1.
“I was in sixth grade then. Saura used to live in front of the school. He was not much older than me. In those days, there were CDs. Of course, the story is not very old, but I feel like time has passed. Once after school, me and Souraya went to his house. There was no one at home. We used to cook half-fry or an omelette when no one was at our house. But on that day he said that he would have a different kind of fun instead. I thought there might be a new computer game, but he turned on the TV. He took out a CD and said, “Ye movie tumhara life badal dedigil”
I said, let's go!
The CD started. There was a woman and a man in it. Both were standing in the middle of the desert. I had never seen the different things they were doing. I got curious. As it was getting very hot, we slowly started to take off our clothes. As the sun did it, so did I. Suddenly he started helping me to remove my clothes. I started to feel a little strange. By doing this, he removed all my upper clothes. He was in ninth grade, older than me, but we got along well as we were in the same team for Ganpati. He didn't want to look too big, but he had just started growing a mustache.
“What? Is it fun?”
I was not paying attention to his question, his voice, anything. I also started to feel that something was happening in my body. But all the information reaching me was brand new. After some time, the movement of the sun began to be noticeable. He was sitting at the back of the Lodala train. One hand was on his own lap and the other on mine. My full attention on our screen!
He began to do it to me like how we would curl a dog's neck. I finally lost my attention on the TV. At first I thought, this was mostly wrong, but how and what to say to him? He did not know what he was doing. After a long time, he took my left hand in his hand and with his own… we used to call it a different word then… he was moving my hand up and down, looking at me.
The incident ended there.
After that, I never spoke to Sourai myself, but when he showed up at school, it would happen somehow. My school changed on 7th. Again, there was no connection between him and me. I never met him again. I often felt that I should talk to someone about this. But what to say, what he did was really wrong? Even so, did I really agree with him? I mean I didn't stop him. Didn't even try. I don't even know how I could have done it. Scared, gritted, frozen.”
2.
“I think love is not for everyone in this world. Maybe they don't deserve it… Anyway! Mostly that's not the point! What was I saying. So I always feel like I've never been serious in any of my relationships. This does not mean that I have had many relationships. But since he did that… wait, let me start from the beginning.
When I realized all this, I was fifteen years old. My friends skipped school and dragged me along. Get that memory card from a mobile repair shop. Taking it, we came to a banyan tree. Everyone sat there in a circle. In front of us was the two-inch display on the phone, and then things started on it. I was looking with my head down, eyes half closed. Other friends were watching with tears in their eyes. I stopped watching after a while, my chest heaving and a lump in my throat. I suddenly saw everything and remembered Adi. He was my great cousin. We used to spend all our holidays together at grandma's place. I was a very shy child. I had no friends. Grandma would take her afternoon medicine and sleep soundly, and then we would watch TV or draw pictures on paper and sketchpen.
I have a big book of drawing cartoons of Allauddin. I felt good with Adi. Although my family didn't understand my behavior, I thought they understood me completely, and then one summer vacation, he started this game. He called it wrestling. But in this wrestling he was very gentle with me. I remember when it was May. I was six years old. It was getting very hot. We took off our clothes while playing. I did not find any problem with this. The new sensation, the touch was all fun. He said in a very soft voice in my ear, “This is going to be a secret between the two of us. OK bro?” I loved the way he used to say bhaiya. The game, he told me, was a bit painful at first. But he said that it is part of the game. When we were done playing, he would always bring me Pepsico on his way home.
Now we were all standing under one banyan tree in an open field. The children were breathing heavily. A shiver ran down my spine. In fact, to be completely honest, I always knew that what was happening was not entirely right. I can't bear all this now. I ran away from there. I didn't know where I was going, but I was very angry. I had deceived myself. It took me a long, long time to get over it. I couldn't forgive myself. I continued to hate myself. I felt ashamed of myself. After that, I couldn't do anything in any relationship. I used to remember Adi, and then it was all over. After that, I often met Adi. But I started staying away from it. He must have known that. Our game also ended there.
It has been twelve years since all this. It was not possible to get away from him completely. We have to go to their house, family visits keep happening. Whenever I go to his house, when I raise my hand to ring the bell, I see all those scenes before my eyes. His youngest son is five years old. Whenever I see him talking to his children in the same soft voice, I think, what if I did the same to his son? Not constantly every day but once in a while? Will that be correct? As with this justice? But I do none of these things. I talk lovingly to the boy, help his wife wash the dishes and talk to him about air and water, politics and cricket as if nothing had happened. Like that little six-year-old boy who couldn't say a simple no."
3.
“I had just gone from fifth to sixth. English and Math were little studied and no one in the house knew anything about these subjects. We lived in a small mansion in the old part of the city. As the house was constantly full of people and traffic, I was sent to study in an empty flat near ours. I used to study there alone for the whole vacation days before the exams. He used to come home once in the afternoon to eat and, after eating at night, to sleep. A family lived opposite that flat, their daughter was in college. Both families had households.
She every day.
Sometimes she would take my book and study me. I felt a little respectful curiosity about her. She was very studious. One day while studying history, she moved very close to me and held me close and held my head tightly to her chest. My chest started pounding. She moved her mouth to my ear and said, “Have you seen the movie in the theater here? In that, they put lips to lips.” My earlobes were falling out. She held my hand tightly in her hand for some time and then took it to her chest. Bending down, she did exactly as shown in the movie and went home.
Related circles :
- https://baimanus.in/article-about-relationship-and-sexuality-issues-and-solutions-in-youth/
- https://baimanus.in/article-about-prayas-institute-program-youth-in-transition-about-sexuality-and-relationship/
I could not sleep that night. Like-like was remembering what happened. I sat in the palace and completed my studies for the next few days. The memory of that day evoked some mixed feelings in my mind. Fear, loathing, and strange curiosity all felt together. I didn't know who to talk to. Much later, when I talked about it with friends in the college hostel, I got a pat on the back. They started saying that I had become avaliya everyone. But if a girlfriend accidentally comes close to me, or hugs me, my body becomes hard like a stone.
Many of the young men who participated in the 'Youth in Transition' study spoke about their experiences of sexual harassment as children. Some of these incidents. He was talking about this for the first time in his life. It was not easy for him to talk about it, even to himself. Many were confused whether to call these incidents atrocities or not. Just as unequal perceptions of sexuality place the burden of vagues on women , they also place the burden of being ready for any sexual act on men. Their 'wholehearted consent' is not necessarily sought, but taken into account.
Yes, even in a married relationship. Not only were these experiences deeply affecting the men's psyches, but they also felt that being a victim of abuse meant being weak, leading them to feel inferior and guilty about themselves. If a child had experienced sexual abuse, especially by a woman, it meant "what fun he had", such statements were heard by many and the exploitation, coercion and violation of will in their experiences were completely ignored.
Although the impact of incidents of sexual harassment or assault varies from person to person, they are traumatic for any gender, and society's insensitive reactions add to it. Many men also reported experiences of unwanted touching in the crowd while passing through the streets, sexual harassment in taxis at night. But many presented it with a blank face and as if he did not suffer at all. All this is disturbing, and even a man can talk freely about it. There is no weakness or fault in doing so, a space most can not afford even when speaking freely.
Many people had the question of how to deny, how to oppose, how to raise their voice to the unsafe experience that interferes with their mental and physical autonomy. Also, the question of how to tell another person about sexual assault was still unanswered. Not only in childhood, but also after! They were never talked to about it. Parents, teachers, relatives or friends were not able to understand the warning about this. Still not.
If the person is an acquaintance or has earned trust, this situation can be exacerbated. 'Games, secrets, gifts' are present in many stories. There are also myths in society that a person who was sexually abused as a child becomes a homosexual or trans person as an adult. The abuse that happens to a person has nothing to do with whether a person considers himself gay, lesbian, bisexual, or asexual. Each person's sexual orientation and gender identity process is the result of a complex set of events that occur during the genetic make-up and personal development of that person. It is inappropriate to associate it so crudely with one thing.
Another misconception is that a person who has experienced sexual abuse in childhood will go on to abuse others! Often times, abusers appear to have been victims of abuse in their own lives, but that does not mean that all victims will abuse others. This thought is not only disturbing but also unfair. It is part of the 'blame the victim' attitude.
Can the child be given a place to resist anything unwanted, be it safe or unsafe? Can the parents be convinced by words and actions that there is nothing wrong with the child? Can you – and others – break out of unequal conceptions of 'masculinity'? Will there be more and more dialogic spaces to look at our experiences candidly, to step out of them?
These questions that have come out from the research are numb, but they have put before us the option of moving forward by creating and creating their constructive answers.
(Relationships and Sexuality – A recent study by 'Youth in Transition' by Prayas health group spoke to 1240 young men and women about relationships and sexuality. The objective was to understand the changes.
