You are only a woman

Blurt was pretty but a very blank girl. Seventeen about turn eighteen, Blurt loved all the attention she got from men. She was exactly the kind of girl men loved to love and women loved too. She was aware of the fact that she was pretty, very aware of it. She would spend hours spent in front of the mirror, part in admiration, part in consternation over a blemish that only she could see on her white, flawless skin. Blurt was pretty high on the looks quotient, but very low on the intelligence quotient. Not that women who look good arent also bright or women who are bright are not stunning looking.They are. Wouldn't want to reinforce stereotypes, but this is Blurt's story. Blurt who was so taken with her own beauty, her face, her body, her clothes that she never paid too much attention to the rest of the world, which was a bad thing because if she had paid a little more attention she would not have died the way she did. She was coming back from school on one hot summer day in May, yes, Blurt was still only in school when she died, when she took a ride from a classmate. Rich boy he was too. His daddy had given him a big car all his own that he would drive all over town. So on that fateful day when Blurt escaped the heat in the airconditioned car, rich boy "proposed" to Blurt. "Would she be his girlfriend?" Blurt laughed. She should not have. She should have agreed and gotten off the car, gone home and told her parents. You don't laugh at rich little boys. Oh no, you dont. And if you do, you have to pay the price. So rich boy whose father was a politician was offended. He did the next best thing to salvage his honour. He dint drop Blurt home. Took her to his farmhouse. Called his friends, five of them. They all got drunk and took turns to rape Blurt hour after hour while her parents sat at home and worried about their daughter. And then when they were done, they took her unconscious, battered body and threw it like a piece of rag on the side of some dusty, deserted road where she bled to death. They found her body the next day. Ghastly little rich boy's daddy packed him off to the US where he spent the next four years using date rape drugs, getting drunk and eventually never mustering a degree. Daddy had taught him that women were good for only one thing and that they should be used and discarded once you are done with them. As for Blurt's parents, they did not pursue the case. The cops told them about how powerful the politician was. Blurt's parents had two more children to look after--two sons. They did not want to take on a powerful politician, least of all for a girl and surely not when they had sons who needed looking after.

Written for the Blank Noise Project.
There is no moral or even a point to the above story. It is not even much of a story except that if you live in India and are a woman you had better get used to the fact that for a majority of the population you are a burden, have no right to live, and if you are alive you had better get used to being stared at, groped or raped. It does not matter what you wear or what you do. If men stare of pass comments as you walk down the road, it is your fault. You have to have solicited it, sent some signal you know. If you get groped, it is definitely your fault. What were you wearing? Was it too tight? Why do you walk down that road? Surely you should know better. You are a woman, you know. These things happen. Live with it. And if you can't, either stop going out of the house without a male escort or at least stop fussing about it. You are a woman, live with it. You are weak, you need protection. Just don't become one of those wretched feminists, who are so passe, making issues out of non-issues. Oof, spare me you your diatribes. It is all in your head. This does not happen. And if it does, you have asked for it. Ensnared some poor unsuspecting male to lech, grope or rape you, just so that you could get some attention. So just shut up and keep quiet about it already.