More than one hundred men present set up a chant saying such matters should be settled within ‘the four walls of a home’. They whistle, they scream, they raise slogans. A politically-aligned student body—which has since insisted in other parts of the country that Valentine’s Day be banned (‘because it makes girls cheap’) and women must not be allowed to wear jeans on the campus (‘because it distracts us’)—takes out a procession opposing the public hearing and raises slogans against Vanangana, ‘Vanangana hatao, parivar bachao’ (‘throw out Vanangana to protect your family’).

What kind of students are these who think that a family can be protected by ignoring the horrors within a home? What kind of homes are these students themselves coming from?

Grass-roots workers activist Bhanwari Bai stands up. She has come all the way from Rajasthan to narrate what has happened to Sonia in Ajmer. Sonia is all of sixteen, she has been married a few months in Ajmer and her father-in-law rapes her. In the presence of her husband and mother-in-law, who do nothing to discourage him.

The men in the hall boo and laugh. They distribute pamphlets demanding that the administration arrest these women activists as they are ‘polluting Chitrakoot, the holy land of Ram’ by raising such issues.

What kind of mothers do they have who could not teach them anything better? What kind of fathers have encouraged them? What does it say of the families which comprise such men? And what does this say of the families which such mothers and fathers come from?

Arun

Arun is being regularly sodomized by his father’s brother.

One day he picks up the courage, whips out the knife he has kept under his pillow and silently brandishes it when his uncle touches him. The sexual abuse stops.

Five years later.

Arun is fifteen, and asleep. He wakes up with a start, he has heard muffled laughter, he feels body heat near him. His eyes adjust to the lack of light, his uncle is standing over him, exposing himself. The boy’s fingers go to his chest, he feels something sticky on it, and then more of it. His uncle muffles his laughter.

The boy gets up and goes to the bathroom. He pours water on himself. He scrubs himself with soap.

He goes back to bed.

The next morning he starts washing his hands.

Ten times a day.

Fifty times a day.

Seventy times a day.

Furtively.

He washes his hands ninety times a day when he thinks no one is looking.

One hundred and twenty-five times a day and night. Two hundred.

His fingers are red, the skin around his nails is peeling.

His parents take him to a well-known, and expensive, psychiatrist in Delhi.

There are several sessions, the psychiatrist prescribes ‘downers’ so that he does not wash his hands that often. Eventually, the boy tells the psychiatrist that he has been sexually abused by his uncle. The psychiatrist prescribes a new set of pills. The boy is now very drowsy and completely disoriented but terribly disturbed. He tells the psychiatrist this. The pills are changed once again.