The best way to know the self is feeling oneself at the moments of reckoning. The feeling of being alone, just with your senses, may lead you to think more consciously. More and more of such moments may sensitize ‘you towards you’, towards others. We become regular with introspection and retrospection. We get ‘the’ gradual connect to the higher self we may name Spirituality or God or just a Humane Conscious. We tend to get a rhythm again in life. We need to learn the art of being lonely in crowd while being part of the crowd. A multitude of loneliness in mosaic of relations! One needs to feel it severally, with conscience, before making it a way of life. One needs to live several such lonely moments. One needs to live severallyalone.

Wednesday 14 March 2012

FALAK: THE SKY CALLS..AND THE AFTERTHOUGHTS

From January 18 to March 8 – from a severely bruised and battered condition to the stable one – from the battered baby of AIIMS to the miracle baby of India!

Falak can go home as the doctors said on March 8 adding that they were not discharging her as the issue with her guardianship was yet to be clear.

So she remains there, in AIIMS children’s ward and the staff there has no problem in attending to the baby.

Doctors said they had received many requests to extend help to the two-year old. Some even proposed to adopt her. But the guardianship issue will only be resolved after the legal tools validate it.

Ironically, for Falak, the sky is an open place now. Falak has plenty of choices as what could be her next home and it is a good sign that the society is coming forward to show the goodwill. Hope there should be good enough number of those among the well-wishers who are well aware of Falak’s situation that she might not grow up mentally and would need special attention.

Equally pathetic is the story of Falak’s immediate blood relatives – her mother, brother and other sister. Presently they are in different shelter homes of Delhi. Her mother has been a victim of human trafficking and so her sister and brother and Falak herself.

But has the basic issue consolidated as the ‘big’ Question?  

A two-year old has become the talking point and national issue raising debates on the issue of human trafficking in India and the Indian media scores some brownie points here. But, like always, we seem to have skipped another chance where a much debated issue could well have become the question of national significance on a malaise that is slowly killing the basic texture of the social weaving.

The range of human trafficking aspects involved in the Falak case is horrifying and so this case is important as an eye-opener.

Falak’s mother was first tried to be forced into prostitution. Then she was forced to marry someone in Rajasthan by the same people. First she was victim of forced sex racket. Then she had the ordeal of going through another human trafficking racket in India. In some Indian states like Haryana and Rajasthan with declining sex ratio, poor and needy women from other states are sold to the men to keep their generations alive as well as to serve as lifelong maid.

After her mother was forced married, Falak, her sister and brother were given to different people. This child trafficking led Falak to the prime accused Rajkumar and the 14-year old girl who had brought Falak to AIIMS.

This 14-year old girl is again a story that demeans everything that is human. After being abused by her father, she ran away but was again trapped by father’s friends and was raped incessantly. She was taken to different cities; was forced into sex trade; was beaten and raped when she resisted forced marriage to an old man. Yesterday, the police registered case against her for assaulting Falak after she admitted during one of the psychological therapy sessions that it was she who inflicted injuries on Falak’s body in a fit of rage after she was left alone with the baby.

It is appalling that media reports have been carrying plenty of news reports on forced sex trafficking, child sex abuse and increasing cases of rapes with minors but seldom have we gone beyond the point of debates to take tough, groundbreaking measures to effectively control the epidemic.

Falak’s case generated a heightened tension and there looked a likelihood that the issue was going to put ‘the REQUIRED big’ question mark on our survival as a just, humane society, and so, might have pushed for some desperate measures to eliminate the threats.

But that has not happened..yet again!

©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey - http://severallyalone.blogspot.com/