Rain has been the only redeeming reality in a week torn by the terrible. Terrible details of human depravity emanating from different corners of the country about horrific crimes committed. “Mother Nature is crying,” said a vegetable vendor, a woman who wakes up at the crack of dawn and boards a local train when it is still pitch dark, to come to the city from her village in the outskirts to sell her fare. “Khub bhoy hoy….buk duru duru kore….kokhon ki hoy….kintu ki korbo?” she says, sighing. It means she is gripped by fear….dread….a niggling terror about the unknown but what can she do? She has to earn a living and fend for her family. “How can this change?” I ask her. What is her suggestion to the terrible problem plaguing the world from time immemorial where women need to feel fear for doing nothing but being the gender that they are? I know it is a loaded question. Naïve even. But I took it to girls, women, men and boys.
The vegetable vendor laughs. “This problem does not have a solution,” she declares.
Others differ. “Poriborton (change) will happen,” says a cook who works in a Calcutta house. “I work in a home where the Dada drinks a lot and initially I used to be very apprehensive because the Boudi goes to office. But not a single day did he misbehave with me or make any lewd remarks. And after working there for two years, I tell myself, ‘If this man can be decent even under the influence of alcohol, then why can’t other men be like this? In fact, I have been emboldened enough to tell him to quit drinking for his own health.” The cook’s confidence in change is based on her empirical experience. “When the mind is pure, no drinking influences a man to do something bad.”
Good people need to be cultivated, she says. “Though Dada is educated, it does not necessarily mean that every boy has to be this level of educated to develop a pure or good mind. It can be done despite one’s educational or economic background.”
The simplistic question did also trigger sniggers, as I knew it would. “Seriously?” scoffed sociologist friend. Who told me what I already knew. Violence against women is an eternal social evil which is rooted in complexities which go deep….from power dynamics to social structures, the injustices of which are too innumerable and too insurmountable to do anything about. There cannot be a holistic cure. We can and only know how to respond with knee jerk reactions. Incidents of violence against women –domestic or public – take place on a daily basis and when protests erupt, these don’t and cannot address the roots of evil.
But what ARE the roots of evil then and can these be eradicated?
“Nope,” said sociologist friend, echoing vegetable vendor. “The roots of evil are ingrained in the structure of society, if not human nature, which are too deep to uproot. If you look for sources, it would be the propensity or need to exert power, domination and this is not just individual but societal.”
Of the people I discussed this topic with in the week that just went by, dozens felt that there were external triggers to built-in internal, “evil” propensities. Said a young man, “Drugs or drinking alcohol or watching ‘lewd’ videos can result in expressions and acts of violence.” He laments that these have been generously injected into society and there is no getting away from it. “The people vested with power don’t just want to do anything about it but are the very people perpetuating it….since the beginning of time….what can we do about it? Nothing.”
Fortunately disagreeing arguments were equally convincing. “Evolution is all about change,” a science student said, echoing the cook, confident of change. “Though we have a long road ahead of us we have also come a long way.”
And that path has always been drenched with the tears of Mother Nature. She has howled through thunder, through lightning. Rain has always come as respite in times of trouble. As today.