There are no words to express the terrible anguish into which many of us have been plunged at the entirely-preventable fate of 23-year-old Soumya, raped and brutally murdered on her journey back home from work a week back. A criminal kicked her out of a slow-moving train between Shornur and Vallathol Nagar, robbed her, dragged her into the bushes, where he raped and wounded her fatally. After five days in hospital, she died. There were other passengers, men, who heard her cries. But none of them bothered to pull the chain, which would have saved her from both rape and murder.There are no words for anguish anymore in the Malayalam media. It has plenty of words to convey, to inspire craven fear and rancid sentimentalism, but none to express and pass on anguish.
Here I am thinking of anguish in a way somewhat similar to, but not the same as Sartrean angst. There is a certain aloneness one has increasingly felt in train journeys. Travelers may chat and laugh together, but essentially, the sense of connectedness is weak and the awareness of being on different paths that are quite unconnected mostly, is acute.A sense of anguish, of being responsible for one’s decisions and actions, and of their impact on others, is then necessary. It is this that Soumya’s co-travelers whose inability to think of the possibility of acting otherwise, contrary to usual responses — it is striking that some of them who were witnesses did not lack a sense of concern — that condemned her to a gory death, lacked.Friends who contacted one of the key witnesses tell me that this young man agonized over whether to pull the chain or not. He could not act decisively, though; he asked other travelers for advice; he interpreted the whole scene of a young woman falling off a train and a man following her as an episode in a common-enough drama of domestic discord, a scene into which good Malayalees do not intrude, even if that means unspeakable domestic violence. I am not demanding of anyone impossibly wide mental freedom, Sartrean consciousness of freedom, or awareness of existence. But surely, one can bear as acute sense of what is possible in immediate circumstances such as this one, one can be aware of the consequences of each possibility? To point towards a deterministic chain which shapes our responses in situations like this, I feel,may let us through, but to me it seems to be an escape from precisely, anguish.Each of Soumya’s co-travelers had, indeed, the freedom to take a decision. But for none did it mean an anguished sense of responsibility to act and the awareness of the consequences of those actions on others.
Hence, also, I would add, the sloven sentimental media reportage of the terrible crime. Over the past few days, there has been much discussion of how the railways, the co-passengers, the beggars on the train, were all guilty; there has been much talk of how rail travel could be made safer for women passengers. Yet, there is little that may inspire anguish — and genuine anguish has to be unconditional — in all this talk. Instead, Soumya has been constructed as a figure who inspires not anguish but hollow sentimentalism.
For example, it has been repeated ad nauseaum how the victim was full of ‘wedding dreams’ on her fatal journey. To many newspapers and TV journalists, the pathos of Soumya’s fate lies mainly in that these were violated.Soumya had been traveling home for her pennukaanal, the occasion on which the prospective groom and his family, sometimes just the family, ‘sees’ (read inspects) the prospective bride. It is also the occasion on which negotiations over dowry begin. And in Kerala, ninety-nine point nine nine nine nine… percent of marriages involve dowry, directly or indirectly.The myth of happy dowried marriage is the worst lie we Malayalees live,and we all know it well. My lawyer friends who are women tell me that they are all at the risk of turning into domestic-violence specialists in Kerala, and that they have no choice. Such is the enormity of litigation around domestic violence in this society, and despite the extreme hostility of society towards women who complain. Why, then, does the media consider the prospect of marriage to be so central to the story of Soumya’s tragedy? Soumya’s willingness for (arranged) marriage is highlighted precisely because in Kerala, it is strong evidence for her being a ‘good girl’, for her a disciplined daughter, and not a wanton woman. I am reminded of another young dalit woman who died a few years back, flinging herself off a building in Thiruvananthapuram– Rajani Anand. If it was a criminal who pushed Soumya out of the train without being challenged by co-passengers, Rajani was pushed off the building by a ruthless educational bureaucracy and an unresponsive neoliberalized welfare-delivery mechanism. Rajani had no readymade evidence to prove her status as a ‘good girl’: she was a struggling dalit student. There were attempts to see whether she could be made into a ‘bad girl’– through a virginity test on her body.In the implicit but active reasoning of the media, Soumya must appear as the disciplined daughter if she is to claim victim status at all.True, Soumya’s dreams of her future may have all been around her marriage, but the highlighting of this as a device for sentimentalizing her death only reveals our incapacity for real — unconditional — anguish at the pain and the brutal death suffered by another human being.
Projecting Soumya as a dutiful daughter — a young innocent — is perhaps at the cost of effacing the most important question that her death raises: that of the well-being of young working class women in Kerala’s booming service sector. Since the 1990s there has been much talk of Kerala’s economic turnaround through the burgeoning service sector, which is also apparently offering employment for more and more educated young women of Soumya’s generation. These women do not enjoy the protection of Kerala’s fabled labour movements; they are underpaid, overworked, often abused, and deprived of labour rights.Indeed, it was the labour movements that ought to have been at the forefront of these protests, right beside women’s organizations. But the figure of the woman worker is so outside the Malayalee imagination. The brutalization and murder of a young woman worker will not provoke even empty sentiment!
And like anguish, there are no words at all to express the excruciating and nearly-physical pain that is even beyond anguish, that many women, including me, feel. On many occasions like this, in which young women were ruthlessly murdered — Shari S Nair, Ishrat Jahan, Rajani Anand (yes, murdered by the system), and now Soumya — I, as a woman who has given birth twice to daughters, have felt this terrible rending pain that cannot be expressed, cutting through me, a pain that one cannot describe as merely mental.Many women friends tell me the same.One then turns to language that has been left out of the public sphere, language that communicates grief and pain as embodied. One could say, petta vayar aalunnu (‘the womb that has known birth is ablaze’). But there too, it is the pain of just one group of women, those who have borne children, known the pain of bearing them. There are no words even in the excluded tongue to communicate the pain of others who have not given birth, but feel the pain just as intense. I do not know, but many men may feel this way too. Perhaps that is what will bring us all together: the need to express the specific experience of such pain in unique ways, and comfort each other through bearing precisely the burden of each others’ safety.
KAFILA - COLLECTIVE EXPLORATIONS SINCE 2006 
It takes a nation to save a woman…and we fail…everyday…we fail..everyway
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Feel the same intense, excruciating pain…
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I am reminded of this article on how representations of women sustain violence against their bodies in Ciudad Juarez and surplus extraction in a globalizing economy; and how over years, a broad coalition of men and women emerged in that city in the NAFTA borderland (US-Mexico) emerged to alter the dominant discourses.
The article is dated…many of the women protagonists in the politics described in the article… mothers to be precise, are today heart broken as their sorrow became eventually consumed by networks of international donors. But that need not detract from the usefulness of this earlier piece of writing
From Protests to Politics: Sex Work, Women’s Worth, and Ciudad Jua´rez Modernity
Click to access wright-sex_women_worth.pdf
But deep down, Devika, I have no words to respond to what you write. Pain and grief are experienced at an affective level which cannot be captured in words. Perhaps, ‘capturing’ itself is the wrong metaphor to work with. Perhaps, pain and grief are communicated more through the cracks in the edifice of reality constructed by words… through measured silences. Perhaps, it requires a very different thought process, very different kind of work to make room for a politics that is informed as much by intense pain and injury, as it is by rigorous analyses of exploitation and oppression.
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The evil hindutva think tank has launched a new book attacking people like us.
http://indianrealist.wordpress.com/2011/01/31/rajiv-malhotras-delhi-lecture-on-feb-9/
time to act.
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no comment please
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Hi Devika,
You really brought out the real feeling that many of us women feel towards the untimely death of this innocent young girl. Every word that u wrote is so very true, I hope the men and women in our society understand the value of life, be it that of a man’s or a woman’s. Nothing is more significant than saving a life.
Thank you.
Geetha.
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I watched this bit of news in horror on NDTV only this morning.And I was struck by a few things besides the obvious horror of the crime.NDTV reported how a family’s dreams had been shattered.My only thought was that it was not dreams that were shattered.If there were no dreams also the family would be shattered.Why do we focus on what she was going to do .It does not matter ! She was a person and this should not happen to anybody!!!
And the second thought was once you have children you know that anything that happens to them rips your insides out.
And after reading your article I am shocked that there were witnesses …How? Why are we becoming horrid callus people !
You are dead right about the entire attitude to women .Dowry being a BIG indicator.
Maybe mother’s should teach their son’s better?
Why do we put them on such stupid high pedestals from which they think they have divine powers and rights.
As a malayalee growing up outside Kerala I have felt in my associations when I have gone back to kerala a certain chauvinism from many young men? Is it just my perception?
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Devika,You really brought out the real feeling death of this innocent young girl. Great ,every men had the evil monky inside his mind ,pls see the young guys with mobile phones was it using good,not if u see in all persion who using this including kids at 6th std to up they are using sex movies and clipping they dont care about mother,sister,naibeor teacher etc they capture the privite things ,once i traveling in train going to guruvayoor lot of family traveling with children babbies i saw a guy age 20 taking photos from berth he was sleeping but he he taking picture of a mother feeding ,i asked him what u are douing he say nothing .it happend 3years back Not a lady cant sweep a floor or bend down the 3rd eye watching mobile phone ,mostely all man and boy children are adected in sex movie watching ,Maybe mother’s should teach their son’s better.so keep inspect everyones mobile ,computer,in our home first,from the childhood we must teach our children to respect women ,dont be like a ravan be sreeram,when ever anyone traveling or go to any place tell them to respect Ladies.u r safe and sound in there
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In India people thinks it is better to enjoy the mishaps rather than to raise alarm. now it is very common to hear all this abnormal critics…but helpless can’t do anything !!!
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Ripening,kidnapping,killing etc.. have a importent role in present medias,especially movies……so please please make a war against them…who comes with me?i ready to come till my death….(also against alcohol)
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I have no words to express my feeling,I feel………………………….being a “MALE MALAYALEE & a REGULAR TRAIN PASSENGER”
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Devika,
Here is poetry that I squeezed out of the pain and anguish I felt on the brutal death of the Kidnapped Delhi girl a few months ago.
Every scar that you have rips within my womb
a pregnant cause that can only whimper
For we birth these banal monsters
who see but cannot see within,
every scar you bear within your mind
Sister.
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Sharing the pain, in all its intensity
The fellow passengers remaining passive towards abuse of women in public transport— sexually colored remarks, awful acts on her private body, pushing teenage girls out of bus for using concession tickets but truly out of male chauvinism —are everyday realities for any Kerala women. None of these are considered abuse rather normal where “good girls” are advised to ignore it/accept it without protesting and bringing “bad name” to family. The future destiny of the literate Malayali women may be to accommodate and accept “rape” also as a part of daily life to be in the good books. Nothing shocks the hypocritical society, rather feels proud about being passive and silent; moreover satisfied by watching the rancid-hollow sentimentalism the ruthless media channels bring out. (Remember seeing a reporter from the most popular channel that was telecasting a live SMS program about the Thatteckad Boat Tragedy asking a mother who came to identify the body of her child in a hurried manner “what is your feeling now?”).
The ray of hope for that strip of land that exhibits extreme hostility towards women who complain is that, there still exists few women who dare to complain and who come together to share their sense of anguish.
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The reality is simply that women are not respected by men or women in this society.The only way we can change things is by educating our kids about how important it is to respect each other. This should be taught at the school level. If our sons act high handed, remind them that one half of the world including yourself is a woman. If our husbands speak in chauvinistic tones, remind them that a woman is a human being and not a door mat. If our daughters think that acting like men will make them progress faster, teach them how important it is to have women in the world.
Thank you Devika for your take on a sad day for mothers and daughters everywhere.
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With great pain, profound sadness and personal guilt, I plead sorry to the women to whom I’ve caused terrible distress. I’m not certain about how appropriate this is. However, now doing this I may have a credibility and clarity in my vision of humiliation against the women community.
I read the book ‘Pennira’ and it enlightens me to think about a terrible truth. Whatever typical characteristics’ it may have, it points out a question, and that question hurts me, more than ever..
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