Beyond the Rape: What Friendship With a Young Survivor is Like

Every day in the life of a rape survivor is a battle – and it goes far beyond the newspaper headlines you read.

(On the 5th anniversary of the Nirbhaya case, we are still a long way from creating a safe space for women. A set of recent incidents involving gruesome rapes of women across the country has yet again raised several questions about the Indian society and the judiciary. The Quint is re-publishing this article to commemorate from its archives to commemorate Dec 16th.)

Smita* laughs every time I tell her I’m planning to resuscitate a failed gym membership. “Don’t laugh at me!” I tell her, with wounded pride, “I have no time to make it to the gym – I work late hours!” Smita will have none of it, and tells me how she’s been actively at it for the past year. I do not counter her perseverance with examples of my own; I know I cannot. Smita took up gymming right after she was raped last year.

We’ve been friends for a little under a year, but it’s been a kind of friendship that rose and fell, with uneasy, undulating crescendos. Occasionally, we’d reach an impasse, mostly in the early months, when she wasn’t sure how much she could tell me, and where she should stop. I wasn’t sure how to be around her, either.

We’d met as journalist and subject, and after I’d written her story and talked her through each step of publishing – ensuring she was on board – we seemed reluctant to part ways.

A week after I’d written her story, she texted to ask if I’d like to meet up for a cold coffee.

I did. And we’ve been friends ever since.

A Day in the Life of My Friend, the Rape Survivor

I won’t delve into the entirety of Smita’s story here. I’ve talked about it before (you can read it here) and it doesn’t get any less horrific with each retelling. Suffice to say, her rapist (a man who raped her most heinously and brutally, twice – on two separate occasions) still wanders scot free, whilst Smita walks no unknown street for fear of the unknown.

Where does our kinship with a rape survivor end? Does it end once you’ve reported every minute detail there is to report? Perhaps you’re on the other side of the printing press, which means you read about them instead. In fact, perhaps I am wrong, and you read about them voraciously and keep them in your thoughts everyday, long after – you’re certain – the physical scars have healed. Perhaps you’ve waited to hear what happened to the culprit, and, if nothing did, hurled the choicest verbal imprecations at him – or alternately punched the air in glee, if it did.

What more could you do?

What more do you (or I) know about a rape survivor, beyond the limited knowledge, filtered down through the prism of police stations, courtroom jargon and statistics?

I didn’t know how much there was to know.

I didn’t know, for instance, that Smita has trouble going to a wide number of places for a variety of reasons. “We shouldn’t meet at X point,” she vetoes a perfectly casual lunch plan suddenly, “I used to meet him there.” We can’t take the Metro beyond a certain point because she might run into him at one of the grand Delhi terminals, in case her rapist is changing his train. We do not plan late nights, because her parents are still, understandably, worried. It has taken her a while to convince them her rape wasn’t her fault (none of my “But why would anyone even think that? They’ve got to understand – shall I talk to them? NOW?” has caused little dent) and she doesn’t want to lose the shakily-earned modicum of trust.

She was ecstatic the day she heard of the arrest of a man who’d been accused of raping a seven-year-old girl close to where she works.

She was in agony the night she got unexplained texts from an unknown number, convinced that it was her rapist. It ultimately turned it out to be someone else, but she didn’t look at her phone without a twitch for several nights.

The Fight and Then, the Wait

Even as Smita waits for a chargesheet to be filed in her case, she deals with tangible, intangible battles, daily and en masse.

Like the very real and physical danger she’s in right now. Smita has developed sepsis on her left breast; it is where her rapist bit her, several times, as he raped her for hours. She’s lived with the bite marks for months, but it is only now that the injury has flared up. She tells me over the phone about the classic signs of an infection – she’s done her research. “There’s pus and swelling, and it hurts like hell. And there’s this fever – it refuses to go down.” She’s in severe pain, and for once, breaking with her usual calm, she gives vent, “I can’t believe I’m still suffering for what he did to me. And nothing’s happened to him.” That conclusion can be drawn of every single battle, every single scar, every single wound (open, bleeding or bodiless) that she’s suffered since. Doctors’ visits have been scheduled, all the right boxes are being ticked – but what’s next?

She hears my voice falter for a second, and chimes in: “Hey, you don’t worry. You know I’ll be fine, you know how strong I am.” I stop for a second to ruminate the bizarre incidence of her comforting me in a medical nightmare that she has to endure because of someone else’s doing.

I have much to learn about her still. I’m learning, with her, each time she waits for a turnaround.

But when does the waiting end?

*Name changed to protect identity