Sukumaran C. V.
If you are the high profile boss and you allegedly lure a young woman employed by you into the lift of the hotel in which you stay and make the lift stay in circuit mode, we can guess what your intention is. The ‘encounter’ can never be considered as banter, it can’t be consensual too. It is sexual harassment, it’s rape.
You yourself know that you have forced upon her. And, as she is a bold girl, you fear that even if you have warned her that ‘this is the easiest way to keep’ her job she may complain. You are desperate to keep your ‘Valley of Masks’ unmasked. First you try to convince the victim that you have done it only because of her consent, texting her that she ‘misconstrued a drunken banter’. Again you fear that your ‘Valley of Masks’ is going to be unmasked, but you want to keep the masks at any costs because if the masks are gone, you are lost.
You send emails to your managing editor explaining that the incident is a bad lapse of judgment and you must do the penance that lacerates you. You think that this would certainly keep your ‘Valley of Masks’ away from being unmasked. When you realized that neither your vile threat nor your ‘lacerating penance’ is going to save your ‘Valley of Masks’, you say that the encounter is consensual and ask the police to “obtain, examine and release the CCTV footage so that the accurate version of events stands clearly revealed”. You have put the lift stay in circuit mode only after ascertaining that there is no CCTV camera inside it. Have you decided to ‘do the penance that lacerates’ you without knowing the ‘accurate version of the events’? The way of your lacerating penance is really wonderful.
Do you think that the rapists need only self imposed ‘lacerating penances’ as punishment? Whom does your penance lacerate? Does it lacerate you or your victim? Do you think that the female will be ready to keep her job even at the cost of her dignity and pride? You must have many such ‘encounters’ before you have ‘encountered’ this 23 year old girl whom you couldn’t silence as you might have done with your other victims. Do you know that those who harass women and tell them that it is the easiest way to keep their job are the most dangerous representatives of our misogynistic culture and male chauvinism?
Don’t you know that the very culture of sexual harassment originates from our culture of silence? Our society teaches the female to be silent and she is silenced always. And you have tried to silence your victim through many sublime ways to keep your ‘Valley of Masks’ unmasked. People like you and the retired judge who allegedly harassed a law intern commit your atrocities against the female within the safety and security of your valleys of masks. And the female is subjected to unmasked atrocities in the public space as the Delhi girl who was gang raped and killed and the Mumbai girl who was gang raped and traumatized. If both the so called ‘educated and civilized’ and the illiterate and the ruffians share the same attitude—the female is a sexual object created for the entertainment of the male— that makes life a burden to the females in our country, can our laws and law enforcement agencies provide safety and security to the hapless lot?
Those who harass women and tell them that it is the easiest way to keep their job are the most dangerous representatives of our misogynistic culture and male chauvinism. They think that the female will be ready to keep her job even at the cost of her dignity and pride. As long as we can’t break this culture of silence or ‘valley of masks’ that perpetrates manifold atrocities against the female, women will continue to suffer harassment from the ‘educated and masked’ people like Tejpal and the retired judge; and the illiterate and unmasked ruffians who committed heinous crimes inside the running bus in Delhi and inside the deserted Shakti Mill compound in Mumbai.
