sexual harassment – My Spirals

Something I can touch.

Something I can touch.

Assume all TRIGGER WARNINGs. I’ve been trying to write about such issues more often and I hope I do them justice. (secret: you might enjoy the poem more if you google the meaning of some of the names) Let me know if you liked it in the comments.

When my father told me we were the gold pots
at the end of the rainbow,
I was only ten.
He loved rainbows.
Every year on his birthday,
our house would become a castle made of
blue, yellow, and red
and my sister and I would draw him a red carpet
made out of every color in the 62 rupees color pencil pack.
It would start at the door and only last four steps
but it made abba smile the widest every year.

The best men can be.

The best men can be.

So, Gillette came up with an advertisement with the intentions of making us better men. It was gender-oriented and asked us, men, to hold other men accountable for their actions. A great move and a beautiful video. But the comments section was flooded with hurt egos of toxic masculinity. Terribly Tiny Tales brought this to my attention, and I’m bringing it to yours. (I’ve never done this before, but I’ll embed the advertisement at the very end of this post. Do watch.)

Can I tell you some stories?

I had a friend named Akbar. We were best friends when I was in fifth grade and he told me about all kinds of things that happened in his life. He was five years older to me. One day, he told me about how his father beat his mother black and blue. Akbar cried as he told me about his mother’s bruised elbows but we didn’t talk for too long about it. I met his mother a week after that and she wore full sleeves all day. Akbar trusted me with his stories and I trusted him when he said he would become a real man. When he told me about his father, he made me promise that I won’t become a coward like his father.

A tale of the five senses.

Sight:
She was walking down one of the oldest and most crowded streets of the town. Men in turbans, or vests, or filthy t-shirts sat on stalls. Women sat on the ground beside the stalls and spoke sweet nothings to their sons in shorts or daughters in t-shirts too big for them. The men tried desperately to sell things to the people who walked past the stalls with indifference. The kids giggled and ran along the sides of the roads, and she saw all of this right before he blindfolded her.

Sound:
The bustle of the town slowly faded and became a distant buzz. Every step she was made to take now made a sound against something hard, probably wood. The man who had blind-folded her yelled directions now and then groaned as he walked behind her. He sounded like he dreaded his job, and he most probably did because he whined with every step. She could hear twigs breaking beneath her legs and birds chirping around her. The crows cawed loudly because they could sense her danger.

Taste:
For a long time, her mouth tasted like strawberries because that was the last thing she had eaten before the man had forcefully taken her into his car. After driving for an hour since then, they had parked somewhere near the outskirts of the city, on a very crowded road. When he blind-folded her, everything went dark and she could taste the strawberries again as her mouth dried up. Now as she was walked with the man, her tongue was dried up and she could barely speak. But she kept trying and started screaming after a long time. The man used a piece of cloth to gag her, and she could taste the cloth in her mouth.

Smell:
The first time she entered into what probably was a house (as she had heard the door shut), her nose tried to block the awful smell in the air. The man nudged her forward as she tripped with every step she took on the stairs. The smell seemed to be a mixture of dead rats and rotten wood. There was also a nauseating smell of paint that, she guessed, had been used for hiding the wood. The smell of the paint on the wood reminded her of how humans wear masks and play pretend even when they’re old.

Touch:
The man pushed her onto a bed and she hit her head onto the edge. She lost consciousness for a while, and when she came back to her senses, there were two distinct voices in the room. One was coming from very close, so she guessed he was sitting by her side. Suddenly, she felt a hand on her inner thigh and she tried to scream but the cloth just hurt her skin as the man removed her blindfold. Both of the men have evil smiles on their faces and the one sitting closest to her moved his hand higher up her thigh. Every time his fingers touched a new part of her body, she cried and died a little inside.

Instagram handle: myspirals
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Related post: Earth.

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The one with women.

The number in the first two statistics are true and have been taken from here and here. This is here to spread awareness, and not to degrade or leave out men. Smile everyone! Also, leave a comment telling about what problems any one of you have faced.

One in every six women has been sexually assaulted,
and accused of “asking for it”,
or facing it because men,
(being the beasts that they can sometimes be),
cannot control their desires and should not be blamed for it.

One in every four women has been denied opportunities,
of climbing the gold-coated staircase.
The staircase of power and creative possibilities,
has been reserved for men,
(and at times women who agree to sleep with them).

One in every two women has a horror story,
to tell that will send shivers up your very existence,
for the story monsters are human beings
with pride horns and intentions like a sharp crooked teeth,
and darkness that doesn’t go away with a switch.

One in every one woman has given her all,
so that mankind can be kind,
and the world can be truly called a beautiful place.

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Instagram handle: @myspirals

Previous post: Family.
Related post: Life.

Life.

Life is a bright sun, but it is also a tornado. These are not real stories, but the problems are real. Also, these are two different stories. I hope we survive. Instagram handle: @myspirals

She was only eleven when this had happened. It was a sunny afternoon and she wanted to play with her friends in the park. While playing Hide and Seek, her friends hid here and there and she was alone in the park, skipping and hopping excitedly as she looked for her friends. It seemed to be a good day. While running towards a bush where she thought her friends were hiding, she tripped and scraped her knee. Tears wetted her cheeks as a few drops of blood trickled down her knee. A guy in about his thirties, saw her crying and walked up to her. He consoled her and took her to his house to see the injury.

He used a piece of cloth and rubbed her knee with it to remove the blood, and she gasped because of the pain. Slowly, he started rubbing her thighs and when she tried to back away, he held her leg tightly in place “Let me take care of you.”. He touched her inner thighs and smiled as he moved closer to her area and her eyes dilated with fear. This wasn’t right. She screamed but he used the piece of cloth to tie her mouth. His fingers touched her in places that she now refers to as scars.

He was twenty-one. Life seemed to be a frolic in the park, happy and delightful. He had a mother and two sisters, and he loved them to death. They lived in a small part of the city. He went out to buy food for his family, when out of nowhere, something blew a hundred kilometers away. Almost in succession, there was two more blasts a little to the east of it. He had no idea what was happening, but he ran anyway. Not away from the blasts, though. Towards them. That’s where his house was and that’s where his family was. After running for ten minutes at full pace, he opened the door to his house as his heavy breathing slowed a bit. They were safe.

He took hold of their hands and asked them to hurry as they ran away from the monstrous blasts. They hurried towards the sea where a lot of people seemed to be headed. He saw boats and sighed in relief. They got on the boat and saw their home turn to smoke and dust as they moved away from the catastrophe. Refugees. Where were the refugees headed? Towards lonely hearts and no home.

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Related post: This damn world.