in the entire world.
*
Later that day, my mother and I were sitting in the living room in Danish’s house. His brother had insisted, made his parents call my parents, and assured them that they would be keeping a watch. I knew it was just Danish and Ankit, people I trusted with my life, yet my body revolted, and it wasn’t well into the night that I finally decided I would go. My mother came along.
Ankit made all of us sit on a couch and showed us what he called the ‘beta’ version of his site. It’s going to be the next big thing, he had said, which I assumed he said about every site he made and not for no reason. He looked every bit the genius Danish had made him out to be. He explained the workings of the site, how to log in, how to access the account amongst other things, and answered all our questions. He told us 1500 people had already registered for this beta site.
‘Anyone can register?’ asked my mother, with childlike enthusiasm and Ankit showed her how to make an account. ‘Once your account is created, you can browse through all the different problems people have shared. You can click on “Reply” and reply to their problems. You wouldn’t know the real names of the people who are posting their problems and they won’t know you! It’s co
mpletely anonymous.’
Ankit showed my mother the list of problems people had lodged under anonymous names.
Username Subject
Broken498 I don’t feel like living any more . . .
Smriti I have had enough. I want to run away.
NoName Do we always need to do what our parents tell us?
DDDDDD Lost. I’m totally lost.
HD A friend is depressed and I think she might be . . .
‘Teenagers have a tough life,’ she remarked. ‘Look at this girl, Broken498? She found out that the boy she loved was also with three other girls? Horrible. She’s crying every day now. Can I reply to her?’
Ankit showed her how to send across her message. Sarthak had taught Mom how to WhatsApp before he left for Poland so it didn’t take her long to pick up typing on a keyboard.
It was the happiest I had seen my mother be. Even while we ate, she kept tapping on the keyboard, one letter at time, typing out page-long answers to people looking for help.
‘You have a very talented son,’ my mother told Ankit and Danish’s parents even as she cried and typed out solutions like a godwoman to the troubled people.
Uncle and Aunty nodded, and Mom kissed Ankit who beamed. Aunty then told us how Ankit had built a company and then sold it after the evil investors drove him to a nervous breakdown.
My mother responded, ‘If Ankit would have shared his problem on this site, I would have helped him. That’s the problem. Kids don’t go to their parents with their problems.’ She smiled at her own joke and everyone laughed seeing her so happy.
‘He had his brother to take care of that,’ Ankit’s mother told her.
Aunty had to pull my mother away from the laptop to make her eat. My mother remained distracted on the dinner table, throwing glances at the laptop where the list of kids writing about their problems kept growing.
After we were done eating, my mother made Uncle and Aunty go to bed since they had office the next day and got back to answering questions, one key at a time. She cried and she laughed and was also shocked, reading the problems and issues the kids came up with.
‘My brother is good, right?’ Danish asked.
I nodded.
‘Why don’t you try and answer some?’
He thrust his laptop in front of me.
‘I can’t.’
‘I know it’s hard. But you have us, Aisha. We all love you. Think of someone who doesn’t have a mother like you? Just try it out. You can share your experience as well. Maybe it will make you feel a little lighter?’
It was really hard to turn down anything Danish requested. The kid-like earnestness in his eyes was hard to ignore so I nodded and took the laptop from him.
Within the next fifteen minutes, all four of us were feverishly tapping out our responses to the questions that came in, answering the cry for help of people without names.
‘My boyfriend broke up with me after three years. What should I do? I don’t think I can go to school any more. We even had sex. I feel so used!’
‘My mother is asking me to get married. I don’t want to! I’m only seventeen. All my friends are going to college, I want to do that too, how should I do that?’
‘I was molested by my father’s cousin, my own uncle. I want to die! I want to die!’
‘I broke up. He cheated on me. I want to kill myself.’
‘My board results are awful. My parents curse me every day. I didn’t get through DU. What should I do?’
‘I’m a girl. I like girls. Is something wrong with me?’
I realized soon enough that I wasn’t equipped to solve their problems. Ankit noticed that when I threw my laptop away on the sofa, held my head and paced around in a little circle.
‘What?’ he asked.
‘THIS IS SO FRUSTRATING! THIS IS A BAD IDEA!’
I tried not to choke on my words.
‘There are people getting molested, cheated on, broken, forced to do things that they don’t like and all we can do is give reassuring suggestions? How will that help them? This website is crap. It’s shit.’
Ankit spoke, ‘It will—’
‘It won’t. We will sound like ceremonious assholes who don’t know anything about the pain they are going through.’
‘But—’
‘What? Ankit, what will you tell someone who’s suicidal about his results? You have been an ace student all your life. This website won’t work.’
Mom placed her laptop carefully on the side, made me sit, calmed me down and gave me water. No one said anything for a while.
‘Why don’t we get them to help themselves?’ said Danish, looking up from his laptop.
‘Is that a riddle?’ asked Ankit.
‘Ankit? Suppose a girl mails to us about being molested when she was a kid. Sure, all of us aren’t professionals so the most we can do is guide them and be there for them. But we can send them the numbers of NGOs and professionals along with that mail. And a copy of their mail can be sent to the NGO. We can tie up with a bunch of NGOs. They can step in and make a real change. We can be the bridge for these troubled kids.’
‘What if they don’t want to talk to anyone from an NGO?’
‘If they don’t, we can connect people with the same problem. Like, for example, I failed my exam and I put up a cry for help. And you failed your exam as well. The website will connect these two people and they can talk about it and help each other out. We can reach a higher level of empathy by doing that?’
We all looked at each other.
‘Okay, I might have been excited about a stupid idea,’ conceded Danish and peered back into his laptop.
‘It’s a great idea,’ said Mom.
I nodded.
Ankit hugged Danish and laughed raucously.
‘My brother is the shiznit!’ he said out loud, and got back to his computer, tapping furiously. ‘Give me until tomorrow.’
47
Danish Roy
It was one in the night and we were still typing out our responses when Mom woke up and asked us if we needed anything. We shook our heads but she still made us coffee.
‘Danish,’ she called out as she was leaving the room. ‘Your father wanted your help opening a cupboard. It’s stuck. Can you come?’
Okay. Now that was our code for when they wanted to take me away from a public setting and talk to me. I nodded and followed Mom into her room. My father was reading a hardbound book under the lampshade, his spectacles perched precariously on his head. They didn’t look like they had slept a wink. He kept the book on the side, and brightened the lamp. I sat on the bed and waited for them to talk. Usually, it was to chide me but it had been years since I had been last summoned to the king’s bedchamber for a sounding.
Mom kept a hand on my arm and smiled.
Dad looked at me and spoke, ‘We are very proud of you. Ankit told us what you did for the girl and we are so happy to hear that.’
What? What? What were they saying? Where’s my fucking phone when I need it? I needed to record this.
‘You were so supportive to her. It really takes a lot of grit,’ said my mother. ‘I told everyone at work about you.’
It looked like she would cry.
‘Even the principal called and praised you. The parents of the kids love you as well. Maybe this is the right career choice for you,’ said Dad.
I nodded. I knew if I were to say something I would cry. I had waited for this moment for years, literally years, for Mom and Dad to tell me I was worth something. And then it came. Like a little schoolboy I burst into tears and Dad hugged me, and then Mom hugged me and she cried a little. I told them how much it meant to me, how much I wanted them to be proud, how much I wanted to be a little more intelligent, a little smarter, get a few more marks, be praised by a professor or two, be famous or popular, and it killed me every day to know that I had disappointed them. I totally regretted it once the words left my mouth. It was embarrassing.
Dad laughed.
‘Yo
u have never disappointed us, Danish. We just pushed you like we push our students in college. We knew you were made for better things. We just didn’t know for what until now. Yes, we were a little impatient. But that’s how parents are. They want their kids to be the best in the world. We wanted the same for you.’
‘And you’re the more handsome of the two,’ said Mom.
‘Will you say that in front of Ankit?’
‘Of course not. I will say the same thing to him,’ she said with a smile. ‘Now go, your friends are waiting.’
She kissed me on the forehead.
‘We are really, really proud of you.’
‘Do a good job,’ said Dad and shook my hand.
I walked out of the room, locked myself in the washroom for fifteen minutes and cried and laughed, and then wiped my face and joined everyone like nothing had happened.
‘Did you manage to open the cupboard?’ asked Aisha.
‘Yes, I did. It felt wonderful.’
48
Aisha Paul
If they ever changed Fantastic Four to Fantastic Two, since anyway their movie franchise isn’t working, with two brothers, Ankit and Danish would be the star contenders. I was hooked to the website. It was four and I was still on it. Yes, it made me cry and shout, for there’s no end to injustice in the world, but it felt nice and warm and fuzzy when people thanked me for saving them, like they told me I saved them. My mother had dozed off by then, and Ankit was frantically testing out codes, asking Danish for suggestions, and then going back to typing. He had emptied the pot of coffee Aunty had left us almost by himself. Seeing them, I missed Sarthak, and all those years we had lost out on.
I got back to replying to more entries when the subject line of one of the entries caught my eye: Not Important, but important to me. Not really. It’s a little silly. Don’t open.
I opened it.
Hi.
Ummm.
Okay, this might be a little silly. I don’t know if anyone will ever read it. Maybe it will get lost like the bottles with little scraps of paper with messages that people throw in the ocean. Maybe you have already stopped reading, right? What I want to say doesn’t matter to anyone, except maybe me, which is why I need to put this out there for at least someone to read or to know.
