Chup, bad girl

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‘Bad uncle...’ the child whispers, shifting uneasily.

Mother glances at Neighbour – kind and respectable. No, he wouldn’t!!

She nudges her 6-year old irritably, ‘Chup*… Bad girl!‘

******

(An attempt to tell a story in Haiku form)

Innumerable cases of child abuse are not stopped simply because we do not believe our children enough. We brush their fears aside, thinking they are baseless. They aren’t. They never are. If a child feels that there is ‘something wrong’ or ‘something bad’ – a touch, a comment, or even a look…  that just makes him/her feel uncomfortable, but is unable to express it, it is our damn duty to take up the matter seriously and investigate, and protect our children.

This post has been written for the Child Sexual abuse awareness month theme run by the Chennai Bloggers Club.

* ‘chup’ – ‘quiet’ or ‘shut up’

Reverend Father

Rev. Father

The Principal of a boys only school. He was jovial, old and respectable. The boys loved him. The parents respected him immensely. He was after all, ‘Reverend Father’.

He was kind to the boys, and insisted on meeting the friends and relatives of the boys. So every fun-fair day, or ‘fancy fete’ day, as it was called in those times, the boys would take their sisters and their friends to show them around the school. Rev. Father would call them into his room. Brightly-lit, spacious room, the shelves respectably lined with thick volumes. The children loved the room. It was, after all, the safe haven that belonged to ‘Reverend Father’.

Rev. Father would always offer the children lollipops. While the boys sat on the chair opposite the huge teak wood table, Rev.Father would call the girl over to his side. One hand would go protectively around the back of the little 6 or 7 year old child, drawing her close to him. The huge table almost hiding her, so her brother/friend could only see her neck and above. Rev.Father would stoop to the child’s level, and ask normal questions very kindly, ‘What is your name, my child?’ ‘What does your daddy do?’. You know, the sort of questions any caring, elderly person would ask!

While in the meanwhile, his right hand would creep up the little child’s thighs, get into her panty, and fiddle away, until the barrage of questions stopped. Usually, the child would remain silent. WHAT DOES A 6 YEAR OLD KNOW OR UNDERSTAND?

* First, the child is taken aback.

* Second, the child is confused.

* Third, the child has no escape!!

Once her turn was over, he would give her more lollipops, and wait serenely for the next child.

So this went on, until one of the kids realised SOMETHING WAS WRONG, and complained to her mother. The mother was SHOCKED. She questioned the other children’s parents. Then, she was FURIOUS.

Reverend Father had molested several little girls who had entered his room. Sadly, some of the boys even KNEW ABOUT IT, and despite that, they went ahead and brought their unsuspecting friends to him.

And then what?

Well, what do you expect? A Bolly-wood style Morcha? A protest or a people’s movement against the sick Rev.Father? A formal complaint against him, after which he was thrown out from his post, or probably even imprisoned and punished?

Ha! HA! HA!

Nothing happened.

It was best to keep quiet. Nobody would believe it. Nobody would talk about it. He was above all this. It was a respectable colony. A respectable school. A calm and wonderful neighbourhood. All that was not to be sullied. It was best to keep quiet, and avoid the sleazy old man.

He was, afterall, ‘REVEREND FATHER’. 

IF YOU THINK SOMETHING IS WRONG , FIGHT IT

This happened two decades ago.

I wonder, had this happened today, will our reaction be any different?

Will we fight child abuse? Will we take up the issue with other parents, will we protest against such molestors? Will we put any effort to get such perverts punished?

Or will we, as always, simply ‘hush’ it?!!!!

To read more about Child Abuse Awareness, please head over here.

Birthday-e-bash and more

The week started in a very uneventful manner. Until I logged into Facebook. The walls were flooded with ‘Birthday Wishes’ to our very sweet and popular blogger Swaram. Messages were pouring into Swaram’s profile 🙂 and when Masood said ‘this is a social event’ we realised the event deserved enough coverage 🙂 Then Uma suggested Swaram start an ‘event’. And before the birthday girl could think twice, I started the Event on her behalf 🙂 with this note:

Guys/Girls,
I have butterflies in my stomach as I invite you to attend the glitzy (er, is that a word?) event of our very dear Swaram’s birthday party 🙂 Do come and leave some words behind, esp if you can pull her leg or reveal some interesting secrets or anecdotes 😉 Even otherwise, do come 🙂
From:
All her friends from Blogworld
P.S: Feel free to gate-crash 🙂

And guess what? Within an hour, we had 28 ‘confirmed guests’! Deeps, Vichu, Baisali, Pixie, Uma, PnA, Monu, Padma, Sagarika, Any Excuse to Write, Iya, Ashwini, Trishna, Nupur, Nancy, Rakesh, ChatterBox, Saritha, IHM, Rakesh, Indy, Supriya, Meira and Masood….

It was a rocking party.. Swaram’s birthday wishes and post on her blog spread a lot of excitement around. Guests started pouring in questions, and it was fun to see Swaram answering all of them.

First was a boring question from me: If you were stranded on an island, and had to choose ONE Man to accompany you, who would it be? Please refrain from mentioning names of spouse/parents/siblings/children 🙂

Swaram’s answer: Rahul Dravid

Uma spiced up things a bit with her question: ‘Where would you like to go for your Second Honeymoon ? Why ?’
Swaram’s answer: ‘Mt Everest’
Meira’s response: ‘She said Honeymoon not Pilgrimage, Swathi’
The rest is censored, folks 😉

Rakesh’s san-sani question: ‘Interview Question: Finally all the blogging and commenting paid off when you got the Most Responsive Blogger Award by public voting. How would you have felt if Hitch would’ve got the award instead? 😛 Honest Answer Please!!!’
Swaram: ‘Vimmuuu won it he he he ;)’
Rakesh, however, was not one to take a beating. He persisted with ‘But swar, how did you feel when Vimmu won it and not you? Did you feel like counting all the comments that you’ve posted and showing statistics to the world, how you should’ve won?’
Swaram very diplomatically replied ‘Err he called me and wished me today .. so, no comments ;)’

Meira wanted to know ‘My question: Swaram, Who has presented you with the worst birthday
gift so far??? as it goes…HONEST answer. No diplomatic answers/no for an answer accepted’
The answer was rather anti-climax 😉 ‘ribbons…school ribbons’.

Rakesh bombarded the event with one more question ‘What is the 1 thing that you really want, you’re really praying for, your husband to do for you today without you telling him to? And no, Don’t say – I’d like him to put the toilet seat up before… he he’

The birthday girl – true blooded Venetian – replied ‘That he does not watch Wimbledon or football today and devotes all his time to me ahem ;)’

IHM asked (intelligently, as always): ‘How does it feel, Swaram, to be born on the longest day on the year (21 June) – so you can have the longest birthday? :)’
Swaram: LOL … gives ppl more time to give me some birthday bumps 😛 😛 😛

Pixie threw a tiny bombshell with ‘My question – Whose wishes did you NOT expect?!’
Swaram diplomatically said :’Time pass .. she is a blogger too 🙂 Never thot she wud send such a personal mail @ that 😀 😀  That very much means I expected all ur wishes 😛 :P’

Sumita: If you could have 3 wishes granted, what would they be? 😀
Hmmmm … that I cn get my grandma bk 😛 😛
I want a vacation to Venice soooooon
Another one .. ice-creams and cakes and chocolates go calorie-free 😛

Well Swaram, we all hope you get your second two wishes as soon as possible 🙂

Deeps Perceptions: Ok heres’ an easy one for you, Swar.. whats the whackiest funniest crackiest joke you’ve ever heard which makes you laugh like crazy even today?? C’mon humour us now!
Swathi Ram Hee hee hee that I am good girl 😛 😛
Deeps Perceptions- seriously,swar..u think thats the funniest joke you’ve heard?? c’mon think hard and give us some real laughs!
Deeps Perceptions- that I asked you to ‘think hard’ can still be considered funnier since you hardly think… bhagooooooo!

Monu: ok what is the weirdest bday wish or present

Now, FB did not allow me to see this answer 😦

Uma’s simple question ‘I’ve one more…Which birthdays were the best for you – the ones before marriage or after marriage ???? u have ever got?’
set a ball rolling in a very interesting direction 😉

Miss Diplomacy replied: ‘After marriage and blogging .. bcoz with parents n family, I nw hv the husband and u guys too 😉 ;)’

Unfortunately the rest of this thread cannot be posted in a public space 😉

Meira got us all laughing with this post: ‘Since the birthday girl is busy, lets all share our hilarious moments with her….
I’l go first. She read my post on my parents’ anniversary and went ahead and wished her parents a ‘happy anniversary’ instead of a ‘happy journey’ :D’

Unfortunately, just when Swaram started opening up with spicy details of ‘Chins’ and ‘Muns’ Facebook had the audacity to Block her from writing on walls!!! This was her farewell post:  ‘FB tells me that I am posting lots of comments and that too very fast…its asking me to enter test code to confirm identity… *rolling my eyes* …this is bad…FB can outcast me like this…‘

So well, the e-party had to end early!!

But yes, we had a GREAT time 🙂

Oh, and now for the BIG ANNOUNCEMENT.

Winner of the prestigious ‘Best Interviewer’ trophy. While many of the questions were excellent, we felt the trophy should go to this very persistent interviewer… none other than .. Rakesh!! So congrats, Rakesh! (Hope I got your blog link right!!) Here is your trophy:

Signing off for now, but looking forward to the next e-Party soon 🙂

Cheers all around people!!!