Webster’s, for instance, says incest is sexual intercourse between closely-related persons; the crime of sexual intercourse, cohabitation, or marriage between persons within the degrees of consanguinity or affinity wherein marriage is legally forbidden.

Is any of what has been done to Srilakshmi visible in that definition?

Or what has happened to this girl which Dr Ghosh talks about?

‘There is this upper-class family with an educated and professionally successful background. The family is nuclear, parents with an older son and two younger daughters. I was called in an emergency situation where the youngest girl had slashed her wrists and was admitted to a private hospital in Calcutta. She was discharged and sent home but within a week of being back at home, she attempted suicide once again.

‘Nobody in her family could understand why she was doing this. Her final examinations were on then, she had to skip them. She was the quieter of the two sisters, more obedient, she kept to herself and tended to stay away from friends and parties; she was thought to be quite content otherwise. Her elder sister was quite boisterous, assertive, threw tantrums, had boyfriends and tended to get her way. The family thought that there was more likelihood of her doing something like this, if at all, in a fit of rage.

‘Several intensive sessions revealed what was disturbing this young girl to the point of suicide. Her brother, the oldest of the siblings and close to twenty, was due home for vacation from college. The girl was dreading to share the room with him during his stay and had told her mother in as many words, but the mother had ignored her request. For a couple of years before the son left for college he had been sexually molesting his younger sister at night while pretending to be asleep. The girl was bearing it all, ashamed and ridden with guilt that she must be responsible for her brother doing something that is not good and sinful.

‘This went on night after night and the girl would dread nightfall and having to go to bed. During the day it was a fine family, well known in Calcutta’s social circles, the parents being successful professionals and financially very comfortable in life. When her mother was taken into confidence about what was bothering the young girl to the point of suicide, she went into denial. The mother’s first reaction was how to protect her son from all this. She felt her son should not even get wind of what has happened leave alone be confronted on the matter. This led to the girl’s mother shutting her off from professional help, the attempt to commit suicide was passed of as being related to examination stress.’

What becomes particularly damaging to an entire family in the Indian context is an elder brother sexually abusing his little sister. It is treated with the same mixture of horror and secrecy as the male breadwinner of a family being accused of sexually molesting a girl-child in the house. First, an immediate reaction follows from the fact that an allegation is being levelled at the son, a son, any son. Then, and almost simultaneously, starts the protection of the son of the house, the scion, the seed which will start the next generation of the family name. Then comes up the ‘fact’ that the girl has to get married and go away so why create confusion? Invariably in cases of a brother sexually abusing his sister, she is the younger of the two; so the facade of brother-as-protector cannot be shattered. This hypocrisy in Indian homes finds an echo in the cynical Hindi ditty sung at the time of tying rakhi, ‘Din ko bhaiyya bhaiyya, raat ko saiyya saiyya.’ (‘During the day “brother-brother”, during the nights “lover-lover”.’)