A male judge, a male prosecutor; everything made me paranoid now. A ‘rape trial,’ is what they called it. The air conditioning chilled me to the bone. I looked forward, yet really never saw anything. I felt like I was frozen in time. My parents sat a row behind me, and I could guess that my mother clutched my father’s hand and was about to break down into a teary mess. My father isn’t the strong of heart either; I could feel the rage in his eyes and the utter despair deep inside. My lawyer kept whispering new schemes in my ear, while I continued to stare blankly at the man who ruined my life. He sat there, grinning, with a pretty blazer on. He sat just a few feet away from me, so why is it that I felt no anger for him?
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Suggested read: Why is marital rape an oxymoron in India?
Coming from a rich family, he knew he could drag this trial till he emptied my parents’ bank accounts. I had never felt so exposed and insecure in my whole life, and I could only imagine what the members of the courtroom thought of me; ‘the rape victim’. The fact that I was drunk when it happened blurred the line between culprit and victim. And I sit here, with sprained wrists, a face beaten to black and blue, amidst a society which already seems to have passed a silent judgment. I would’ve cried, but my tears had dried up. I barely have the strength to sulk, let alone provide a passionately aggressive testimony to all the scoundrels in this room. I tried to push the thought to the back of my head, but it’d crawl forward and make my mouth sour.
I remembered the night when my friends left early, and I was careless enough to fall for the excuse of ‘one more shot’. Was it roofies, or did I just pass out from the drinking? It didn’t make much difference, for in the next moment I found my hands and feet bound with duct tape, and a disgusting feeling in my mouth. Then he came out of the shadows, grinning, like he’d accomplished something no one else could. That was when I realized, I was stark naked. I tried to scream, but the tape held back my pleas for help. My belly had scratch marks and I couldn’t turn my neck without feeling the bloody scratches on it. The idiot didn’t even bother covering his face, and deigned to come and smirk at me after doing what he did. He probably felt he was immune, which unfortunately might be the case. My eyes were watery in no time, my head felt like scrambled eggs, and that weird sour taste in my mouth surfaced for the first time. He calmly left, locking the door behind him. After half a day of recollecting what happened and puking every now and then, the janitor found me.I
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Suggested read: A marital rape survivor’s diary
I cried and hugged him the moment he took off the painful duct tapes, I was relieved beyond my wildest expectations. My parents, luckily, were extremely supportive of me and didn’t ask me to hold back. “Hit them with your hardest punch,” is what my father said before embracing me in the roughest of bear hugs. My mother made pot roast for me that night, so I could keep up my strength when the rape trial begins. And now I sit here in this rape trial without a shred of anger; only disgust and a calm sense of apathy running through my veins. From somewhere inside came forth an unbreakable resolve, to try and get this monster the end he deserves. My insecurity and fear vanished in the blink of an eye. Justice is what you make of it, and you have to enforce it. The world is cruel and twisted, but empires shall fall at your behest. Let’s show this man what true agony is, and how I decide his fate.
Featured image source: Google, copyright-free image under Creative Commons License
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