I prepared myself for an insult as I opened the chit with trembling fingers. Before my mother made me delete my Facebook account, it was inundated with messages which said more or less these things:
Slut.
Fuck you.
You got what you deserved.
You should be gang-raped.
Did you and your brother together fuck the entire team?
I read the note. The handwriting was beautiful, and the note said, I believe you. I smiled for the first time in days. This wasn’t someone from my family. Or Namrata or Norbu or Danish. It was from a stranger, and that somehow mattered.
I ate my lunch alone. When the bell rang, I went and sat in the class for the next three hours wondering who amongst the students had sent that chit. My desk had SLUT scrawled on it. But inside the desk were two more chits with the same message, I believe you. I folded them and saved them with the other note. I spent the rest of the period rubbing out the word SLUT on my desk.
‘How’s your first day going?’ asked Danish when I entered his office.
‘I could see you standing outside the class. Thank you.’
He pulled up a chair next to me.
‘You tell me if anyone says anything to you, okay?’
I nodded.
‘You have to remember that you have been wronged, and he should pay for it.’
I nodded again.
‘Someone wrote the word “slut” on my table,’ I told him.
‘Then we have to do something about it,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘We will think about it,’ he said. ‘Did you manage to take notes today? Concentrate on the teacher’s words.’
I shook my head.
‘Oh. Never mind, my brother is a sort of genius and he never studied in class either. He will teach you when the exam time comes.’
‘They also abused Norbu and Namrata,’ I said.
He pushed a pad in front of me and asked me to write the names of the students who did it.
‘But—’
He asked me to write out those names and I did.
‘What are you going to do?’
‘Namrata had an idea,’ he said, got up and rummaged through his desk.
He took out a few printouts and laid them out in front of me. I read through the pages. They were prints of all the nasty stuff the students had either messaged me or wrote on the bathroom stalls or scribbled on blackboards about me, Namrata, Norbu and my brother.
‘Norbu helped Namrata hack into their Facebook and Google accounts to fetch these. We are going to mail these to their parents so that they know the kind of language their children use.’
‘I see no point . . .’ I said, scared of what their parents would think of me, but he interrupted me and asked me to read them again. I did so.
Sahil Chugh: Aisha is a fucking slut, man! A train can pass through her pussy without a groan.
Arunee Mehra: Norbu? That gay asshole? He should get down on his knees and suck my dick, man. And his girlfriend surely would love to eat my cum.
Shrikant Gupta: I think Sarthak became gay because he knew he wouldn’t get anyone hotter after fucking his own sister.
He continued, ‘Their parents should know. It should teach them a lesson.’
‘But—’
‘Don’t worry. I will have people keep an eye on them. They won’t touch you. And the minute they say anything, let me know. Their parents would be notified and I have a feeling this time people will believe us,’ he said, his eyes fiery embers.
‘Why are you—’
‘Because their voices need to be snuffed. Only then will our voice be heard.’
The bell rang.
‘You should head back to your class now. Don’t be weak.’
I nodded. ‘Thank you, Danish.’
‘Thank Namrata and Norbu. This is my job. What they are doing is great. You’re lucky to have them.’
*
I thanked Namrata and Norbu and they asked me to stop embarrassing them. We were still waiting for our chemistry teacher to come when the door was slammed open and Vibhor walked in with four of his most hateful cronies. My heart jumped and I dug my nails into Namrata’s hands.
‘Just stay quiet. Don’t cry,’ Namrata whispered.
They jumped and stomped on the tables and walked straight towards us. Vibhor sat on the table in front of us and the cronies sat on the chairs, all of them cocking their heads, hissing.
‘We will see you later,’ said one of the cronies to Norbu who was trying to wriggle past and leave the class.
Norbu looked at me apologetically and I managed to smile back at him as he stood at the door, watching helplessly.
‘What do you think you were trying to do, bitch? Did you think you would fucking beat me?’ snapped Vibhor.
My classmates dropped everything they were doing and looked in Vibhor’s direction.
‘You’re nothing but a fucking jealous slut.’ He stood up on the bench and faced the class.
‘She lodged a complaint against me. Imagine her fucking guts! She came to my party, got drunk on my alcohol, spent my money, went to my bedroom, fucked me, not once but twice and then shouted rape! Poor, poor Aisha, that’s what you wanted people to think about you? Why don’t you tell them what the lawyer said about you? Huh?’
‘Vibhor—’
‘I can’t hear you. Let me tell them if you’re being too shy. He told everyone that she’s a slut who sends her naked pictures to boys. That she had always wanted to gag on my cock and fuck me. He read texts in the courtroom. Wait wait wait. Where are you going, Aisha? Stay here and let me read them out to the class?’
He scrolled through the texts.
‘Are you naked, Vibhor? Damn! This is what the slut sent me days before she fucked me. And all this is hard evidence, Aisha. Now say, what were you saying again?’
‘Vibhor—’
He addressed the class. ‘I came here for you guys. To tell you to be beware of these middle-class, attention-monger bitches. Talk nicely to them and what do you know? They fleece you off your money, drink your alcohol, talk sweetly to your mother and then cry rape.’
‘You raped me—’
‘Blah blah blah. SHUT THE FUCK UP. I know what she would have done if we didn’t have a strong case against her. She would have asked for settlement money! Wait, wait, it just struck me. Oh my God. It makes sense now. Is this how your brother got the money to go to Poland? Threaten someone with a gay rape case? Because your shitty-ass father couldn’t work for a thousand years and get the money!’
I got up, stumbled and fell on my face. I cut my lip and it started to bleed. I tasted metal in my mouth. Vibhor laughed.
‘Look at the slut go.’
I got up and ran past them crying, and heard Vibhor and the cronies laugh behind me. A girl whispered into my ears just as I ran past her, Be strong.
45
Danish Roy
‘How did it go? You look angry,’ asked Ankit as I entered the house.
He was furiously typing away at his laptop, chewing a pencil. The white board behind him had gibberish written on little post-it notes stuck haphazardly. I tried to read one and he slapped my hand away.
‘Don’t spoil the order.’
He gets that way whenever he’s working on a new project.
‘Quite awful. It might be the worst day of my life,’ he said.
I told him about the letters we had sent to all the students’ parents. The principal’s phone had been ringing off the hook since then. Most of the parents didn’t budge, didn’t want their kids to apologize, called Aisha names and told me to concentrate on throwing Aisha—a girl with no character—out of the school. They fought with me for hours on end, even told me they thought their kids were being noble by supporting Vibhor against a false rape case, and whatever slurs—cum guzzling slut, randi, prostitute, whore—Aisha was being subjected to by their kids was fair. They told me they would move court if their kids were asked to apo
logize.
Thankfully, a few of the parents sounded angry and apologized for their sons’ and daughters’ behaviour, and assured the principal it wouldn’t happen again. They asked me to apologize on their behalf.
‘What did you tell them?’
‘I have asked them to come in person and apologize to the aggrieved parties. A few of them are coming on Monday.’
‘Aggrieved parties? Is that how you talk these days?’ he laughed and I rolled my eyes. ‘I’m just kidding, but it’s a great idea. You’re like her knight in shining armour.’
I told him it wasn’t really my idea, and that Aisha wasn’t a damsel. It was Namrata who was the knight, if anyone.
‘And what about the parents who are not coming? Nothing about them?’
I shook my head. ‘They abused me, threatened me, and told me it was Aisha’s fault and that their kids were right in supporting Vibhor.’
‘What? I . . . I don’t know what to say that. Did they even read what kind of messages their kids were sending out? The language?’
‘They did. But as they say, like parents like kids. Out of the twenty-three students whose parents we had contacted, fourteen took the fight to the school and wanted me gone. But the principal has been extremely supportive. He even fetched CCTV footage to support our claims. So that’s really nice of him.’
‘I still can’t believe some parents can be such assholes!’ he said.
‘Yeah, I was kind of taken aback too. Remember the first time you said bhenchod when you were in the eleventh? Mom brought the entire house down and didn’t talk to both of us for a month. A month! And these parents will do anything to shield their kids. If their parents are okay with the kind of sexist language these kids use, what else do you expect from the kids?’
‘Yeah. God knows what the fuck is happening to people. Anyway, come and see this. It might cheer you up,’ he said, and motioned me over.
I peered into his screen which looked straight out of the Matrix movies.
‘You expect me to understand this?’
With a few quick clicks and commands he made it all disappear, leaving behind a little empty dialog box and the little button on the right side which said, ‘TALK TO ME, I’M LISTENING’.
‘What is this?’
‘This is you, Danish, a faster, omnipotent work in progress version of you.’
I told him he had lost it.
‘Let me explain how. Now suppose Aisha didn’t know you, or scratch that, if I needed someone to talk to in that hotel room in Mumbai, who would I have turned to? Or Sarthak for that matter? Who could he have talked to?’
With a flourish of a hand he pointed towards the screen.
‘Write anything and you will have someone to talk to. It’s totally anonymous. So if you have a problem you can’t share with anyone, this website will come to your rescue. Write your problem and it will guide you to anyone who can help you, talk to you and be there.’
‘Like a suicide helpline? Only online and for every kind of problem?’
‘Sorta.’
‘And anyone can join and start helping other people?’
‘Yes, anyone. You can just sign up and start posting your problem or start helping people. As simple as that. Anyone can sign up!’
‘You do know that if it’s anyone, people can be easily misguided, right? What if I write fuck-off to someone’s genuine problem?’
‘There are two fail-safes for that. First, anyone registering will have to first write an essay on why they want to help people, and secondly, they will have to get verified with a photo-ID. Also, I’m working on an algorithm where the answers can be screened for profanities. And last but not the least, every problem will be sent to at least ten people, so even if one of those ten is naughty, nine will be nice!’ he said. ‘So as I said, it’s an updated version of you.’
‘You’re giving me way more credit than I should get.’
‘Am I? I found those little chits you’re making for her, and I’m guessing you are going to drop them in her bag or her desk,’ he said.
‘She needs to know there are people out there who believe her.’
‘I have another idea,’ he said, and turned back to his laptop. ‘I can send out ten emails every day to her from IDs that don’t exist. You can say whatever you want to and she will never know these people don’t exist.’
‘Can you—’
‘Of course I can.’
‘How are—’
‘How am I not rich, successful and adorable? I actually am.’
‘When was the last time you got some decent hours of sleep?’ I asked.
‘Sleep is immaterial when you have cracked a big idea, bro,’ he said and asked me to mail him whatever I wanted to say to her so that he could forward them to Aisha.
He got back to his laptop, tapping furiously at what I thought was a brilliant idea. But that’s what I always expect from my genius brother.
*
The next day, the parents of the boys and girls were already waiting in the principal’s room when I got there. Out of the twenty-three kids whose parents we had reached out to, only eight had found this issue pressing enough to visit the school. Just great. Why did the other parents even bother to send their kids to school if they were okay with them being raised as savages? Why get teachers to teach them when all you do is threaten them when they voice their opinion or act harsh with the kids?
I took my seat. The principal introduced me to the parents and the parents hung their heads. ‘He’s Danish, the teacher who caught them using bad language while addressing their fellow students.’
‘Hi. I’m Danish. I would like to thank all of you for coming there. You took the trouble to listen and try to address the issue unlike the parents of other kids who didn’t think it was important enough to chide their kids who were openly harassing their fellow students. I’m glad to see you here.’
The parents nodded. I passed out the printouts of what their kids had written or said to Aisha, Namrata and Norbu. They read it and looked murderously at their kids.
I continued, ‘I think we should call the boys and the students they humiliated.’
The parents nodded reluctantly.
Fifteen minutes later, eight kids and their angry, repentant parents stood in front of Aisha, Namrata and Norbu. Aisha’s mother was there too and she was the first one to speak. Her voice quivered, and her fingers, which were wrapped around Aisha’s hand, trembled. ‘Namaste. Thank you for coming here. It means a lot to me and to Aisha. As you know by now, the court says my daughter wasn’t raped and Vibhor, the boy your kids are friends with, is innocent. We have accepted the court’s order. What else could we do? We can’t change that. But what we can expect is for Aisha to come back to school and attend her classes like everyone else. Without anyone calling her a . . . without anyone calling her names. Is that too much to ask for my daughter? What did my daughter do to your sons and daughters that they hit her? Spit on her? Write words like “slut” on her desk? Or her bag? Why?’ Aisha’s mother looked up at a few of the women who felt ashamed. ‘Can’t they let her study in peace?’ Aisha’s mother rummaged through her bag and brought out mark sheets of Aisha, right from the second standard to the eleventh. ‘Here. Here. Here.’
Aisha’s mother smiled weakly at the old, yellowed mark sheets. I took them from her and passed them around. The parents stared at them because they couldn’t meet Aisha’s mother’s eyes. ‘She’s has always been a scholarship student, always among the top three students in her batch. When she was younger, the class teachers even made weaker students sit with her so they could learn. And now the same students . . .’ Her voice trailed off. She clasped her hands as if to beg. ‘I’m requesting your kids to leave her alone. Can you do that for her? I’m not asking you to believe her. Just leave her alone?’ It looked like she would burst into tears but she didn’t and instead held Aisha, who was crying now.
There was silence. The parents shifted in their places, angry and ashame
d.
‘Apologize to them,’ a few parents said to their boys. Things happened in quick succession from then on.
A mother slapped her son and waved the printout in his face. ‘Is this what we have taught you, huh?’ The mother looked at Aisha’s mother and said, ‘I don’t know where he learnt all this. We are sorry.’
A father cried for her daughter. A couple of boys apologized before their parents got hold of them.
Aisha’s mother was consoled by a boy’s parents. ‘We are sorry. We had no idea. We will make sure our boy stays away. We know Aisha. He would often get Xeroxed notes of her copies home. We are so sorry.’
A girl cried and hugged Aisha. They muttered their apologies and swore they would never do it again. Aisha stared at her feet. The parents apologized to Aisha as well once the kids were done.
Finally, Aisha spoke, her eyes pools of tears, ‘Can you ask them why they called us names? Why they spat on me? Why they called Namrata—’
The parents looked at their kids. They didn’t answer.
‘Your parents are asking you something,’ I said.
One of the boys finally spoke, ‘She filed a rape complaint against our friend, Vibhor. And he won. We knew he was lying and—’
The boy was interrupted by a tight slap that resounded against his cheek. His father heaved in anger.
‘But she went to his house—’
His father slapped him again. The other parents looked at their sons like they were pond scum.
‘Don’t hit them,’ mumbled Aisha, behind the tears. ‘He’s right. I drank. I went to his place. I thought he loved me. He was my boyfriend. I stayed quiet. It’s my fault, is it?’
Aisha’s mother continued, ‘I had given her the permission. It was her eighteenth birthday.’
‘Mom, she was drunk,’ argued Kunal, one of the boys.
‘So?’ snapped his mother, and stared down her son.
‘The boys made her feel she deserved it, or that she was lying,’ I said.
A father slapped his son and held him by his collar. ‘You have a sister, Karan. What if this happened to her? Haan? Would you doubt her too, you asshole? And whatever happened was between the girl and the boy. Why did you have to butt in? Is that why we send you to school?’