They were four of them. Young and fragile. Must be in their twenties. Standing squeezed in between a Sub-Inspector of Police and a constable [they were really paraded] near the entrance to a Session’s court, they got their faces covered with dupattas. TV cameras, having been pitched in around them, were in readiness to click the moment the girls removed their veils. There was a crowd too. People who’d gathered around the four vied with one another to take a glimpse of them. Impatient TV crews now started clamoring at the S.I. to make the girls to take off their veils and show their faces to the cameras as they had in the predicaments of the girls a host of ‘Breaking’ stories. Twirling his mustache, the S.I. [he was already on cloud nine as if he’d arrested a bunch of terrorists who were at large for long] bad-mouthed the girls and goaded them with his lathi to remove the dupattas from their faces.

Fearing further harassment from the people who stayed put around them, the girls slowly but reluctantly removed their veils. Mad went the cameras and their interminable flashlights blinded the four for a while. The crowd went into a sort of jitters as if they’d struck gold seeing the girls’ faces. But the girls cried aloud… cried their hearts out. With folded hands, and tears rolling down their cheeks, they implored the TV crews not to take photos of them and ruin their lives. But, no one seemed hearing the girls’ pleas. All eyes were swarming on their bodies. Soon after getting remanded, the beleaguered four were taken to a woman’s cell. Later, I learned from a journalist friend of mine that the girls were not professional sex-workers. They were innocents, and only the victims of circumstances. Having fled their homes to try their lucks in the celluloid world, they were kidnapped by a mafia gang who finally sold them to a pimp.

That I’m relating the above incident with great resentment don’t mean that I’m defending the sex-work per se though ‘devadashys’ were honored and glorified in legends and literature. What I’m more concerned more+ about is taking away of women’s rights by some high-handed officials and fellow-citizens. Be that as it may. I still don’t understand under which sections of the Suppression of Immoral Traffic Act 1956 [interestingly the act doesn’t brand sex-work as a criminal act] a police official could force a sex worker to show her face to the public especially to TV cameras. Would any official or for that matter any journalist force high-profile criminals or hard-core terrorists to remove their masks whenever they’re brought to courts. No one could dare doing such a thing for retaliation. But the girls had nothing to fall back upon except their tears. To my shock, I heard one of them had since committed suicide fearing a contemptuous backlash from her family and relatives when newspapers would publish her photograph along with those of her friends. Now, who’s to be held responsible for this?

Women’s’ rights are being trampled upon in every threshold of life. Still having their thoughts riveted in 1920s, male mind-set is yet to be kindly disposed to women. Notwithstanding series of laws, the empowerment of women will remain only a pipe dream if male thoughts about women are not rehabilitated and brought to bear realism.

Let us [we, the men] swear on this Women’s Day not to indulge in the followings:

Not to take control of our spouse’s minds; not to take total ownership of their personal funds and any property they own; not to take right to the products of their labor; and not think that a woman has no will of her own.

Happy Women’s Day.

Easwar arumugam.

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