It took me a while to finally gather up the courage to write
this and finally decide to share the experience of sexual abuse
that I faced during my childhood.
In our times, there was no sex education at school, and
discussing sex across the table with peers was a taboo. Till some extent I feel
it still is, till a great extent despite all the liberation.
In the house where I was born and brought up, we often had
relatives visiting us when I was a child. When I was 6, my maternal uncle’s
son, touched my body for the first time. I was not in a state to understand
what happened, but somehow that memory remains etched in my brain forever. My
mother was busy cooking, and he was sitting next to me on the bed and talking
to me. Suddenly his hand reached under my pants and I felt his touch for the
first time. It lasted for a few minutes and then he told me that this is
something I should never share with anyone. And I kept quiet, only because I
had no clue to what was happening. He came over to our house again and again,
and this is something that continued for quite some time. Somehow, after a
certain period of time, it was over and before I could understand, there was a
hidden box of mixed feelings that grew inside me as I grew up. Something I
could not explain to myself for a very long period of time.
However, after this incident the experiences did not stop. The
sexual abuses continued, as there were two other relatives, one my cousin and
the other my brother-in-law, who abused me for each time they paid a visit to
our house. Touching me, playing with my body, kissing me forcefully, grabbing
me, fingering me, and making me touch them. And just not relatives, there were one or two
neighbours who attempted and abused me. All that they had to say after each of
their sexual exploitation was, ‘hush, hush!’ And maybe by then, I had got into
the habit of keeping silent about these events, and no one, including myself, ever
maybe thought that something like this could happen to a child, and therefore
there was no conversation on this, ever.
At 11, when I started menstruating, my mother gradually
became protective about me. Thankfully for her protectiveness, the sexual
abuses stopped, but yet I was not able to open up to anyone. After a while,
through school and being involved in LTS (A leadership training service), I met someone senior who treated me as
his younger sister. He was the first person with whom I was able to gradually
share these experiences and incidents and open up to him, trying to deal with the scars. It was he who helped me
understand what had happened and enabled me to face myself. Looking back at
those faces, moments, experiences only made things worse for me, because they
not only harmed me mentally but also affected my physical development. He kept
on talking to me, encouraging me to overcome the dark shadows that surrounded
me and he also wanted to talk to my parents, but I don’t know why I stopped
him that time. I tried many times to speak it out to my parents by myself
later, but I was unable to do so. The moments haunted me for long, making my
teen phase, much more complicated than it should have usually been.
Those dark moments left me scared, lonely, deserted,
scattered, confused, abused and hurt with a sense of overpowering inferiority about
myself engulfing me. It took years for me to come out of my shell, to finally
break out of those lingering painful moments, moving out of those terrorizing shadows
that shrouded my body and mind. However, when I was older and I saw those
people eye to eye, it used to give me a kick that they always turned away their
face from me. They thought they will break and finish me, and when they saw the
bolder side of me, they were unable to face me.
But I overcame that thought with time, with true strong men
as my true friends, their support and conviction and also from strong, powerful
female friends who understood the scars left on my soul and accepted me for who I am. And through this
process and over times, I enabled myself to be bold enough to say NO to men for
sexual pleasure when only they want to have it. Women have the power and the
guts to move ahead in a positive way for sex when they want to, and yes, they prove it right.
