‘Tell me who taught you that or I will slap you hard!’ said the father.

The child raised her finger and pointed to the father’s friend.

The friend quickly laughed, he looked at his own wife at the dinner table who looked stunned, and said, ‘Can you believe this? I was telling you about the terrible poems the children pick up and she memorized it!’

The man then, as quickly, turned to the child’s father and laughed a lot as he said, ‘You better watch it my friend, your daughter is growing up to be quite a chutputtee.’

Chutputtee. Chaalu. Cheez. All the words men use in ostensible derision but always with that gleam of desire in their eyes.

The man, owner of an advertising agency, continues to be the father’s friend.

Meera’s husband said their daughter need not go.

Meera has not told her husband about her own experience because she does not think he is man enough to truly understand. She says this without any bitterness or rancour. She is currently visiting a child counsellor because she truly wants to understand how she can give her daughter the intrinsic freedom a son automatically attains. She muses, ‘We talk a lot about women’s empowerment these days. But financial strength is not emotional strength, is it? And how would we, ourselves as women, react if our daughter says she wants an Aids-free certificate from the boy who has chosen to marry her through an arranged match?’

Meera had been sexually abused as a child by her male cousin. He had systematically abused several girls in their extended family, fondling them heavily whenever he could. When Meera said she would tell her mother, the cousin laughed, ‘Rape toh nahin kiya na? Did not rape any of you, did I?’ To the girls the women of the family said, ‘Hush, do not tell anyone and don’t go near him in the future.’

The cousin mocked the girls by undressing them with his eyes at family functions.

Mummy brought them a mockingbird.

The girls were duly married off.

Daddy got them wedding rings.

Two of these girls could not bear to let their husbands touch them, eventually their marriages broke down. ‘It’s all your fault,’ said their husbands and parents.

The girls had to get themselves a looking glass.

Siddharth

Will Siddharth grow to be able to heal on his own? Or does Siddharth need counselling? And is he likely to turn into a perpetrator himself? Right now he is in Pune, attending school and playing cricket like any other boy; but on some days something bad creeps into his mind and he can be found alternating between bewilderment and dread.

Siddharth comes during the summer holidays from Pune to Mumbaii to visit his grandparents. It is summer holidays now and the school near his grandparents’ house has organized a one-week personality development course by Otto Sir who comes every year to teach the six to fourteen-year-old boys. This year Siddharth’s parents have enrolled him for it, after checking with the other Bandra and nearby Khar schools where Otto Sir runs similar classes.