Resounding the Bell Purposefully!

It might seem a little too late, since a movement started to end domestic violence at home and send out a message to the world that the safest place for women actually renders them most vulnerable to harm. And if we as individuals are to retain some semblance of virtue and goodness for future generations, we best be cleaning up our own back-yards and spurring others on as well. In this, Breakthrough’s Bell Bajao Campaign (www.bellbajao.org) singes our collective conscience for those of us who do too little or nothing at all while walking away from a situation that may cause an embarrassment too fleeting, but might mean life or death for a particular woman and her children. I am no superman, but there have been a couple of times, when I more than ‘rang the bell’ – kind of put my self where my heart, mouth felt at home.

Sometime in April 2004 in Noida – Sector 41, dusk was falling and I had just begun my favourite evening ritual to fill up my hours before bed time - a form of active zen meditation - running! I had just broken into a cool sweat, passing some new construction when I heard the screams. They came from a shack assemblage of smog draped plastic, standing on an open plot alongside fresh bricks, mortar and cement. I hesitated for a split second and then leaped over the gutter that separated the plot from the main road. I had barely come to a standstill when a wisp of a woman with a teary child in her arms ran straight towards me screaming “Bhaiya (brother)! Please do something; my husband is beating my son!” Her pale face and eyes wide with terror, disheveled appearance, and parched lips, undoubtedly dry from screaming anguished entreaties bore painful testimony to the scars of her individual womanhood. My own fear and loathing threatened to choke me even as I screamed “Hai!” towards the entrance of the hut. The cries and shuffling sounds from within the hut stopped abruptly! Almost immediately, young boy with a torn shirt ran stumbling and falling out of the hut and into his mother, clutching her torn sari.

As I stood with my posture adopting a tinge of unnatural menace, blood rushed to my brain as I desperately tried to outthink the pace of events that began to unfold beyond our control. A man came out after a suspended interminable silence, his face, a contorted mask of rage and arrogance. I was after all, an intruder! This was his house, his woman, his affair and I had no business here. I scanned the scenery behind him. A cycle rickshaw, kerosene stove, pans and a makeshift bed of old clothes. They were rural folk – poor landless labourers who had fled the poverty of their village hoping to eke out a living in India Shining - the seductive truth that brings most of our rural poor into the informal economy.

“What are you doing?” “Have you lost your mind?” my harsh questions cut the space between us. His posture began to mirror mine but his eyes could not hide his fear. If he called my challenge, he had to have the heart to stand in front of me and take whatever came. My open palms inadvertently clenched into fists – I so badly wished away this hated moment. The woman cut the tense energy with her pleading – “Bhaiya, please tell him something, he thrashes my son often and when I try to interfere, he beats me too. Her husband stared at her, muttered something unintelligible and looked down. Now it was my turn to scream, “You have no right to hit her and why are you hitting your son?” “What has he done for you to hit him?” No reply. The sullen staring and muttering continued and it seemed like he was cursing us all.

By this time some onlookers gathered around and even tried to plead with him to be reasonable. I then barked, the ultimate wound to his pride. “If I see you hit your wife again or hear of it, I will make a formal complaint to the police and have you thrown in jail!” As if on cue, a Police Patrol on noticing the crowd, parked their van and a constable got out. He held in his left hand a stout stick and there was no pretense about what he was willing to do. Before any sanity could prevail, some of the onlookers began speaking in loud voices about the quarrel and how this man habitually abused his wife and children. The constable’s right hand shot out suddenly in an arc that landed solidly on the man’s left ear and felled him to the ground! The dazed man collected himself and started screaming like a mad man and kicking his feet in all directions. The constable then caught hold of him by the scruff of his neck and began to drag him towards the squad car. Only this time, he raised his stick! My only thought as I watched helplessly, was that this man was going to return and take it out on his wife after all of us had left the scene.

What followed next shocked my heart and wrenched my well-schooled logic from its moorings! The woman, his badly bruised wife, used her body as a shield, and began begging for mercy with the constable not to take her husband. The heartbreaking scene was that her pleading actually carried the earnest tone of love! Anyone, anywhere who has ever loved knows the intimate timbre of the voice that speaks of love for their other – an indelible tenderness suffuses their words. The absurdity of love’s generous madness in the face of anger, violence and hate was overwhelming. It was heartbreaking as it dawned on me that this way of loving in such undeserving circumstances was something almost only a woman could do! Honestly, all of us, including me wanted this man to receive the poetic justice that he had coming to him.

In spite of myself, I reached over and touched the constable lightly on the shoulder and requested him to let the man go. The bystanders, who were shocked into silence until then, gathered their courage and began to request him also. The constable let the man go with a stern warning. After the crowd dispersed, I lingered awhile and then strolled home, my evening ritual long forgotten. I kept hoping that his shame and fear would overcome his pride to hurt his wife, knowing now that the world was watching and could also be a participant.

I know this was not the last incident in her life and for that matter for most women, especially those who do not have a voice or a forum of formal justice. But if neighbours and particularly men come forward to own their favourite virtue which confers true manhood – to protect and shelter with strength and purpose, instead of being silent and abusive; women every where can own a favourite of theirs – love and nurture of children and the future of families…and men.