Spectator sport, anyone?

But what of that poor lady bereft of nature’s bounty since the loss of her bonny son at seven months? In an advanced country could a seven-month-old baby have conceivably been born alive?

The trauma and rejection, the shame and tearing pain drove Ashirta to just pick up a baby from the nearest nursing home. The lady is an educated CA yet she acted like a juvenile delinquent, why? A lady of her purported IQ and education should have plotted and planned more meticulously no?

She had a hundred options which were easier, cheaper and not a crime like her chosen path, then why? Being atrained psychologist myself, my educated guess is that she went into severe post-partum trauma which rendered her thinking mind a mindless curdle of misconception. I cannot help but go back to my argument that in a progressive country she would have received counselling as would have her family and others. She would have been "talked" out of her trauma by a therapist initially and then through group therapy, perhaps with other women in a similar situation.

Why did her husband not notice? did he never visit her? It begs an answer.

Why and where did we, the sisterhood, fail Ashirta. In one of my previous columns, I projected the strength of "the hand that rocks the cradle" ruling the world. But what of an empty cradle? Doesn’t that hand that rocks an empty cradle long to pick a baby, any baby, to fill her cradle.

The appalling tragedy that awaits this poor young lady, as the slow wheels of justice and the pathetic state of our penitentiaries destroys what little sanity she has, can be witnessed in theyears to come by one and all. Ghoulish as is the curiosity in this city!

Not by any stretch of imagination do I condone the act of kidnapping but why does the word have all the gory trappings of a heartless, for monetary gain act of a gang of hoods, versus an act of a mother minus her natural due from Mother Nature. Can we make a distinction, please! The world over, the power of "mother" is recognised. Yet in a "mother" obsessed nation like ours we cannot be seen to be forgiving of a mindless act of a near demented "mother" to be, can we? I know without asking, the pain of "lost" motherhood.

In the seventh month all the hormones of motherhood are kicking in as is the baby kicking in her stomach. In World Cup parlance you are within striking distance, only to have nature strike your baby right out of your gut with gut-wrenching, heart-rending pain what else? Oh! It could have been any one of us, but for the grace of God. Does that mean we are "safe" from the extreme behaviour pain drives us to.

My owninstinct is that no woman who has never lost a child can sit on this jury. No woman who has not experienced the pain of a sudden unnecessary death can sit on this jury, and no man can! For the handful of women who are fit to sit trial on this unfortunate woman’s case, there will be buckets of tears and pain — real and imagined.

Then let us see who can give a sane consensus judgement of "guilty". Sadly, neither do we have a system of trial by jury, nor do we have the time to ponder on the loss of a young lady called Ashrita to civilised society as we know it. For a long time to come, she’ll be gone because she became a victim of untold pain.

The story of Aruna, the raped nurse brought to life recently in a book, stirred many an editorial and made a lot of women sick to the stomach, but her case was one of Alice in Wonderland. Now we have another of the sisterhood about to disappear into the "man hole" of the justice system and are we all going to be mere bystanders?

If so, then it definitely is WorldCup and Wimbledon days — mute spectators are the order of the day. But what’s the difference between us and the Romans who cheered as one of "us" was mauled to death by the animals called "The System". Spectator blood sport anyone?