The Soul Survivor

It’s been over eight months since two best friends stated breathing together. The journey that inspired both to share their lives together is yet to be made, but nevertheless, it has begun. It’s hard to imagine what the world expects from often simple individuals who just want to live lives as they want to.

Why do you work so hard while you get paid so little? Why don’t you buy a house, an AC and a car? Why do you have to cycle down the lane? Why should you not wear gold? Why do you dress so casually? At times, these expectations drive individuals to live lives under constant pressure and threat. It is hard even to balance on a scale that may not be able to support your weight.

It is this immense pressure that makes some of us realize life’s paradox. God did intend each of us to be responsible for our souls, but also, He wants us to make sure that our lives touch hearts that need a little bit of support. With the intent of living for oneself, if one loses his/her zeal to help live their lives as well, it would rotten one’s inner being so bad that its ashes would have to just blown away into thin air. Some men and women care the least about others, let alone their own, of their flesh and blood.

The mad rush for comfort, status and pride has brought a haze of happiness that now comes at the cost of crushing other human beings. What about all those fellow workers that are trampled for more profits? What about the poor who have not paid their dues? What about the children who are left to die because they were born in a family of lower caste?

It’s time to know that this is not the end, but it is just the beginning.

The Dark Knight: Breaking the Silence on Child Sexual Abuse

Margin! Border! Boundary! Limit! There are umpteen numbers of times when we consider ourselves to be stuck inside a box. There are ALWAYS limits to what we do. Yeah, there ought to be limits, as in there has to be a limit to the space on which a car can be driven on, or a limit to what you can do or speak where others are concerned, and there can be a limit to the land on which you can build, etc. Without limits, there would be innumerable Alexanders or Hitlers who would have kept on widening the boundaries that they thought were defensible.

 

When it comes to safeguarding children in families, there are a lot of limits that are laid out too. These rules are mainly meant for children and not for adults. For example, they have a long list of things that they ‘ought not to do’ when it comes to dealing with people. Never talk to strangers who look dirty and smell bad. Never get close to an opposite gender unless you want to marry him or her. Never disclose yourself at a level that would make you vulnerable. Never play inside a house. You should smile, at all times, even when you feel like crying. Boys should never cry, for God’s sake and Girls should never fight. Never give money to a person you do not know. Never eat or drink at a home that is not clean. And never wear dresses that’d make you look like low class citizens when you are in public; and the list goes on and on and on.

 

Don’t do this, and don’t do that. Then what should they do? In the communities that church partners serve, it is often a common sight to see a mother weighing about 200 pounds landing a nasty blow on her 7 year old daughter for walking out of the house chasing her red ball or a father forcing his 10 year old skinny son to take about 25 push-ups just to make him a man or a brother selling his sister to his friends for a night just to earn his some petrol for his bike, or a sister nursing her mother’s youngest child because she lost her own child to malaria.

 

But when it comes to adults, there are seldom limits to what they could do while they are around children, or how they could treat little precious lives. According to the Report on Child Abuse 2007 by the Ministry of Women and Child Development, 53.2 per cent children have faced one or more forms of sexual abuse. This means that one out of every two children is sexually abused in India.   

 

Child Sexual Abuse still remains one of the least discussed issues in the society today; however, this is one of the main areas of Child Protection Standards that all CDCs need to keep in mind for the future. Most adults who have been abused as kids have got on with normal lives and may seem as if nothing went wrong in the past, nevertheless, the feeling of austere hatred for one’s body and feeling of being good for nothing has always been the mystery among children who have gone through the painful event in their lives.

 

Though all kinds of sexual abuse against children are severe, for the purpose of the study by the government, it was divided into two groups. First, twenty per cent of children have been victims of severe forms of sexual abuse that includes assault (including rape and sodomy), touching and fondling, exhibitionism (forcing a child to exhibit his/her private body parts) and photographing a child in nude. Second, fifty percent children have been victims of other forms of sexual abuse that includes forcible kissing, sexual advances towards a child during travel and marriage situations, exhibitionism (exhibiting before a child) and exposing a child to pornographic materials.  

 

Sexual abuse, with its known criterions, is horrific and traumatic. It is not easy for children to understand it at first, and slowly they tend to negate themselves as they go on with their lives. Raja* was one such child living in the Delhi. He never realized that the family that he was living with would change the whole course of life. His family loved entertaining guests, who often came home and stayed over for weeks. One day, his aunt came to Delhi in search of a job. Her stay was extended due to various processes that she had to go through while hunting for jobs, but since his home didn’t have much space to accommodate her in a separate room, she was always given the responsibility of taking care of  the kids at home and putting them to sleep, and one of them was Raja. Being a 7 year old boy, Raja loved being with his aunt who was always nice to him and brought him gifts after work. One night, when they were off to sleep, Raja felt uncomfortable with the gestures that his aunt was asking him to do. As days went by, it became physically painful for Raja, but he never could gather enough courage to tell his parents about the ordeal he was going through, and it lasted for two and half years till his aunt left.

 

In a separate incident Shipa* was a victim of sexual abuse by her grandfather for over five years, till one day she screamed and hit him so hard that he was scared to come back fearing that she would complain to her parents. Ironically, Shilpa did tell her mother a couple of times earlier, but she brushed it away saying that it may have been a bad dream and that her grandfather was a good man. Children, who have been abused, infrequently feel confident or good about themselves. They tend to become loners, and do not make many friends. They tend to mature faster than other children, and find it very difficult to trust adults.

 

Survivors of child abuse do not just find it difficult to go through such an instance in their lives, but find it hard to cope through their normal life cycles that they are left with in the years to come. But there is still one major question that still lies unanswered. Why are children who are being abused not identified or recognized by caregivers? Or why are children’s voices not being heard? Have their voices gone numb that adults aren’t able to listen to them?

 

Are children today allowed to cross margins that teach values? Can a child go up and tell his father that he feels wrong about his relationship with his friend’s mother next door? That’s the Margin of Respect. Can a child go to his teacher and accept his inability to identify alphabets, thus making him dyslexic? That’s the Margin of Honesty. Can a child today tell his seniors to stop abusing him? That’s the Margin of Courage. Can a child today take an injured person that he sees on the road to the hospital without an accompanying adult? That’s the Margin of Responsibility. Can a child today smile, looking at a butterfly, as he screws the bolts on to the engine of the car in the workshop he is employed in? That’s the Margin of Joy. Can a child smile at strangers that walk by her, play childish games with adults, hang out with friends at her hut, fight for peace in the family battling domestic violence or can she just feel beautiful when she looks at people around her? That’s the Margin that defines Free World.

 

Child sexual abuse still remains a taboo in India. There is a conspiracy around the subject where most people have chosen to assume it to be a western problem than accepting that it as a reality in India. Part of the reason lies in the conservative society that does not talk about emotional and physical changes in the growing years. As a result, sexual assault of children never gets reported. The girl, whose mother has not spoken to her even about a basic issue like menstruation, is unable to tell her mother about the uncle or neighbor who has made sexual advances towards her. This silence encourages the abuser so that he is emboldened to continue the abuse and to press his advantage to subject the child to more severe forms of sexual abuse. Very often children do not even realize that they are being abused.  Some deep seated fear has always moved Indian families to keep their girls and their ‘virginity’ safe and many kinds of social and cultural practices have been built around ensuring this. This shows that there is knowledge of the fact that a girl child is unsafe though nobody talks about it. However this fear is only around girls and the safety net is generally not extended to boys. There is evidence from this as well as other studies that boys are equally at risk.

 

Are parents today well connected to their children that may share their fears to them? We do chose to believe today that parents are open to their children as compared to the previous generations, but is that so? If adults, especially parents want children to report abuse, it is inevitable to assume that adults need to be approachable. A healthy communication and friendship with adults always empowers children to understand that their caretakers are the best superheroes that they could find who would protect them from all those ‘dark evil knights’. A sincere prayer is often uttered that no child  should go through the trauma of sexual abuse, but if that does happen, the bandwidth of love and care that a child has access to, always helps him or her to report such a traumatic episode in his or her life.

 

If a child reports being sexually abused, often adults exclaim, “How can I take action against a family member?” Most of the times when a child complains, adults often excuse it for social status, family respect, or what the society would say. Through all of them, we just think of the society? What about the child? What about the little child who has gathered enough courage and trusted adults to save and protect her from the dark knight? Who would reach out to the child?

 

For the record, the child is always the primary concern and everything else is secondary. Period. At such a time, all efforts should be made to understand what the child is going through and how has this traumatic event affected him or her. Child becomes important and it has to be made sure that he or she comes out healed and stronger when all this is over.

 

Also, it has to be clearly understood that child sexual abuse is a crime, just like murder, theft or any other offense. Crimes are not to be hushed up behind closed doors, rather justice needs to be served and the perpetrator needs to be put behind bars. Matthew 18:6 clearly says, ‘but if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.’ NIV (©1984)

 

Herbert Ward once said, “Child Abuse casts a shadow the length of a lifetime. “ It is time that we stand up to protect the children of this generation whom God has entrusted on us, and this becomes our prime spiritual responsibility as a Follower of Christ. Stand for what is right! Speak up against Child Sexual Abuse! Break the Silence!

 

This article is in honor of all children and adults who are created in a very Unique Way, and have been survivors of Child Sexual Abuse.  

*names changed to maintain confidentiality

A Destiny Fulfilled

I would never forget that moment that I felt the lowest in my life. There were times I imagined I would never get off a world which appeared like an expensive showroom that made me seem as if I was put up for sale at a price that may not be what you’d expect of the ‘real’ genuine product. The day I did walk out of the showroom was the first time I felt the real purpose for which I was made for. Facing up were the stars that shone the evening sky, while the rubber under me, polished the tarred roads that had steered so many out of this mess of crazy individualism and consumerist spiritualism.

I am no stranger to foldaway journeys. From the wet lands to the buffalo sheds, to the tanning industries that sent shivers up my spine watching children working extra hours just to buy bread, it had been a voyage. My life was taking me to trips that I never thought I would travel, that too for so long. Not to boast, I had been to the wet lands of God’s own Country aka Kerala, to the dustiest roads of Budlada in Punjab. I had been to the mountains of the Uttarkashi (almost near the Himalayas), to the desert like grounds that produced heat that vaporized the Nagpur façade. I had been to the roads that led to the brothels in Kolkata that served minor girls to ruthless customers, to the little byways of the Chandni Chowk in Delhi where no woman would dare to venture. For a change, I’ve also made short stopovers to the land of the Ghana people that now is called South Australia, to the huge camouflaged city of Bangkok that hid the impishness of a city. Not to mention the opportunity to touch down at Kathmandu, Colombo, Kuala Lampur and Singapore too.

Ah those were the days, when I never needed to groom myself like today, just to catch the attention of viewers who would just envy me and the one’s I swung around with. The days were beautiful, even to the times I loved the rain drops falling on my fascia making me soak the colour of the beautiful sky. It never mattered to me if I was walking for over two hours just to get to destinations that made me smile at Life’s amazing Grace. I always enjoyed the company of little ones, though not dressed like I was, but still had their own stories. They looked tired and over used at times, to the extent of being called ‘abused’. I felt sad for them; because I knew that they wouldn’t survive this journey that mere Existence takes you on.

I enjoyed the epic journeys that took me to people who listened to me, and respected me to the fact that some even prayed with me. But where there’s the Good, there ought to be the Bad too. There were so many others who kicked me, stepped, scrapped, scuffled, and tussled with me. But yes, with all those good times, these fights have brought me to where I am today.

The other day, I noticed that I had two cracks that broke open after a deadly blow to my side. Even seven stiches to the sides weren’t able to hold me together anymore. Guess discussions have begun where I may need a transplant. A transplant may cause me to forget all that I had felt, touched, caressed, embraced, cuddled, stroked, experienced and practiced endlessly for the past four years. Well yeah, I did think that I would live a little longer, but no ‘Shoe’ is made to last that long.

My name is ‘Shoe’ and I am 4 years old. The two cracks in my sole may not hold me together any longer, but this life that I loved living with the person who wore me and loved me, and showed me off will never go waste. I do not know if I will miss being worn, but yes, I will miss being used for a purpose that was my destiny – a destiny to safeguard the ‘beautiful feet’ that carried a Miracle to the unknown world.