The Curse of Being a Wallflower
Tags: Society, Life Lessons, Sex Education, Metoo, Sexual Harassment

Image source: 123rf.com

23.02.2019, Saturday.

4.30 pm.

The usual cafeteria table where we gather after office for little chit-chats, smoking, and coffees. It will be fun. Today, I was thinking about the news I read in the newspaper. Suddenly I can hear,

“I hate momos, it will be yew, let’s have pizza tonight at my place”

Someone is distracting me from the subject. I was turning my head towards the direction where the voice is coming from. Who’s that?, oh Sanjeev, He’s crap, I remember him saying momos as his favorite, last week.

No one remembers that, because everybody’s mind is busy with something. But not mine.

Here I am drinking my coffee, listening to all these shits, and talking to myself.

Hi, I’m Karthik, I’m a wallflower.

I’ll observe everything, it will be interesting, mindful, most of the time funny, sometimes melancholic. Being a wallflower is a gift. We will be everywhere but unnoticed, we won’t expect anyone’s attention either. We all know you better than yourself. But we never judge.

We know whenever you change your statements like Sanjeev did few minutes before, we know when you forget something, we know how many masks you are wearing that day, we know when you lie, we know everyone’s story.

How?

Because we ‘O b s e r v e’.

Enough of self-appraisal, back to our newspaper news. It was about a rape conviction. It is disturbing me since morning. Because, I know about that rape long back.

How long?

I triggered the memories while driving to my home.

Nudes! Nudes! Nudes!

Back in my school, My heart beat fast for a girl. I had big dreams with her. Even I wrote some unpublished poems for her.

Unlike others, this is an introverted love story, so no big attempts except waiting for her around the staircase every morning just to fall for those eyes. Little did I know about that building, that it has four floors with four stairs with four boys on every single floor for the same girl. Whatever it is, I had a big castle in my heart for her, like every other Romeos. Those days were good.

One night in the boys’ hostel, Ravi ran to our room and said, “Macha, someone listed out the top 10 girls of our class in the third bathroom, it is funny, come on take a look ”

I felt lazy and planned to go after some time. But the boys ran like a herd. Everyone enjoyed it. After 15 minutes, the list was not there, someone struck them with a marker. Everyone other than me knows the list. But, I know who did that.

How do I know?

They confessed. Ravi told me that he wrote the list, Ranjith told that he struck them.

This is another benefit of being an introvert. People confess. They will share their stories just to drop their burden, like gossip. I’m a not big secret keeper. Because a secret is no more a secret when it was revealed from the subject. They are sharing with me because I won’t reveal them, I won’t talk much and I’m trustworthy.

Whenever I need to drop baggage from my head. I will talk with my diary. I hope it will share its stories with someone. Because Everybody needs somebody.

After striking those names from the bathroom, Ranjith said, “How nasty these people are, there is no pity for those girls”.

I tried to convince him by saying, “Macha, don’t think too much, No one is gonna tell those girls, Boys hostel will be like this only, desires are just hormonal things ”.

He seemed unconvinced.

After two days, everyone was talking about a particular bathroom, giggling, and laughing. I was curious and went inside, I found the different top 10 lists of beautiful girls of our school, but this time with a big tabular column comparing everyone’s assets with nudes. It was hilarious.

I was about to say this to Ravi but I couldn’t move my legs, as I found my girl’s name in that list with her description. My heart was heavy, my eyes were full. I quickly ran and bought a marker to strike them down. I struck every names. I don’t know who listed them now.

It may be Ravi or the people who have similar desires, any way Ravi is the one who ignited their spark, He influenced people.

Everyone thought that it’s not a big crime to investigate. But the girls came to know about that. Their parents came and it became a big issue, investigation happened, some girls even dropped school and joined some other schools including my Juliet.

The issue is a ‘crime’ now. I understood something on that day, Before getting exposed, Crimes are just mistakes.

Later that day, we were discussing the incident with teachers. One staff said, “ Boys will be like that only, what are they expecting. Buddhas, uh?. It’s normal. Back in our time, we will be writing about teachers”, He paused and said, “so that you don’t have the right to write about me boys”.

Everyone laughed.

He continued,” Who’s name was in the top?”, They laughed and the conversation got nastier.

Everyone got convinced. But not the victims, me and Ranjith. The teacher used the same words that I used to convince Ranjith. I couldn’t accept those reasons now.

When Ravi told us about the first list, I had a chance to strike them down, I had a chance to stop the bad influence, I didn’t do that. Now, I’m weeping under my blanket after they fantasized about my girl. I was also a part of this dirty game.

Enough of the flashback. Tomorrow, I have some business to do with that news, I know that I’m not going to sleep properly tonight. Atleast, I should try.

24 February 2019, Sunday

9.30 AM

Tambaram police station.

I went there to meet the convict. I lied to the police that I am going to Canada next week and the convict is my best friend who holds my company’s important records that I need to recover from him. The police asked me to wait for some time.

I hate the algorithm of my brain, whenever something bad happens, it just recollects everything related to that and connects the shitty dots. I think this is how ‘overthinking’ works.

The newspaper story started connecting the next dot while I was waiting.

The second (black) dot.

When I was in college, we will be forming groups to share porn videos, hot photos, and hot tik-toks of girls’, sometimes aunties’, It will be fun and erotic, Everyone will laugh, comment, and then it will be masturbation night. There is nothing wrong with admiring beauty after all that is the job of hormones. To hook us up.

There is a guy named Batman in that group who posts lots of stuff every day, he even shares horny, erotic sex stories. The group is all about temptation, desire, and fantasy. Everything will be available in that group like videos, images, blogs, memes, and even morphed pictures.

I’ll say you something that no one in the group knows. Ravi is the Batman. He told me once. Even after our school days, Ravi will text sometimes, we will have long calls discussing about the past.

That group will be active every day. One day something other than girl stuff was going on in that group.

Guy 1: Macha anyone heard the news about Bois Locker Room.

Guy 2: Yeah, Police are going to arrest the members of that Instagram group.

Guy 1: Someone released screenshots of their chat from that group. They were talking some abusive stuff and unparliamentary words about girls, mostly underaged, and sharing their morphed images.

Guy 3: You know what, It was a girl who leaked them, those schoolboys in the group threatened her that they will leak her morphed pictures.

Guy 4: Some people said, she was also a part of that group in the past, she was sexualizing men, and doing dirty stuff.

Guy 2: Whatever it is, Let’s see how the investigation goes.

Guy 1: I heard that they are going to examine every social media platform.

Guy 2: Are you scared about us? We didn’t talk anything bad, so chill.

Guy 1: Yeah, we didn’t use words like ‘rape’ and all, so it won’t be an issue. But objectifying girls, using foul and vulgar language may be a problem.

Guy 2: Don’t think too much, Let’s exit this group till the climax of that issue.

Chat ended.

What am I doing there in that group? I’m a wallflower as I said before. I’ll be everywhere, I too need some masala in my life.

The whole night, I was thinking about Bois Locker Room, what if someone exposes our group, Will all these conversations come under crime?

Sharing images of someone without their consent is a crime under Section 354C of IPC. Everything here is coming without the individual’s consent. So all these dramas may be a crime when they all get exposed.

I’m a part of this system, but it didn’t affect me now like last Juliet’s story because none of my well-wisher’s pictures are there. One thing is clear, Before getting exposed, Crimes are fun sometimes.

“Hello”,

The police interrupted my thought process, he called me to say that I got only 5 minutes to talk with the convict. I thanked him and went inside. I can see him in the dark, he too saw me, he came near the prison door.

I asked, “Ravi, How are you?, last week, you texted that you have something to talk about, I thought It will be about these incidents, so I came ”

” Thanks for coming, I didn’t expect you, you are a savior”.

I can see his tears, but he restricted them from coming out.

He continued, “For the past two days, I couldn’t sleep peacefully, We have less time to talk, so I’ll drop my baggage as much as possible. Umm from where to begin, macha do you remember all the sex stories that I have been sharing in that group. They are my personal experience, I just framed them as someone’s stories”.

I am not much into sex stories, so I have no idea about the subject he is talking about, but I can feel that they are fun once but crimes now.

He continued, “Some married woman will call me to satisfy their needs, I helped them whenever their husbands leave, It was fun, they gave money, But I crossed the line and sometimes I approached some girls for my satisfaction, I cheated some people with their money, I had nonconsensual sex, we can call it as rape, I misbehaved in buses, I disturbed the peace of many women, I’m a sinner, I never get caught, But this time the woman who filed the complaint had consensual sex, she falsely charged to get money from me ”.

“What? , If we can prove this, You will be freed!”

“No No, I have to be here, For all the sin I did all these 6 years”

I was shocked. My eyebrows went up, ‘Six years?’ I thought within myself and continued “Umm, sorry to ask, what made you feel guilty after these many years”

“ Because of my daughter, She accidentally peeped my phone and saw a morphed nude image of a girl, She showed that to me and said, “Pa, I wish I were in that place”.

“My world crumbled”.

Now he couldn’t restrict the tears, they might have felt ashamed of his sins and left his eyes.

“Times Up”, the police reminded. I don’t know if it’s for me or his sins.

I left without saying a word, The one thing that is running in my head was Before getting exposed, Crimes are someone’s job.

I took some of his trash. Don’t you think my work is done here?

No, I have some baggage to drop in my diary.

I usually write something just to recall how I lived and how to live.

This helps me to rectify the mistakes I did earlier. It’s like a self-exploration, Self-discovery, It is actually

A Note to Self

Image source:worldtribune.org

I went to the police station to check if my hands are involved or not.

Yeah, my hands are in. How?, I had a chance to stop him from listing the girls’ names in school. I didn’t stop. The staff didn’t stop. You may ask, How is that thing related to a rape?.

Everything is interconnected.

First things first,

The line, the world’s thinnest but important line lies between a human and an animal inside him. We don’t even know when we cross that. Look at Ravi and me. we lived the same way, talked about the same topic, and shared the same stuff, but the only thing that keeps him in a cage and me out is, I caged the animal in me, he failed.

I admired those girls, he abused them. When a being cages the animal inside, it evolves into a social animal, they named it as human.

2. Normalization.

Social media normalized every sensitive thing in the name of freedom. Using abusive words in the comment section is the new normal. If a girl posts a picture, people expressing their fantasies is the new normal. This is where the line between admiration and abuse plays a major role. Using proper words to acknowledge beauty is important.

Let me put it this way, After looking at a picture if you express that

‘she is beautiful’ will come under admiration, stop right there, you may get fantasies, desires, interests, if you express them or make a meme, troll it, create a story out of it, you have to face the consequences, moreover, it is affecting the vulnerable indirectly.

There is a big psychological difference between “I want to fuck her” and “I want to rape her” and there is a big difference between using the word ‘sexy’ with 18+ girls and below 18. Just remember, words are swords.

3. Vulnerable

Can you point out a particular reason for sexual harassment and rapes?

Harassments happening to

A six-year child, because she is a child,

The college and school-going girls by teachers, neighbors, and sometimes their own family members.

Office going women by their superiors/ boss/ colleague.

The sixty-year-old, because she is weak,

Sometimes dogs

Sexual abuses happening

Because of the caste,

Because of the money loaned out,

Because of blackmailing.

Either they are ignorant or vulnerable or being trapped.

In reality, no one is vulnerable, society traps certain people as oppressed.

The Irony is though they are in great numbers, they accepted themselves as weak.

Here Sex Education comes into action.

It begins at home, with parents, teachers and sometimes friends.

This is not a big mahabharatham to explore. In simple words,

Accept the sex as it is

Respect the consent,

Dos and Donts, (The most important chapter which encloses everything )

One’s behavior should not affect another individual physically and psychologically,

Every kid should be educated.

Do you remember me saying my hands are in this shits? I had a chance to educate him about Dos and Donts. I failed to do. That might or might not have changed him. It’s my conscience that triggered the guilt.

4. Men will be Men

When boys listed the top 10 girls with nudes, They said, “Men will be men”.

When they influenced their fantasies and abused them on social media, They said, “Men will be men”.

Don’t you think that phrase should not be applicable to whatever men do? The extent of that sentence oppressed women for years.

Believe it or not, it developed a rape culture, they are not only saying “Men will be men ” but also blaming the victim which is worser than the assault. (Check the link) Documented by The Quint

“If a girl smiles, obviously a guy will take advantage” — locals (in that documentary)

The lady filed a false charge on Ravi, it is possible for a sexual encounter to begin as consensual and become an act of rape. They have the power to turn consensual sex into rape.

Whenever a girl gets harassed, they will say ‘It is not about whether the saree sticks on a thorn or the thorn piercing the saree, at the end saree will be damaged’.

Now it applies to dhotis also.

PS.Put your penis and tongue inside.

While completing this self discovery session in my diary, I got a text from my sister saying that her boss is torturing her with some demands. Thank god, she opened up to me. Now, I have to deal with a dancing penis.

The(-re should be an) END

Writer’s note:

*No one will include links while talking with their diary, I need to do that because they are much needed to be known.