Dear Saleha,
What can one say to a three-year-old who died?
Did you cling to your mother too, when the men came for you, I wonder? And flinch away from the thought.
What can one say to a three-year-old who died?
That, for a long time after we heard about her, many of us believed that wrongs could be righted if enough of us fought long enough and hard enough, even cared enough.
How could that not be, we thought, as we held self-consciously to every horrific detail of your story.
That, if I met you today, I am not sure I could tell you the same. I am afraid I would not be able to meet your eyes, the child named after the Urdu word for ‘virtuous’, who became one of the 14 victims of a spree of gangrape and murders, killed by bashing her head against a rock.
No, not enough of us fought long enough and hard enough, nor cared enough.
What can one say to a three-year-old who died?
That, you must know that there is one person who never stopped fighting: your mother, Bilkis Bano. You would perhaps spot her easily still from amidst a crowd, as she tells her story endlessly to the world, a little older, a lot sadder perhaps, but as determined.
And still very much a mother; you have several siblings you know, the eldest in college.
That, all these years, your mother has refused to be cloaked behind “honour”, that false shield which the world puts around victims of assault like her, erasing them completely of every iota of an identity, making it just that much easier to forget and move on. That, blocked every step of the way by a hostile government and a reluctant police, Bilkis has kept going, forcing another door open when one closed.
Many fellow travellers have fallen by the wayside, but she has kept the faith; doing so, not surprisingly, along with and backed by other women.
What can one say to a three-year-old who died?
That, they might tell you the world has come a long way from 2002, point to you the bullet train, for example, passing by your home. Give you data, to show more girls now survive birth, finish school, enter college, find jobs, and get married of their choice, even if they are blind to the hard struggle each one of that step is.
But is that any comfort for a three-year-old, to know what could have been? I am not sure.
That, despite her own struggle, which many fear has come full circle with the release of the 11 convicts, Bilkis is determined to carry on. For your sake, for her own mother, her aunts, uncles, others, your siblings.
And yes, for you, me, all of us, for whom this case remains a lightning rod to whether justice retains its meaning.
So, what can one say to a three-year-old who died?
That, she is not forgotten. And that as long as that is the case, as long as Bilkis stands there asking questions, everything can change in the bat of an eyelid – for you, me, all of us.
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That’s what scares them.
As love goes, there are few to parallel Bilkis’s, and you Saleha, will always have that.
