RED

‘Physically abused’, ‘Violated’, ‘Sexually Assaulted’- terms that don’t even come close to describing what had happened to her. No, it hadn’t happened to her, it was done to her. ‘The event’ was announced to the world on the third page of the newspaper, in a tiny column on the bottom left corner. ‘Seventeen year old girl’…. ‘sexually assaulted’…. ‘temple’…. the words cease to make sense to her. She trembles at the sound of those temple bells, down the street. God? Where was he when they did that to her? How had he permitted it to happen? Suddenly rage takes control of her body. The paper had said she was sexually assaulted, as if those words would lessen the severity of what they had done to her. They had RAPED her - they, those men of god. Today, forty eight hours later, the sores on her body bore no semblance to the pain inside her. For every day of her life, the temple down the street had been her haven. It was her escape from family feuds. It was her resting place of peace and serenity, with god. A god who had betrayed her, a god who had deceived her. He had hurt her as much as those men. Suddenly, filled with rage that made her body quiver, she stood solidly on her feet. She wasn’t sore anymore, she was enraged. Her mother fearing for her daughter’s life, was very uncomfortable with the fire in her eyes - a fire that nobody expected to see again. She knew better than to stand in her way. She had lost her little baby to those men, but what could she have done? Her little child’s life would have been further ripped apart. Police men and lawyers would only make it worse. They would find a way to blame her, as they always manage to do in such cases. So she silently wept as she watched her child, her innocence stripped from her, walk out the front door.

That nameless, faceless ‘seventeen year old girl’ in the papers walked swiftly down the street to the temple. The same street she had walked forty eight hours ago, like every day before it. Two days ago, every step took her closer to her evening prayer. Today, she walked towards the ancient structure on the corner, that had lost it’s sanctity - it was where she had lost herself. As she stood at the temple gates, memories of the childhood come back to her. Days when she gathered flowers for god in her skirt, days when the priests had carried her fondly into the sanctum, where other devotees where not permitted. Days when she had sat for hours, watching them wash down the idol with milk and honey. Days when she had sat at the steps of the altar and sang to god. But most of all, she remembered how she hated being a girl. Because every month, the voice of generations before her told her that she was impure during the days of her period. She would sit by herself for those five days waiting eagerly for her misery to end so that she would be re-united with her god. Such was her devotion. But those days were now tainted with anger; with hatred; with betrayal. They had taken her childhood away from her. As the temple bell tolled, she felt her womb tremble with fear. She saw the men who had invaded her. She watched as all four of them went about the daily holy rituals. She watched their bodies move, those bodies that had taken turns to consume her. She watched as they kept up the façade of holiness and purity.

Suddenly they noticed her presence in that holy abode. Their eyes pierced her womb. They were undressing her all over again. She didn’t move as her eyes met theirs. She stood rooted to the spot in front of the altar. They suddenly noticed a dark streak on her red skirt. They realised that she was bleeding here, inside God’s holy altar. They cried out in holy chants and prayers as her blood began to ooze down her legs, seeping, spreading darkly, thickly, slowly over the temple floor. They hung their heads in shame, unable to face the rage in her eyes and the redness of her blood. Without realising it, they check for blood stains on their clothes and body. But she just stood there and bled.