When I was in nursery/pre-school, I was sexually abused by an uncle. He would wave at me, call me when he saw me crossing the army quarters near the dairy in Udhampur’s cantonment area. He forced me into giving him a blowjob. I stopped watching Son Pari because the character of Altu uncle reminded me of him. I couldn’t understand what had happened and didn’t tell my parents. From then on, I became a very quiet kid, my curiosity had died somewhere, and I felt violated to the core.
When I was in Class 6, my father had left me with the motorbike in Naraina’s sabzi mandi in Delhi, when a man came and started feeling my genitals. I don’t know if it felt good or bad. Ironically, it was also the first act where I began to understand my sexual urges. But this time, I turned away and said ‘NO’!
And I stuck to my resolve till he walked away.
That was my first political act – of speaking up, of saying ‘no’. Part of growing up was to also understand that speaking up, not for anyone else but our selves were one of the most important things to do. Speaking up is the beginning of a protest, and saying ‘no’ is like saying, I have had enough! Because speaking up means loving and valuing ourselves, and we can only value someone else when we value ourselves the most.
We are surrounded by popular media and culture that profits from our ignorance, and therefore loving ourselves in itself becomes a rebellious act, in such a scenario. As a society, even though we have developed but our present-day lives continue to be characterised by alienation and indifference.
And as a child who has grown up in a country whose culture of oral narratives has been so strong, I have always learnt more from stories than theories – simple stories of courage and love, that have affected me in human ways and have inspired me to act.
When I opened the portal of Youth Ki Awaaz for the first time, there was this tab which welcomed stories from anyone. This attracted me to YKA more than anything else – the act of valuing people’s stories and giving them a platform to share.
Violence perpetrates by propagating fear and silence, and silence historically has not done us any good rather than providing impunity to the perpetrator.
I write on YKA to talk about things which people would not easily talk about, to use my anger as a subversive tool for change, to protest against things that need to be changed in our society, to share my own stories, so this cycle of violence breaks, at least in the lives of those whom I can touch by my words.
So that no child gets abused like I was abused and has to stay shut, unaware of what had happened to him for years. So that, we become a society that learns from its history and does not commit the crime of repeating it again and again. So that the world becomes a happy place, through a humble act of sharing stories, stories that matter!