“So you put the burden on me to raise it as my issue?”
P responded to my WhatsApp text yesterday as I urged her to write a think piece on the Hathras rape case. Before making this request, a professional hazard, we were discussing long distance running, strength training, different fitness apps and gears etc.
P and I grew up in towns sitting adjacent to Hathras. When we were colleagues at an A-list Delhi University college, we’d spend some afternoons discussing what that milieu was and how we survived it. Yesterday, we both figured that we only had rage, blind rage, over what was done to the Hathras victim, first by the rapists, and subsequently by the police.
“I can’t write it myself...But somebody needs to raise the question ki bhai kab tak chalega ye sab?” – I had texted, to which P had responded with the curt statement above.
I deserved it. I was trying to play too safe, perhaps, by doing the politically correct thing.