Hear me now, as I scream from heaven
As you failed to hear me, that day, at least speak for me now. Say loudly: “I am the procreator, of human race, and not an object of lust, lechery, and a plaything.” PHOTO: AFP
I, Nirbhaya Damini, have left my earthly abode. After fighting hard for two weeks, my mortal body has surrendered to grievous injuries, inflicted on it, by six human beasts.
I must confide to you that I am happy in heaven as angels have sung beautiful songs on my arrival and have taken me on a round of green pastures and pristine blue lakes. I am also happy to escape the hallmarks of human existence on earth – pain, illness and injustice – and achieve eternal salvation.
I must also tell you that as I had lived an ordinary, uneventful life for all of my 23 years, I found the sorrow and anguish of people all over the world on my death, as well as the homage paid to me by horror-struck people of India – bewildering.
But I must say that tributes have humbled me. So in this moment of anguish, I request people mourning my death to channel their anger and grief to speak out against violence unleashed on women, not only in India but other parts of the world too.
Listen to these words:
That day you didn’t hear,
My stilled screams,
Echoing on a chilly dark night.
My pleas of mercy,
In the corners of a moving bus,
The clank of iron,
Ravaging the insides of my body.
And my shudders of pain,
On an icy, black roadside.
You appeared deaf to all.
As you failed to hear me,
That day,
At least speak for me now.
Say loudly:
“I am the pro-creator,
Of the human race,
And not an object of lust,
Lechery,
And a plaything.”
Utter empathetically:
“I am the nurturer,
Of mankind,
And not an object of derision,
Contempt,
And mindless violence.
The procreator, the nurturer,
Is the Creator’s agent,
Who men cannot beat into submission,
Molest on baser instincts,
As it portents the death,
Moral conscience and sanity,
Of the human race.”
Read more by Sameera here.
The views expressed by the writer and the reader comments do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of The Express Tribune.
It’s really sickening what happened to this poor girl, I cringe when I think about what the 6 monsters did, especially with the iron rod.Recommend
Ae Qaid-e-Azam Tera Ehsan Na Bhulenge… But for you we would still be a part of this country where women are treated horrifically like this… Do-Qaumi-Nazaria anyone? A thousand thanks that my maternal grandmother was taken from Delhi…Recommend
Sameeraji,
I am overwelmed by the benign thoughts you have expressed for an Indian girl. This beastly act should not happen with any girl on this universe.The anquish you have expressed in your poetry, should be a cannon fodder for all those like minded people who are opposed to beastly acts like this.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us.Keep writing,
Lt/ Col Nagarajan
India.Recommend
speechless on this horrendous incident. GOD have mercyRecommend
@Shehnaz: “Ae Qaid-e-Azam Tera Ehsan Na Bhulenge… But for you we would still be a part of this country where women are treated horrifically like this… Do-Qaumi-Nazaria anyone? A thousand thanks that my maternal grandmother was taken from Delhi…”
Seriously? You think rapes do not happen in Pakistan? All that Zia has accomplished is make it punitive for a girl to report rape because unless she can produce 4 male witnesses, it is she who will be locked up for zina. Instead of using anger against rape to change the ugly reality for women in the subcontinent, you are hurting the women’;s cause with your head in the sand denial approach.
Also just curious have you heard the name Mukhtaran Mai? Recommend
@shehnaz What the hell seriously?? how delusional are u? there are equal if not more rapes happening in islami pakistan, but noone to raise their voice against them. atleast indian people are speaking up.Recommend
@Shehnaz: This is not about Pakistan or India, this is about humanity.. the rape rate is increasing rapidly in the whole world.We must bring this thing to an end now, by protesting against it, irrespective of boundaries.. Her county, her religion doesn’t matter.. what matters is, she was a human, a young girl and a bunch of sick people rapped her.. I strongly condemn this act! and I want those sickos to get punished!Recommend
@ Shehnaz
I began the poem as part of a collage of disturbing memories that included amongst others gang rape of Mukhtaran Mai, Sialkot lynchings and burning alive of a mentally disturbed person on the unproven blasphemy charges. But reading about gang-rape of Delhi girl, I rewrote the poem, originally intended for Mukhtaran Mai, for ‘Damini’. Her assault had shocked me tremendously. This could happen to a woman in Pakistan too.
Let’s condemn violence against women wherever it occurs.Recommend
I have posted about this horrific incident on a number of blogs. I would like to state that for once I dont think we should claim that Pakistan is any better them India because frankly its not. This is not about India Pakistan debate. This is about a horrific horrific incident happening to a young human being. I dont care if she was an Indian. My heart still bleeds for her. I agree with omair becasue i myself cringe every single time I think about what happend to her. It’s sickening. How conveniently, she was raped, mutilated and then left for dead by a bunch of thugs. It could however happen in Pakistan as well. I still remmeber what happened to Mukhtaran Mai. Therefore please dont make this a debate of how Pakistan is any better then India. This is about that poor Indian girl. This is about all the women who were raped and are being raped across the world and no one hears their plea. Their cases are abandoned and the culprits are never brough to justice. I am glad that Indians have stood up for her. I salute them for doing so. It does not make me any less of a Pakistani. It just makes me human and as a human, I condemn what happened to Nirbhaya. I pray that her soul gets peace and she gets the hightest place in heaven.Recommend
Heartrending indeed. I think, we should think beyond borders. and act together against such horrendous crimes against women.Recommend
@shehnaz, are you delusional or what? Are you really so naive as to believe that women are safe in this Pakistan?Recommend
@Shehnaz:
In my reading of ET hitherto I have not come across a more worthless remark than this, while trying to score a point. Truly, femina feminae lupus: a woman towards a woman can be (as insensitive as) a wolf.Recommend
some violence kills you instantly, some violence kills you every day and each day. women are victim of all kinds of violence and never raise a voice to condemn it. the ones who do are condemned for speaking up. it is a very serious issue which is never discussed even in families. we have to train young girls and mothers to raise voice if they are a victim of violence. pakistani society has yet to evolve to the point where everyone is treated with respect especially women.Recommend
@Shehnaz
Search tribune you will find the list of rapes in 2012 in Pakistan. There are reports of a father coming with goons to rape his own daughter and wife for not agreeing to marry a man of his choice ? People of a country where a JUI leader tells women to keep quiet about rape unless she finds four witnesses has no right to give jibes on Rape to India.
So now should Indians be Thankful to qaed e azam that he spared Indians from living with such people ?Recommend
Dear Sameera,
As an Indian truly indebted to your effort to raise this global issue and to sympathize with ‘Nirbhaya’.
The update is that the trial of the accused will be in ‘Fast Track Courts’ and conducted on ‘Daily Hearing basis’. Pressure is on to put some sort of time limit to get speedy justice and also to increase the severity of punishment. More Indian States like Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu etc are coming up with special sets of laws keeping in mind the practical problems for conviction and also for protection of women at large.
Let us hope the efforts bear the desired result!
Indian. Recommend
@Shehnaz
A thousand thanks that my maternal grandmother was taken from Delhi..
What do you mean “taken”?? Was she some kind of object?Recommend
It is better we start hearingRecommend
Moral decay is widespread throughout the world. Technology and the PARANOIA of people are alienating us from one another, stifling love we dare not share. I fear this tradgedy and many others like it are just the beginning.
Maybe the Mayans got it right after all???????Recommend
We all must condemn!Recommend
The World is watching after a shock and with surprise to see the ugly side of India, which none of the international journalist reporters mentined before. Sati is back and the failures of the Moghul emperors is now being felt by all. Paganism was eliminated by the christians in Europe, Africa and the Americas. But not in Asia!! Let us pray for all Indian women victims who have suffered the rape attacks and did not even report to police, 90% cases, including kashmiri women who are delivered to the military.
Rex MinorRecommend
@Rex Minor:
“The World is watching after a shock and with surprise to see the ugly side of India, which none of the international journalist reporters mentined before”.
Really? India does not hide its rape statistics. The reason this incident got so much coverage around the world is because of widespread protests within India. A few days later there was a gang rape in Pakistan that got no coverage in Pakistan and therefore naturally never got covered elsewhere. Not sure if you think that keeping quiet to preserve national image as Pakistan has done is desirable. PErsonally I prefer the loud protests in India and hope that they drive change. Between trying to improve reality for Indian women or image of India for Westerners, I would pick the former every single time.
“Sati is back and the failures of the Moghul emperors is now being felt by all”.
Sati is back? Making stuff up are we? And no it wasn’t Mughals that were instrumental in stopping Sati. On the legal side it was Lord Bentick and on the social reform side it was people like Raja Ram Mohan Roy. We don’t miss the Mughals.
Paganism was eliminated by the christians in Europe, Africa and the Americas. But not in Asia!! ”
It looks like whether one side of problem is Christian, Jew, Hindu or Buddhist the other side is a constant and it isn’t the pagan Hindus .
“Let us pray for all Indian women victims who have suffered the rape attacks and did not even report to police,”
YEs undoubtedly there may be some level of underreporting of rapes in India due to the family honour concept that prevails in the subcontinent. But nowhere near the level of underreporting that would prevail in a country where a woman needs 4 male witnesses to the rape to lodge an FIR or else she is thrown in jail for zina. Of the rapes reported, India has a 30% conviction rate (not good enough for sure) but way better than Pakistan’s 1% conviction rate. And no we don’t need your prayers. We Indians will make things better for ourselves be leveraging the voice that democracy gives us.Recommend
@gp65:
I marvel at the drops of disdain you display, so evident towards Pakistan and Pakistanis in general. Yet here you are, every blog, every article, spreading the love (read: thinly veiled nastiness). I can’t seem to figure you out. Regardless, I admire your chipper attitude about the “voice of democracy.” I hope I’m around to actually see it work. And let’s not kid ourselves, the entire subcontinent desperately needs all the prayers it can get.
Haunted by what this young women went through before losing the battle for her life. To know I’m walking the planet with such people around is enough to scare the pants off of anyone. Incidents like this (and the many many other brutalities committed against women folk throughout the subcontinent) make me wish the primitive forms of punishment (torture) could be reintroduced into the modern world. Seems human kind has not progressed as much as we’d like to think. Recommend
@Marjorine:
I do not have disdain for Pakistan or Pakistanis and in my personal life have many Pakistani friends.
I do have disdain towards the PAkistani military leadership of the past who deliberately lied to their own people and started multiple wars with my country. Where possible I do correct lies with facts.This is my general approach.
Now on to the posts in this specific article : Also as an Indian Hindu, when I find that someone is being outright disrespectful about my religion as Rex Minor was, I choose to correct the facts. When someone like Shehnaz and Rex Minor gloat about a heninous crime in my country, I show them a mirror and finally when someone like Rex Minor states lies about my country (e.g. prevalence of Sati), I correct them verbally.
The democracy that I am supposedly chipper about shows me that this is the way to respond.
As a believer myself (though perhaps in a different faith than you), I do not reject prayer per se. What I rejected is the implication by Rex that Indian women had no hope other than foreigners praying to God.Recommend
@Rex Minor:
You say Sati is back
Do you even know what it was? Or, is it that in your country, whichever it is, the victim of a gang rape is declared a “Sati”? And you are going to pray, with such venom in your heart, you will actually pray for an Indian pagan? You remind me of Gabrino one of the insane Knights of the Apocalypse screaming Ego sum Rex Gloriae (I am king of glory) & rushing sword in hand at Pagans & Believers alike till Inquisition put an end to him!Recommend
@Rex Minor
Either you are smoking something really strong or you are swaying in the delusion of your mullah’s speeches. Either way.. keep smoking the same stuff if it keeps you happy
Sati is back and the failures of the Moghul emperors is now being felt by all.
ROFLMAO, this is one of the most bizarre statements on tribune. Rex Minor, please keep us amused by your nonsense.
or maybe as the elders say “Jab Adults Baat kar rahe hote hain to Minors beech me nahin bolte.” Lol!Recommend
@Rakib:
Do not play with words, please. I am not a pakistani nor from your region; I am simply reading the stories of Hindu writers who claim that ‘Sati’ is still practice in many parts of India. The l European jornalists who are supposed to be the experts in your region just blew it up and failed to recognise the monster within Indian communities. There is no admoishment in a hindu family when a child lies or tells fibs, nor placed any restriction on hunreds of congressmen who are accused of rape but cases are pending for seeral years while these legislators are in power in their villages and towns with full protection of Police force. India is up against Indian Women now and the Pandora Box is not fully opened yet. It was Indian media which suppressed and refused to inform its own citizens about the hindu culture with the excuse of the Indian law which prohibits the discosure of the victim as well as the perpatrator?
Every sixth in the world is of Indian origin and is crowding the que for migration to the lans of the believers. It was Voltaire who said that if we were not to have a God then we had to create one so as to have morals. And it was Kant who said that without God there cannot be amorality and ethics. India stands today alone on the threshold of morals and ethics guranteed by the Indian constitution verses the hindu culture which denies and forbids equality of castes and gender( men and women).
Rex MinorRecommend
@Rex Minor:
I am not a pakistani nor from your region;
I was specifically non-specific about your country when I said “whichever it is”. Nationality, religion, gender, politics etc of every second humbug are immaterial. It is your boorish crudity towards women & gross ignorance that amazes me. If you don’t know anything about Indo-Pak,about Hindus & Muslims, instead of advertising ignorance humbly ask & get enlightened before becoming judgmental. India banned Sati, under insistence from Hindus, way back in 1830s. Breach of that law makes it a criminal act, not a kosher activity. Talking of kosher, a non pagan country Israel still has Witchcraft Act on its statute where punishment is assured to women! Never for men! Per your definition what kind of pagans the British, other Europeans & Americans were when they burnt 9 million women at stakes suspecting them to be Witches? Nobody showed a sense of outrage when the non pagan State of UK imprisoned women (Victoria Helen McCrae Duncan & Jane Rebecca Yorke) as late as in 1944 under their Witchcraft Act of 1735(abolished only in 1950s). Or, when the Salem Witch cases went on searing the psyche of innocent women. You make crude remarks against Hindus but do you even know what havoc was caused by the so called non-pagans in the history of mankind and continue to do till date? You Sir are in danger of being called a hypocrite, to put it as mildly as possible..Recommend
There is nothing more I can add to explain the critical nature of the issue… Women empowerment, I guess, is one thing conservatives are afraid of…
Moreover the way girls are being grown up in eastern families and the perspective of a society to take women as independent human beings greatly influences girls’ attitude to people harassing them…
The struggle to decrease the actual incidence of rape cases is a long way to go…
If, at least,all the ‘reported’ cases are dealt under ‘fast tracks’ and if courts make sure that all rapists are being punished might help heal the wounds of the victim ‘families’.
Self defense and martial arts should be a compulsory subject in schools, this training mustn’t be lacking! and last but not the least the keen interest of a government and law making agencies is the key to a safe society.
And yes I would like to appreciate the efforts of the author to portray so intricately the emotions of Nirbhaya and all such victims, that is not an easy task I must say.
Rest in peace Nirbhaya Damini…God bless her family…Recommend
@Rex Minor
ROFLMAO, Keep up the delusional nonsense.
@Rakib
As Mark Twain once said
“Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience”Recommend
@shenaz w also thx to ur grany. Who took u thr n u r sefe. We know that it not good any way.atleat indian women r raising issueRecommend
@Rakib:
Every twenty three minutes a rape are the official statistics of the Indian Govt. The country among G20 is at the bottom with respect to women rights! The young Indian women canot take any more, this wily nily marching of Indian legislators into houses in rural are and committing rapes in front of husband an hen being beaten by the village women, is beig shown on BBC and France 24 TV network. . End of post.
Rex MinorRecommend
Beautiful words that touched my heart. May her soul rest in peace. I am a Pakistani yet pray for Indian who take such a remarkable stand against the culprits. Pakistanis often deal with such cases with silence. The issue is not limited to any particular nation, so the response should be worldwide, as well.Recommend
@Rex Minor:
The young Indian women canot take any more,
After making boorish remarks now you are overflowing with milk of human kindness for pagan women. How come? You became a Neopagan or what? So tell me how are the Wicca doing lately?Recommend
the Indian girl is echoing from heavens not only for justice but the the joyous moments awaiting for her on this earth, her ordinary life to be filled with some special events and striving to enjoy angelic songs on this very heaven with her family and friends—lets hear the silent screaming of INDIAN GIRLS all around you.Recommend
first of all as a Pakistani, i want to apologize for the comments of miss Shehnaz. I dont know what she tried to say or she chosed inappropriate words to express her feelings!
As i heard about this incident, i was shocked that how a human being can do this! The act what they have done is even not imagineable! Before doing this horrible act these culprits should think about their mothers who were also female, and their mothers commited sin by giving birth to them! What they done to a innocent girl! At least they dont had to torture her! I think these culprits should be locked in that cursed bus an burn them alive after treating them with the same iron rod in same way (kash ye ho sakta)
May ALLMIGHTY ALLAH Bless soul of that girl with highest place in Heaven.(Ameen)
I dont know that i am right or wrong, but i think that line of control firing issue is created by the Indian government to distract the Indian people from Delhi rape issue!
Sohaib Mushtaq (Pakistan)Recommend