Damaged goods

Trigger warning: sexual assault and suicidal thoughts

All images here are my digital avatars created as part of a series called “Exploring the Self.” Some of these were exhibited in London and New York in 2012.

The podcast version of this email is available below, but if you’d rather read and see the imagery, please keep scrolling.

Blood Tears

I am 46 and I am finally finding the courage to unburden myself of these secrets. 11 years of “manhandling” by strangers, neighbors and family members alike.

I don’t share these vignettes as a victim seeking pity … I share to finally take away the power all these men have held over me … the silent suffering I have endured all these years ... the rage I have felt that our society deemed it ok for them to use my body as a tool to pleasure themselves.

I don’t want to be haunted by their faces at random times during the day or wake up in a sweat worried that they are coming to get my daughter next.

I need to share my lived experiences — family “reputation” be damned — so that I can finally shed the shame I have carried in my body, my heart and my mind for “inviting” this abuse.

I have long been made to feel responsible for all of it. And painfully alone.

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Growing up, I was groped almost every day by the person who lived in the apartment above ours. I remember his face distinctly. His beady eyes. His mustache. His smelly breath. His yellow teeth. He looked through my clothes. Raping me with his eyes every time he passed by. Grabbing me at every opportunity.

I was in third grade when it first started. He touched me in a way that didn't feel right. He must have been in his early 20's at the time. He was newly married. My parents made me call him Chacha — the Hindi equivalent of dad’s younger brother.

His wife’s porcelain skin and culinary skills were the talk of the neighborhood. As was customary in our apartment complex, my mom would routinely send me upstairs to share a bowl of her own famous “parathas” — stuffed flatbreads — or bring one of Chachi’s famed curries. Then there were the lemons, and the curry leaves, and the extra mangoes or the chutneys … that was our culture — sharing your bounty with your neighbors and using your children as messengers.

He would squeeze me against the wall as soon his wife went into the kitchen, pin his body against mine so I could feel his hardness for those horrific 30 seconds. Once, he held me down and tried to squeeze open my mouth, his salivating tongue mere millimeters away from my lips. I squirmed but didn’t scream.

I didn’t know how to. I was 10.

Blinded by tears, I stumbled my way down the stairs every time, handing the bowl to my mom as I rushed to the bathroom. I would scrub myself raw, wash my face until it was as red as my eyes, and sit down for dinner. I remember my mom never asking me if I was alright. But there was always a comment along the lines of: “Every time you are asked to give a helping hand you sulk! What is your problem? You can’t run a simple errand upstairs without drama?”

I sat quietly. Head hanging, shoulders dropped. Unable to say what had transpired. I didn’t have the vocabulary to articulate how “dirty” I felt. Or the words to describe what he did. I ate in silence as they watched TV.

Regret

He was, after all, the funny one. The charming one. The helpful one. The one who had the most beautiful, cultured wife in the neighborhood. The one they called upon.

His wife had witnessed him trying to put his hand inside my school shirt when I was 16 … I was parking my Kinetic Honda in the courtyard when he had grabbed me from behind. She was out on the balcony putting clothespins on freshly-laundered clothes. I heard her shout, “Are you back already?” He immediately withdrew and went upstairs. I thought that would be the end of it. I imagined him getting lashed.

Later that evening as we were watering the community plants, she advised me to “wear less revealing clothes.”

She knew. She had seen exactly what he was doing. And she blamed me.

She had a daughter of her own — all of six years old — I wondered if she would have said the same to that child … her child.

Probably.

Because I know that’s what my mom had done when I told her about her father-in-law.

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I adored that man. He was intelligent, funny in a ha-ha way, caring, kind, affectionate. He would read me books and teach me how to ride a cycle. He gave me the gift of time … something my parents couldn’t afford. So, when he put his hand on top of my underwear that first time when I was nine, I didn’t know what to make of it. Perhaps, it was his way of getting even closer? I had often complained about my parents never hugging me. Perhaps, this was how he wanted to make me feel loved?

He and my grandma visited us every summer for a month. I had to share my bed with them and he would make me sleep in the middle. The following year, his hand made its way in. He would stay still. I would be frozen. Barely breathing, pretending to sleep through it. And he would be his affectionate, loving self again in the morning, doing crafts with me, slicing up fruits, playing Scrabble while verbally abusing his wife for being an imbecile. “Ganwaar” he would call her — uneducated.

Decoagulation

By the time I was 11, I knew this wasn’t your typical grandpa’s love. My three female cousins, with whom he lived the other 11 months, had shared how he would help them fall asleep at night. It was his “special way” and they had been told to keep it a secret.

I thought he would stop that one summer when I had my period. That it would be too disgusting for him. That it would make him feel filthy. It didn’t. In tears, mustering up all the courage I didn’t know I had, I went to my parents and said “Dada put his hand in my panty.”

My dad’s immediate, decidedly-dismissive, knee-jerk reaction was: “Oh he must have been joking.” And my mom asked: “Are you sure?”

These were the people that bore me. My protectors. How was I to share anything with them ever again? Of the daily abuse that was occurring right under their noses, not just this one time — as they determined — over summer?

Unapologetic

Clearly this was all my fault. Not only was I letting them down academically, I was now accusing a family member of something so heinous. A lie, perhaps, they thought to get their attention? I don’t know … I don’t know how else to justify or rationalize their (non) reaction or lack of concern.

I’ve blocked a lot of pain out from those years, but I do remember feeling like a pile of garbage. “There’s nothing you can do that I can be proud of,” said my mom one day shortly after. The only way for me to cope with the deep despair I felt, was to pretend it never happened.

This was not my truth — it was my cousins’. They were the broken ones. Why didn’t they put a stop to it? Why did they let him continue? Why did Dadi? Surely she knew…she slept in the same bed as the predator and his victims.

Why did I?

It was too much to bear … perhaps, I was the one at fault for not shutting it down. For not raising my voice. For not asking for help.

Maybe, I thought, some part of me wanted it? Wanted to be held and touched and loved? Maybe a little part of me craved for some sort of physical intimacy? Maybe I was the perverted one?

But the truth was that it didn’t make me feel safe and loved … it only made me feel disgusted with myself. I had so many conflicting thoughts and no one to share them with. So, the only way to make sense of it was to deny that it ever happened to me.

I wrote poems on assault, disguised as a social-justice issues and submitted them to teen magazines. Many were published. Some won awards. One of them earned me recognition from UNICEF. All of it, unbeknownst to my parents.

When it was too hard to find words, I’d paint. Humiliation, shame and fear equaled silence … vivid colors, controlled brushstrokes, idyllic scenes masked my inner turmoil.

Many a times I thought of ending my life … but that would give my parents another reason to feel ashamed of me. Would they be able to heal from the pain I caused? Would I forever be remembered as a mistake? A curse. A blight on the family name.

So much self-pity and self-loathing. So much loneliness.

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In my teen years, my male cousins took it upon themselves to use me as their guinea pig … dry humping during sleepovers, my developing breasts grabbed or my barely-there-hips squeezed, my neck choked, my face licked.

They had immunity.

When one of my female cousins told her mom that her own brother had tried to “French kiss her,” she was beaten with a cane by her father while her mom watched. It was supposed to “set her right!”

I knew it was better to be a rag doll. My body wasn’t mine anyway. It just felt like this thing I was trapped in.

Christiana puts it more eloquently than I can:

Seeing someone who harmed you being protected by the people who claim to love you is a special kind of hell. I see its insides every day. 

As much as I tried to protect myself from the “known” abusers by feigning illness or using upcoming exams as an excuse, there was no dearth of fellow commuters pressing against me in a crowded bus, or boys passing by on motorcycles trying to grab a boob, or street vendors grabbing their balls while smiling suggestively when all I was trying to do was help my dad buy a cauliflower head.

There was no recourse.

There still isn’t.

When my father’s dad died, he was called a do-gooder, a generous man with the heart of a saint. My father has his garlanded portrait prominently displayed in his home office. His smile continues to mock me every time my parents do a video call.

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People often ask me why I don’t want to visit India … why I loathe it so much. “Everyone visits at least once every two years except you! Do you not miss the country you were born in? The people? Your relatives? Your own parents?”

Half of that answer lies in these experiences. The other half, we’ll get into another day.

Even as a 44-year-old — with agency — when I visited for 5 days after 12 years, I was subject to a man at the airport, his wife by his side, making eye contact with me, rubbing his crotch vehemently.

He saw me pointing my phone at him to take his photo but that didn’t deter him. I didn’t call him out because I knew that I would either be made to feel “responsible” by all those strangers at the boarding gate or I would be told that I am the “educated one” .. the “cultured one” and should ignore and move on.

These men still had immunity.

As I texted the photo to my husband, I wrote: “India hasn’t changed.”

I escaped that place and its men in 2002 … and thought things would be different when I went back as a married woman dutifully every year from 2004 until 2010. But the men at the railway station, the bank, the restaurants, the streets … made me relive every single moment from my abuse-ridden childhood. They didn’t care for all the outward symbols of my being taken: the sari, the bindi, the sindoor, my husband standing by my side. None of that mattered.

Lost in digitization

Perhaps, I could have “edited” it all out … pretended not to see those instances of public masturbation? Perhaps, I could have sought my husband’s “protection?” But he seemed so oblivious to all of it. I was afraid he would not — could not — understand.

His India was so different from mine.

I never shared any of this with him because I could never rid myself of that shame. That feeling of self-loathing. The fear that if I told him I was “damaged goods” he would love me less. That it would make me undesirable. That he would reject me.

I was never good enough for my parents. How could I risk losing him?

I needed him to see me as “pure.” I wanted him to respect me. And I didn’t want him to think I had delusions of grandeur.

Perhaps, it was just something that happened in our dysfunctional family? Perhaps, it was me that attracted that kind of attention? Perhaps, in some way, then, I deserved that pain? Perhaps, it was, therefore, only mine to carry?

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They didn’t just rob me of my innocence … these men — and complicit women — collectively shredded whatever little self-esteem and self-respect I had. They gave me decades of guilt.

And a deep-seated fear for my daughter that I hadn’t realized I had carried over until my dad commented how beautiful she looked in her spaghetti strap summer dress. I recoiled involuntarily. A shiver ran down my spine, accompanied by a sickening lurch in my gut. It was a visceral reaction, one that caught me completely off guard.

What if he had the same gene as his father? Would I be able to keep my daughter safe? Would she tell me if he touched her inappropriately? Have I prepared her for the ugliness of this world? My dad never abused me but he did have an extra-marital affair … maybe he had seen his own sisters get abused … maybe he ignored it … maybe he normalized it? Was I sure that I could trust him? He hadn’t kept me safe.

The rational parts of me shouted: “She isn’t you!”

“She has a dad who is nothing like yours!”

“She is safe!”

“This is not India!”

I remember getting so sick that I sought the help of my acupuncturist … the tears flowed uncontrollably, I was incoherent, my entire body shaking in that candle-lit, windowless room. How broken was I?

She held me.

She held space for me. And my darkness.

I didn’t expect her to understand. But she did.

Katy, thank you for saving me from myself that day.

She shared some resources with me, including this one that brought so much clarity. For three years, I have read some more, got some books, listened to some podcasts, talked to a therapist … and finally realized it wasn’t me.

It was never my fault.

My soul is like a trapped moth

I know it’s not fair to tarnish an entire country’s image based on my very hyper-local experiences … but I know that this continues to be “the norm” … that women still battle this widespread socially-accepted-form-of-abuse every day. On the streets, in the pubs, while running errands. Their coping mechanism is to shrug it off as “part of our culture” or never ever talk about it. Both of which I was told to do.

Both of which I now refuse to.

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I do not have the ability to go back in time and tell little Mansi that her body was sacred and no one had the right to defile her the way they did.

I do not have the ability to forgive or forget any of them …. to dismiss it or to deny it.

I do not have the ability to protect my own daughter from being exposed to a culture that continues to objectify women.

But I do have the ability to forgive my self.

I have the ability to raise a daughter who feels safe and empowered.

Who knows self-defense. And isn’t afraid to kick a man’s balls if she needs to.

I share my story not to garner pity … but to shed all the stigma and burden around it. To try to rid my body and spirit of the deep-set rage. To release the trauma in these cells. To disempower those cowards.

To live the beautiful, safe cocoon my husband and I have built.

To love the person I am, not because of, but despite the childhood I’ve had.

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Thank you, as always, for being here. For your empathy and your kindness. My life as a young adult in a country halfway across the globe from my “motherland” has been far less traumatic … so, the messy truths will continue but there will be a lot less darkness going forward.