It wasn’t HER fault.

Rape is not just a physical action. It is a mindset. No rapist wakes up one fine morning and decides to rape someone. It is a seed that grows; it is a seed watered by the mentality of the population in general.

Everytime you kill a girl fetus, everytime you decide that your son’s education is more important than you daughter’s, you water that seed. Everytime we allow a boy to hit a girl as an expression of his liking, pull her ponytails or push her books off the table, we normalise violence as an expression of all emotions. Everytime you ask a teenage girl to hide her bra strap, bodyshame her because of her growing breasts, force her to lengthen her skirt to not ‘distract’ boys, you make the female anatomy a prize one must conquer. Female body is sexualized from her birth to her deathbed.

It was her fault. She was wearing a skirt.
Then why do women in burkas get raped?
It was her fault. She was a teenager begging for attention.
Then why did an old aunty wearing a saree with her head covered get raped?
Why did a 8 months old baby girl get raped?
Did she invite it? Was she showing too much skin?
Rape. Rape is NEVER the victim’s fault. As much as we, the audience, love to comment from the sidelines, as much as we enjoy victim-shaming, it is NEVER the victim’s fault. Don’t shame a girl for being born with a vagina. It is NOT her dress, her religion, her age, her residence, her habits, HER fault.
Rape is a mindset. It is a mindset that fuels a heinous thought that a women’s body is a piece of flesh to be used at the leisure of a man’s raging hormones. It is a mindset that a woman is nothing more than a vagina made for a man’s pleasure.

Remember Nirbhaya? The outrage, the pure anger and disgust every single person in the country felt? Remember that anger? The protests, the candles, the march, the tears. It was the time that the country joined hands and decided to fight this evil. Now that the criminals have been punished, is that it? Does the anger fizzle away? Did we eradicate this disease, this flithy mindset from the country?
Remember the rage you felt when you read about Nirbhaya. Remember the disgust. And use this memory to find the strength to call out and stand against every roadside romeo who calls a girl ‘item’, ‘bomb’, ‘maal’, ‘pataka’. Stop any male AND female sexualising any human. Listen to what makes an individual comfortable and act accordingly. Understand the concept of ‘consent‘. It all starts here. Find the strength to cut it out at the root and maybe, maybe you’ll save someone’s innocence.

Alone?

And in a room full of people, I felt alone.

Vibe. Connection. Frequency.

This is an important essence to any relationship. It ascertains your level of comfort with an individual, you willingness to open up to them, to let them in. It is the key factor that decides whether that person will be someone you only politely smile at across the hall or be someone you’d walk the halls with, laughing and connecting. It is the criteria that decides all your future encounters with people and your ability to enjoy yourself around them. You need your frequencies to match before you start putting in efforts to build and nurture your relationship. Efforts without a deeper connection is watering the soil without planting the seed, hoping the plant to grow. It is in vain. Such relationships fizzle out with time. They do not survive the turmoils and hurricanes of your relationship.

Whether you agree to it or not, whether you listen to it or not, your gut always has a way of knowing who you would connect with. We have an internal compass that directs us to the people with whom our true and authentic self comes forward. It usually takes a short interaction for our gut to establish a real connection with someone and our body reacts to it. Our shoulders loosen up, the tensed brow creases disappear, our stance loses its defensive nature, the laughter doesn’t seem forced, the wall behind our eyes crumbles. Our mind and body accepts the presence of the person we vibe with. And usually, it all happens in a instant. One moment that defines our frequency with the person in front us, one moment is all it takes to be in our comfort zone.

With the increasing pace of our lives, the total disregard for emotions, connections and vibes, the deeper desire of climbing up the social ladder, disappearance of deep, meaningful connections; we’ve all forgotten the need to be in our comfort zone. We are all so busy “socialising” that we have become lazy to develop deeper relations. We all want to surround ourselves with a crowd, a long list of instagram followers and facebook friends that we no longer have a group, a friend, a person with who we have a connection with, with whom our frequency matches. The world has become a mere popularity contest and nothing more. Everybody wants to be constantly surrounded with a group that lives in the moment, jokes and celebrates life like there is no tomorrow. Nobody wants to open up. We do not surround ourselves with people who have seen our ugly, crying self. Someone who shares our interest, our view of the world, our way of living. Someone who pushes our boundaries and helps expand them, someone who has seen our tear-streaked face and not only the mask we wear around our entire life. Our this attitude has become a habit that has numbed our gut to connection, vibes and frequency. Because being a part of something is a trend now, isn’t it?

It isn’t till that moment, that one moment that you realise how alone you are. When you are at a party and you realise you don’t belong there, to the place, to the people. When everybody around you is enjoying something you have least interest in. When you are alone with yourself and you don’t recognise ‘you’. You’ve moulded your needs, likings, interests according to the people around you. You don’t have anything about yourself to call your own. You start missing the connection that never was. In a room full of people, you feel alone.

But if everybody has felt like that once in their life, if everybody has felt ‘alone‘, are you really alone? Or do you just need to find someone you connect with?