One day our descendants will think it incredible that we paid so much attention to things like the amount of melanin in our skin or the shape of our eyes or our gender instead of the unique identities of each of us as complex human beings – Franklin Thomas
Acid attack has been one of the regular features of both India and Bangladesh. For a myriad of reasons, social, socio-political, political and casteist reasons.
Prologue:
My name is Haseena Hussain
My father is a civilian working with defence services
I completed my Class XII from Kendriya Vidyalaya, Bangalore
When the jar of sulphuric acid was poured on me
My flesh became
Rotten,
Mangled
My clothes and self-belief was reduced to ashes
I was lying on the road
naked
the masks are off
I was literally and figuratively unmasked, exhumed, eaten, spat out
Acid:
I am sorry Haseena,
I did it
I threw this on you
Yes,
I
Did it
Let me categorically explain myself: I did it
During such
Jilted times….dicey times…..I did not know that my
Progeny
Belonged to a pedigree of the King Cobras that walk on the street
With sting in the tip of their trifurcated tongue
Each end of the tongue
Carries the venom
That pours itself
Over
Your stark naked body
Naked
Stark naked
Bare bones
Bare back
Bare hands
Bared conscience
Bare legs
Bare buttocks
Bare flesh
So,
When I shove my lust inside you
Your mind does not matter any more
It is only my maleness between your thighs trying to dig deep
It is a ritual
I am a possessed programmed robot
Who will come in, come out
When I am satisfied with all that is white, all that is black
And all that is black tangled up with white
I will then mould you into a re-usable doormat
A kind of a installation in the gallery of voyeurs
All waiting to lap you up for a price
You are just incidental
Your suffering is cool, sexy and jazzy
Alkali:
I’m sorry Haseena
I’m the generation that is on the buyout spree
I am into mergers, de-mergers, acquisitions of all things that are lusty
So, you don’t have a choice
Even before a syllable gets formed in your tongue
I know what I’ll do
I’ll twist your arm
Your back will arch
Kick you at the buttock
Bend my conscience
Slap you using a backhand flourish
And while you are making your first decisive move towards self-defence
I will pour you a bucketful of sulphuric acid
And drench you
With a sensation of burn
That will be permanent
And deadly
27 plastic surgeries later
Haseena you will be sure what skin means
How peeling skin like peeling onion
Disentangles
One by one
One by one
One by one
The surface comes off
Gets yanked out
Ripped open brazenly
Your face is mine
Your back is mine
Your bare skin is mine
Your desire is even mine
Identities, formations
Reasons, dreams
Idioms, nightmares
Presence of the absence
Lost in a avalanche of stories
When funds dry up and the donation tree has shed it’s last leaves’
And the dark-toned sun is deserted as yet another source of light
Becomes cut, camera, action
Bulb:
I am sorry Haseena
It isn’t that some Joseph Rodriguez
But I did this
Me
Me
I am that son-of-a-bitch
Product of such vulgar times
Uncouth horizon
That I think in terms of
Magic mushrooms
Magic bulbs
Magic acid
Magic powder
Manic darkness
I am sorry Haseena
I am so full of mock pity for doing this
I won’t change
I will grab the course of future
And will show off my false machismo
How can I feel remorseful
For something so constructive
Me buying
Me buying
Shopping for all this and all that
And all those
I am shopping for faces
In multiplex, malls, arcades
Those faces don’t have a choice
If you say yes
I will skin you to the bare bone
Sexily
And if you say no
Then I will see to it that your skin is unpeeled
Look at you Haseena
Have I not cracked you up?
And the battle between
Vision
Blur
Blur
Vision
Vision
Blur
Blurred
All with a jug of acid
A pitcher of acid
A bucket of acid
A drum of acid
A mug of acid
A container of acid
Haseena,
It is like killing two birds with one stone
Face loss and loss of face
All happening simultaneously
I get this primitive kick
This sado-masochist drive
This kinky high
To see the skin falling apart
Like unpeeling the red layer that hugs the apple with a knife
You kind of unpeel it with a sense of morbidity
Tone by tone
Texture by texture
Later by layer
Strata by strata
Each peeling off; each falling apart
Each disintegrating
Each diminishing
Each ripped apart
Each aberration must be
Dutifully
Drenched
A million birds will fly wingless in a truncated sky
A sky dotted with wingless birds falling off and wanting to hold on to the gravity
Darkness
Now,
I am a little happy
Over these crocodile tears
A zillion sounds that will never be able to drown your dirge
Your regular deep down soundless lament
Paper boats will still float on the Hiroshima water
But the time will not heal these permanent scars
April 20, 1999, 8.30am
A jug of sulphuric acid was poured on you by an ex-boss
Of a computer company called Neta Computer Services
A place
Where you worked briefly as a data entry operator
In 1997
Before the company closed down
The boss kept chasing you
Kept issuing threats
Kept re-assuring that bodily and only bodily harm, he will inflict
Reason:
You did not give in to his one-sided advance
And lofty claims of love
And even dismissed his suggestion of marriage as impractical
Haseena,
Now even the dogs run away from you
The vicinity children are scared to talk
So called close friends long disappeared
Your dream to become a fashion designer lie in
Shambles
Haseena,
I am sorry. I did it.
I am these times, your times
I am sorry for your parents
Haseena,
They allowed you to study B.Com through correspondence so that you can chase your fashion designing dream
Ignoring family diktat
Of marrying you off
I feel sorry Haseena for your younger sister,
She does not know
That
In these manicure-pedicure-steam bath days
All verbal aberrations must be treated with acid
Epilogue
Haseena says:
I need maybe a 15 more surgeries
I cannot see
I am unemployed
Yes,
I am disfigured
I was 20 when this happened
I am now 27-years old and broke
To put it accurately, I am a 27-year old visionless, penniless piece of shit
She adds:
The Karnataka High Court has sentenced Joseph Rodriguez
To life imprisonment
He has been allowed to file an appeal in the Supreme Court.
Out of Rs 5 lakhs, he was asked to pay-up, he has deposited Rs 3 lakh
The remaining Rs 2 lakhs nobody knows
She reads a poem by Wislawa Syzmborska called People on a Bridge(translated by Adam Czerniawski):
……..how many have jumped off the speeding time
And are disappeared into mounting melancholy
If perspective’s to be believed-
How may, if the question makes sense,
If one can reach the final sum
Before he who counts include himself, have fallen into
this deepest sleep
if there is no deeper-
Filament:
She continues:
By, the way
During moments of loneliness
With my black glasses covering my blindness
And blank mind
I think
Why me?
Why me?
Yes, I am a little better and a little worse than the vegetable you spit
If it it is not cooked well
In short
I am the spit
Meanwhile, the macho-mafia plot their next hurl
The next throw of the acid dice
Parnab Mukherjee
Please write to parnab@culturemonks.in with your feedback and comments.
Postscript
This piece of writing is based on the acid attack on Haseena Hussain in 1999 by her ex boss Joseph Rodrigues. Joseph Rodriques in now serving life imprisonment and Haseena Hussain now works for a NGO called Make Love Not Scars, helping victims of acid attack.
Instances of Acid attacks are becoming more frequent in India. The reported and recorded cases have risen from 83 in 2011 to 349 in 2015. Indian has seems to have the India has the ¨highest number of acid attacks in the world, but the worst conviction rates¨.
Much has been done and more will be done for sure. The cultural values of the leadership in politics and society goes a long way in curbing this trend. But sadly we see in the current climate that this has failed abysmally and in fact a leadership has emerged which actually encourages such acts as retribution, domination or for political gains. No doubt the recent rise in lynchings are indicators of this malice. The growing violence in the Indian society aggravated by irresponsible media is churning a discourse which is very frightening.
But yet we should read deeper into this text to remember what is actually meant on the day acid was used on a woman as a means to wield power over her- the power to destroy, which remains one of the most fundamentally abused powers which mankind continues to nurture and herald as a mode of claiming supremacy. – Sudipta Dawn
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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