The Turning Point

by Nikita Singh

  ‘Of course we blame you! Who else will we blame? You were the one who—’ her father started, but Sameer shut him up.

  ‘Stop it. Just stop it, both of you. You make me sick,’ Sameer ground his teeth in anger, holding Anjali’s hand. She was shaking with fury. She had been crying before, when she was trying to explain to her parents why she eloped with Sameer, but when they started blaming her for her own rape, that’s when she lost her temper. Her tears dried in her eyes, as she was overcome with revulsion.

  ‘Let’s go, Sameer. You were right—this is not worth it,’ she said, glaring at her bigoted parents.

  ‘No, these people disgust me. They are blaming you for getting raped. They are the ones who should’ve been by your side, and helped you through it. But instead, they made you keep it a secret, fearing what? The society?’ he threw his hands around and pointed at the people gathered there. ‘Do you think these people respect you for asking your own daughter to commit suicide? Instead of filing a police report and trying to find the bastard who did this to her, you just wanted to get rid of her, didn’t you? That night she came back...’ Sameer shook his head.

  ‘Get off my property,’ Anjali’s father sneered.

  ‘You think I want to be here? We were happy. I was helping Anjali, and she was getting better. We have a normal life, we have a good life. But she wanted to come here and meet you, because even though you want her dead, she’s your daughter and she’s biologically programmed to love you. But you people...you don’t love anything except your honour. When your daughter came home in that state, you wanted her to die. You wanted her off your hands, so that no one ever got to know that a woman from your prestigious family was raped. Instead of demanding justice for her, instead of being her parents and taking care of her... And anyway, it’s one thing to not report a case to the police and keep it hidden in fear of social rejection or whatever. But you actually blamed her, you despised her for getting raped, as if she’d made a voluntary decision. I think you were secretly glad that she told you about me right after that incident—you found a reason to hate her. And when we ran away, we made your job easier...’ Sameer spat on the ground. ‘It’s good that we came. Now she knows what kind of people you are. She has been dead to you since a long time, and now, after this—you can finally be dead to her.’

  With that, he turned around and pulled Anjali with him. The auto rickshaw was still there, waiting for them. Who would miss such a show? Sameer got in after Anjali and held her to him, instructing the auto driver to take them back to the railway station.

  They waited at the station for hours, until a train that followed their route finally arrived. On their journey back, Anjali didn’t say anything. She didn’t cry. She didn’t even look at anything. She just sat still, staring blankly at her hands, which she kept in her lap, entwined with Sameer’s hand.

  When they got home a little past midnight, Sameer went straight to take a shower, while Anjali changed and fixed something to eat. She boiled instant noodles, and sat down next to the stove on the cold granite counter with a sigh. She didn’t understand how she felt about everything that happened; it was a lot to process and her feelings were jumbled. When Sameer came out of the shower, the noodles was done. He poured it all into a large bowl and grabbed a couple of forks. Anjali followed him to their bedroom.

  They sat down on the floor, resting their backs against the bed and dug into their dinner. They were both silent, deep into their lines of thoughts.

  ‘So...that didn’t go very well,’ Sameer sighed suddenly and dramatically.

  Anjali giggled and looked at him. The light moment lasted only a few seconds, before they got silent again; they both knew they were thinking about the same thing and that they were going to have to talk about it. ‘I just...I had been concentrating so much on meeting them and asking for forgiveness for eloping and getting married, I never thought they blamed me for getting raped. They hate us.’

  ‘I hate them.’

  ‘Don’t say that.’

  ‘It’s true,’ Sameer emphasised.

  ‘We...let’s not talk about this. I can’t. Not yet.’ Anjali’s expression looked pained. Sameer nodded silently and they finished dinner.

  The next morning, Sameer left for office early to attend a meeting, but Anjali slept in. She got up when her maid, Vimla, rang the doorbell. While the maid did the dishes and mopped the floor, Anjali took a shower and got dressed. She put on grey trousers, with an off white shirt and was in the process of deciding which shoes to wear, when Vimla came in to mop the bedroom.

  ‘I came here yesterday, nobody opened the door. Had you gone somewhere?’ Vimla asked.

  ‘Yes, we went...home.’ It felt odd to refer to that place as home now.

  ‘Oh. Is it okay if I don’t come tomorrow? I have to take my son to get him some shots.’

  ‘Yes, of course. How old is he?’ Anjali inquired.

  ‘Almost a year now. He’s started walking; I feel so proud!’ They made small talk for a while. Even though they were talking about Vimla, Anjali’s mind was in a whole another world. She phased out, nodding her head, but not actually hearing anything Vimla was saying. When Anjali shut the door after Vimla had left, she sort of just...broke.

  The impact of everything that happened hit her straight in the face. She got out of her work clothes and put on the loose T-shirt Sameer wore to sleep the previous night. She shut all the windows, turned all the lights off and went to the darkest corner of her bedroom and slumped on the floor, hugging her knees to her chest.

  The way Vimla spoke about her son...that’s how parents are supposed to feel about their children. Anjali wondered if Vimla had been as proud if her child was a girl. Maybe, maybe not. But she sure as hell would not hate her daughter the way Anjali’s parents hated her. No overprotective parent in India can be blamed for being overprotective, given the circumstances. But if something bad does happen to their daughters, they help them through it, don’t they? They don’t blame it on their daughters and throw them out of their lives.

  A sob escaped her lips, as she thought about the hurtful things her parents had said to her. You should’ve killed yourself. You’re dead to us! Maybe...she should have. And she certainly would have, if not for Sameer. Anjali was taken back to that night...when it all began, and her association with her family ended.

  When Anjali’s parents had started thinking about getting her married, Sameer and Anjali had decided to tell their parents about their wish to marry each other. They knew that given their caste disparity, it was going to be tough to convince their parents, but they were foolish—they were in love.

  But fate had other plans for them. The evening that they had planned to talk to their respective parents, Anjali had gone to one of her high school friends’ place to congratulate her on her new born baby boy. At that time, Anjali had considered herself lucky to have parents who encouraged her to go for higher education after passing out of school and didn’t force her to get married and start having babies. Meanwhile, Sameer had told his parents about Anjali and the heated Hindu-Muslim debate that ensued led to Sameer packing his bags and leaving home. He went to a friend’s place and waited for Anjali’s call to find out her parents’ reaction.

  When Anjali left her friend’s house, she had decided to walk to the nearest auto stand, which was only a two minutes’ walk. It was getting dark and there was no electricity since the last couple of hours. She was just about twenty steps away from the auto stand, when someone held her waist from behind and used his other hand to gag her and stop her from screaming. She kicked and struggled, but couldn’t get out of the man’s tight hold. He dragged her forcefully and once they were away from the road and into a secluded spot, he punched her several times. Anjali protested; she screamed, she bit and hit him and was even successful in kneeing him once, but that only angered him and made him kick her down on the dirty ground and beat her till she was barely conscious.

  She could still hear the sound of her clothes ripp
ing. She remembered how she begged and pleaded that man to let her go, and how he pinned both her hands above her head using one hand and laughed every time she winced in pain. When she passed out, he spit on her face to wake her up. He was not just doing it to fulfil whatever masochistic sexual desire he couldn’t control; he was also a sadist. Seeing her in pain, seeing her alternate between fighting back and begging gave him pleasure. At that moment, she prayed to God to kill her. She couldn’t take it anymore; she wanted it to end. And she knew that even after this beast had had his way with her, for her, it would not end. For her, it would never end.

  After he was done, her put on his clothes and wiped off his sweat and left. He didn’t even look down at her to see what he had done. Maybe his fill of sadism for the day had been satisfied. Anjali lay there in her blood and urine. She could hear her phone ringing consistently, but she didn’t have the energy to get up and look for it. She passed out.

  When her consciousness returned, her phone was still ringing. She got up slowly, looking for her clothes. She put on whatever was left of it and found her cell phone ringing in one of the dried weeds nearby. It was Sameer. She began crying, just seeing his name on her cell phone screen. Huge sobs wrecked her body, and her knees gave out. She fell to the floor, holding her phone in her hand, gathering courage to take the call, wondering what she would tell him...how she would explain to him what she had been put through...

  When she finally pressed the answer button, Sameer’s panicked voice questioned hurriedly, ‘Anjali? Where are you? Do you know how worried I have been? I thought something went wrong at your place. I thought you told your family, and you fought. So I came here, but you’re not here... Where are you?’

  Anjali sobbed into the phone, hearing concern and panic in Sameer’s voice. She struggled to explain what happened, but no words came out. She somehow explained to him where she was and what had happened, her body convulsing as she cried.

  When Sameer saw her, he took off his shirt to cover her up. He sat down with her and held her tight, first asking what happened, but when he realised it only tortured her more, he just hugged her silently. He called a friend and asked him to bring a car. They drove Anjali home. While the other two boys left immediately after reaching her place, Sameer picked her up and carried her inside.

  Anjali’s mother came out rushing. When Sameer had come to ask about Anjali’s whereabouts a couple hours ago, she’d gotten worried too. She’d sent her son to pick Anjali up from her friend’s place. But he had come back, saying she’d left there over an hour ago. Since then, her family had been searching for her frantically. When she saw her daughter, it took her seconds to decipher what must’ve happened. Instead of going to Anjali and seeing if she was okay, she ran to her bedroom, crying out for her husband.

  Anjali spent the next few days lying in her bed, crying, crying and crying. No one spoke to her. She could hear her mother weeping in the other room, and assumed she was crying about her daughter’s pain. Instead, she had only been concerned about how they would show their faces in public. Almost a week later, her mother finally spoke to her. She came to her room late one evening, and sat down at the foot of Anjali’s bed. And she said, ‘Why does that Muslim boy keep coming here? The neighbours have started asking questions.’

  When Anjali told her mother that she loved Sameer and wanted to marry him, her mother immediately fetched her husband. After a whole lot of yelling and cursing, blaming their stars for ever giving birth to her, her parents took away her cell phone and locked her up in her room. They did not let Sameer visit after that.

  After three days of being locked up in her room, Anjali heard a tap on her window at night. At first she was scared. She imagined her rapist coming for her again. But then she heard Sameer call out her name. They ran away that night, taking the first train out and changing trains three times on the way, they finally reached Kolkata. They stayed in a motel for a few days, after which they rented a one bedroom apartment. One week later, they went to a court and got married.

  They were running out of money, and even though Sameer did not want to leave Anjali alone, he joined his office. All day, while he worked, Anjali locked herself in and did not so much as peek out of the window. When he came back from work every evening, she would hold onto him for dear life. The first few months were especially hard. The first time she stepped out of home was three months after they had rented it. Sameer’s job was paying him well, and they started buying furniture and setting up a home.

  Through their first year in Kolkata, all Anjali did every day was cook and clean. And when she wasn’t doing that, she read about rape and rape cases on the internet. She was obsessed. Statistics say that one rape case happens in India, every twenty minutes. Around twenty five thousand cases are registered in the country every year, though unreported cases are believed to be much much higher than reported. She read about social rejection, about cases where parents married off their nineteen year old ‘tainted’ daughter to a fifty five year old divorcee with three children. She tried to justify her parents’ decision to keep what happened to her a secret.

  Not reporting a case is better than reporting it only to get insulted by police officials, who refuse to file reports, sometimes asking for proof of rape by undressing in front of them, raising fingers on the character of the victim, for being out alone at night, or dressing provocatively, or secretly enjoying the rape. If they do file a report, the chances of finding the rapist and the case ever reaching a court is very minimal, especially if the victim does not have political or monetary reach and the rapist has influence. Anjali read a case about a family breaking ties with the victim because instead of settling for the money offered by her rapist, she wanted to press charges.

  She read about these cases, and she felt blessed. She felt that she had tormented her parents enough, and thought it was a good decision to not file a police case and not putting herself and her family through what would’ve followed. At that point of time, she honestly thought her parents were scared and confused and on top of that, when they got to know about Sameer, they flipped out. She had always thought that one day, she would go back home, and they would take her back.

  And when Nirbhaya’s case came up, she saw hope. Nirbhaya and her family had helped discouraging the social stigma to a great extent. Anjali took strength from them.

  All the hope that news had given Anjali now lay shattered on the floor, where she sobbed uncontrollably. People change, and she had hoped that since India has started opening up about crime against women, her parents would also understand what had been done to their daughter. And she had hoped they would forgive them for eloping. It had taken her two years to recover enough to go back to that village...and she had been concentrating so much about her parents, she had forgotten about her rape. It was when she was there, and the train stopped, that she realised where she was, and what had happened to her in that village.

  Even after that, she had been strong and continued. She had met her parents, and they had rejected her again—only this time, she knew she had been rejected, and unlike last time, she did not have a hope of reconciliation she could hang on to.

  She had put the broken pieces of her life together. She had gotten over most of her fear and paranoia, she had stepped out and gotten a job. She had built a family of her own—a stable, loving relationship with her husband. She had friends and colleagues and hobbies. She had even planned to switch jobs and do something that really interested her. She prayed every night, whispering a prayer to God, to help her fight. Every day was a battle. And then, pursuing the false hope Nirbhaya had given her, she had gone back home. And now, she found herself back to square one.

  ‘Anjali...’

  She looked up to see Sameer standing at the door in darkness. ‘Sameer.’

  He came to her and sat beside her. ‘You weren’t taking my calls. You know you can’t do that.’

  ‘I do. I’m sorry...’ He nodded. As he sat there on the floor with her, she poured her
heart out, she told him everything she had been feeling, how depressed she was, and how she desperately she had wanted everything to work out with their parents. ‘You didn’t even go to see your parents...’

  ‘After what happened with yours...I knew how it would go with mine. It’s useless,’ Sameer said.

  ‘But, I thought...people change, so maybe...’

  ‘No, Anjali. People change, yes, but only if they want to. Only if they try to open their minds.’

  ‘I tried so hard to forget what happened...but in Ara, it all came back. I pretend it never happened, that I was never raped, and I am okay for some time, but then, one day out of the blue, it all comes back to me and I break down...’

  Anjali said.

  ‘That’s the thing, Anjali—you can’t forget what happened. You can’t. You want to, and I want you to, but it is not possible. It wasn’t something inconsequential. We don’t like it, but it is a part of your life, it is a part of who you are. It’s a big enough part to define whatever you do and how you do it. But we can’t let it grow bigger. And I think...I think the only way to move on from that is to accept that it happened. Then we’ll get to a point where it will no longer define who we are.’

  ‘But, how?’ Anjali looked up to him, with tears in her eyes. But also hope. It made him hopeful too.

  ‘I don’t know how. But maybe, with time... We feel shitty right now, but don’t you think we feel less shitty than we did two years ago? Soon, we’ll have more experiences—hopefully good, and certainly not as bad. As the bits and pieces add up, our new experiences will overtake the old, shitty ones, and one day...we’ll be okay.’

  They stayed silent for some time. The more she thought about what Sameer said, the more Anjali was convinced she could do it. With him by her side, she could definitely do it.

  ‘We’ll be okay?’

  Sameer pulled her towards him and rested his head on her shoulder. ‘What do you think?’