Protest

০৯ ই ডিসেম্বর, ২০১৮ দুপুর ২:১৬

One evening, I was strolling with friends down the earthen road going beside our village. We heard a commotion coming from a neighborhood and rushed there straightway. A young, angry crowd, holding tree branches, bamboo sticks and iron rods in their hands, were howling. Therefore, it was clear there had been a fight between two villages. Anyway, we entered a house, where people gathered, to see what was going on there. In a while, a middle-aged man hurried to us and said, “Our boys have held captive a boy from the neighboring village. Now tell us what to do with him, for the crazy boys want to beat him. If he dies due to a severe beating what would become of us!” “Okay, let’s go to the room where the boy is confined,” I replied, “First, I will meet him and then decide what to do.”

Consequently, when we were about to move ahead, a beautiful young girl stood before me stretching out her arms and said, “I have a complaint you must listen and take an action.” She was frantic and shaking all over. Because no girl had dared talk to me in this way until then, I got amazed. Having restrained myself, I told her, “Okay, tell me what is your complaint about.” Under an electric bulb, I saw her white cheek getting red. She dragged me aside by my arm and looking at my eyes, she told me, “Nazrul, a mischievous boy, beat me while I was trying to stop the mobs from fighting. You must give him a heavy punishment for what he has done to me.” I wondered why Nazrul had beaten her while both of them were from the same village, and the fight had been against another village. I understood eventually what had been the incident. In the disguise of the term “beaten me,” she complained about sexual harassment in such a place where every woman kept their mouth shut about it. Besides, there was something in her eyes that uncovered the terrible pain sexual harassment could inflict. Thus, I looked for Nazrul all around the place but couldn’t succeed to find him since he had already left the place. If I had found him, I couldn’t have taken any step against him because of the patriarchal culture of our village. The people of the village would have told me, “The girl is nothing but a whore, and she has made the story to take money from him as a fine.”

২ টি +০/-০