Kathua & Unnao -- In-dia is In-dead

Five & half years ago, I wrote intensely & emphatically about Jyoti Singh [Nirbhaya]. My letter [article] wasn’t sad, it was flambuoyant, and it had a message of Hope. 

I couldn’t have been more fucking delusional.

Five & half years later, things have changed for the worse. Absolutely expectedly

Before I sat down to write about eight-year-old Asifa, who, like India, is dead, I read several insightful articles over the past three days. All the discerning opinions were connected by these five major elements.

InfuriatingRage, InstantCapitalPunishment, SelectiveCompassion, Hate&BlameBJP, DemandForAccountabilityAndChange

InfuriatingRage: Outrage & Anger feel good and are vaguely therapeutic. They ‘stir & shake’ but don’t ever bring lasting change.

InstantCapitalPunishment: Capital Punishment feels like the 'right thing', doesn’t it. It brings no change at all. 'Reform' not Capital Punishment is the answer.
P.S. Don’t challenge this fact before, like me, you’ve read multiple evidence-based critically acclaimed books on the lack of efficacy of Capital Punishment & How Capital Punishment has led to zero positive change in the US & worldwide.

SelectiveCompassion: Human Compassion, like humans, is a hypocrite - It’s always selective. While we’re crying out for Asifa, thousands are getting raped, brutalized & murdered. Millions of kids are sleeping on an empty stomach, yet we’re shamelessly taking our kids to posh restaurants for a lavish dinner.

Hate&BlameBJP: Now, bring Congress back & let them fuck whatever is left of India. Ha!

DemandForAccountabilityAndChange: Do you think this is the first occasion someone has demanded change & answers in India. For 100s of years, we’ve been asking for change & answers. But the answers we’re looking from someone else aren’t with them. Then where are they? They’re with us.

Introspection [examination of one’s own conscious thoughts, feelings and soul] is one aspect that’s conspicuously missing from our DNA. And let me say this - unequivocally - it is always missing. 

No article I read [this is not limited to Asifa] - No person I spoke to - ever accepted the partial blame themselves. No one said or wrote that they, at a certain level, were responsible for what befell Asifa.

I will fix this cavity.

“I, Gaurav Bist, am, doubtlessly, responsible for, and not limited to, Asifa’s rape & demise.”

I did not know Asifa [will never know her]. I did not know the perpetrators. I do not, under any circumstances, condone their actions. I loathe them unreservedly. And I firmly believe BJP is fascist.

Then why I’m responsible for Asifa’s rape & demise. Because I was born & raised in TheSoulDeadNation: Indead [official name: India]

And I’ve failed as a citizen to do my part to stop the sickening rot.

My failures started early and are spread across my 36 years of existence.

I will showcase them with excerpts from a poem I wrote last year.

I've gone through life

Committing legalized crimes

Mirrors shiver at my sight

Sitting here, I'm contrite

Writing this poem to set the record right

I've seen women hurt and strike

mentally torment men & stood bemused

I’ve seen eve teasing & sexist jibes 

Instead of intervening, I turned gutless mute

for the longest time, 

I didn’t rise for mom against dad’s physical abuse

I can say I was too young to put up a fight

but that’s just a sissy excuse

with all the honesty in me, I’ve also bribed

with all the compassion in me, I have stayed silent on genocide

I eat animals when I know it’s a grotesque crime

I have threatened another human with violence

I’ve seen an injured cry & yell for help 

but I didn’t have the heart to get out of friend’s Benz

and left the man for dead

I didn’t fork out a dime for thousands that died in tsunami floods

I didn’t join the protest in icy January for fear of police’s cold water canons

I’ve called vegan activists nazi turds

when I know, I’m the one

who deserves to be pooped on by the birds

I make jokes about hindus, christians, not muslims

because I’m a pansy avoiding getting lynched

every day I suck on a branded 200-buck coffee 

when millions die of curable disease

because they don’t have 100 rupees 

I’ve shown no guts, stood with hands on butts

when I saw drunk punks treating girls in skirts as sluts

asking their rates & threatening them with rape

still, I go to bed tucked under my velvet quilt 

when 8-year-olds are defiled by delinquent rapists

That was a mere trailer of the film of my life’s cowardices. 

Instead of burning money on expensive foreign education, I should’ve bought homes for those 8-year-old girls I see sleeping every night under the bridge. Instead of working in cozy jobs in India & Oz, I should’ve joined the Police Force & shed some blood - I should’ve joined Politics & tried to fix what’s broken. Instead of staying ‘quiet as death’ when cow vigilantes butchered minorities, I should’ve taken the first train to Uttar Pradesh & sat outside CM Yogi Adityanath's office till he sat next to me & listened to ‘why I’m here’ and ‘why religion is the cancer of the human soul.’

I didn’t do that because I was either busy, coward or lazy. Those three are the primary reasons we don’t stand for something that deserves our 'blood & soul' - not mere 'FB & Twitter activism'. 

If dead-India has to come alive again then all the four pillars of Indian society - Money, Happiness, God, and Family - must be decimated & burned down and replaced with - Money to Passion; Happiness to Purpose; God to What is Right; and Family to Non-Selective Compassion.

Because the truth is, I, like all of you, never really gave a crap about Asifa. Because if we did, she would be running around with her dumbass friends in a park wearing a flowery frock - smiling like nothing matters - and nothing matters when you’re eight. But, she’s dead. Like India, she’s dead. And we all are responsible for it. Till we don’t accept this fundamental truth, nothing will change. I correct myself. Things will change - They will change for the worse like they always do.