Rapists are Made in Schools!

Years ago, on a wintery January evening, we were in our school bus on our way back home from an annual picnic.  I was in my 9th grade. It was already late in the evening and the sun had gone down; but not the spirits. The entire bus was bursting with noise, realizing that it was the last few hours of a well-deserved picnic day.

Many boys and girls as usual were standing and dancing and shouting and mostly having fun.

Meanwhile, when everything looked fun and happy, the lights went off for a few brief moments and up went a roar of excited noises again. But when the lights were back, one of the girls was seen sobbing with her face buried in her palms. She had been groped in those brief seconds. The entire thing had been a setup and the girl was already marked out way before. I knew who the boys were. The puny I remained silent. The girl remained silent. The next day in school was business as usual.

After all these years, when I recollect that incident, a chill goes down my spine. It was only 9th class and these were my batch mates who were already practiced molesters. (Some of them are in my Facebook today and probably reading this.)

During that time, I wasn’t quite able to make sense of all of that. I thought of them then as “bad” boys. I also thought that such acts were normal for bad boys to do. But years later, when I introspect today, the trend was symptomatic of a dangerous society in the making. They weren’t just “bad” boys. They represented dangerous seeds sown into our very society. And there were other boys being sucked into it unwittingly.

These boys projected the macho gang, the brave hearts, the noisy and the boisterous ones. I too for a long time was sold to that image. My feeble personality then and a weakling that I was, desired somewhere to be like them. To be able to talk like them, walk like them with that air of nonchalance and gay abandon; to be able to bully the “good” boys and see terror in their eyes. They portrayed an enormous strength to my weak unsure eyes.

I also for sure have witnessed young boys of the same ilk stationed in busy malls and shopping centers tracking women, violating them quickly and escaping into the very crowd. This would be their favorite evening pass time and they would high-five each other on every successful attempt.

They were so immersed in this debauched act that their nervous smiles defied all innocence of their age.

Rapists aren’t constructed among regular people just out of the blue. It takes years to manufacture one. They are a work in progress over the years having let off with many such violations while growing up. And when the opportunity presents, their character, hardened by years of digressions reveals itself with beastly glory.

Each time a young boy utters a maaki or a behenki, he is a work in progress. Don’t kid me that uttering such mouthfuls is innocuous. Each utterance is cementing the portrayal of the idea of a woman in his mind, especially when you name a mother and a sister in your expletive. I for one learnt all my expletives from my school and so did everyone else.

The malaise is symptomatic in these “little” things that are left unchecked around us and manifests in the ultimate violation of women, called rape.

-Ravi Kumar