Sonali Pattnaikwhen she goes missing, we ought to be screaming our lungs blue and throats running parched
but when we cry out the first thing we will be told is to go silent, a pillow placed upon our screech. a girl missing is not a thing to be lamented, we shall be schooled by them who should be looking. to scream out in shock over her is to behave as a fool. no frenzy, desperation or due diligence to be followed– rather we must stifle our speech and ask if we indeed wish to tell others that our girl–our sister, our daughter, our friend, our wife, our life– has indeed gone missing. Instead of keeping the light lit, the oil of hope burning we are told to think, truly think, just think of the import of reporting a girl who has gone missing. we are severed and internally bleeding just thinking of what that girl is being put through right now, abduction, gang rape, date rape, rape inside a moving vehicle, tied to a pillar, gagged, kept in isolation somewhere so she may have repeat visitors who can play with her, penetrate her and piss on her, sold to sex trade, trafficked, crossed borders, acid burnt and unrecognizable or simply dead, burnt, dumped in a sack in the river, in the sewage, by the road where nobody could find her body, not her, just her body for days so there are none guilty, nor punishable as a girl, a life is wiped clean from the page. we bleed from just thinking and we are told to really think if we ought to report. the police they tell us that we are imagining things, while some of their ilk have brought the kerosene to light the fire into which the raped body of a girl will be tossed. they tell us that the girl has brought infamy, that whether she may have gone willingly with the men, or the man, whether she is raped or not, matters little for finding her will now upon us great dishonor, bring. who will marry the others in a family where a girl has gone missing, we are asked. the police will speak to our cries and call them lies as they tell us that we ought to be glad that they are helping us to hush up things because a girl gone missing is case for quickly closing not for investigating. do we not know that? and we won’t know where to begin to scream in horror, in desperation, in bewilderment, as we watch silence in uniform marching in. we, not the abductor are guilty for letting a girl go missing, we will be interrogated when the girl goes missing. if it is with her consent we would be happy, we only want to know if she’s safe. they grin at our folly. a girl gone missing belongs to no one they will tell us so before you file a report, ask if you are truly her friend or kin. she may be enjoying, she now belongs to another, you will be told– the joke is on you, just think. you will be numbed from trying to unravel what they may be hinting. the laws are for when men go missing for they are worth retrieving. a missing girl is best lost forever are the words that will be emptied, surreptitiously, into the unceasing tears of those to whom she dared to belong. you will feel wrong for caring for her, not wronged. you will be looked at as having broken the law, for loving a girl, for wanting her back, for being raw and wounded when she goes missing and for demanding a basic missing report filing, of dreaming of justice, of hoping to bring back a wretched girl, in this burning land, happens to have gone missing. for here, in this forsaken, cratered, broken land of ours, a girl gone missing has lost the fractioned humanity that she had been given– reduced infinitesimally upon contact with a collective fantasy of desirable effacement of her species who is never worth believing and best disposed of after some using, as soon as she goes missing halves are further halved into a zero sum recurring. even a thing gone missing is worthy of greater attention, looking for a girl gone missing, you will be told, whether she is found or not, will only bring diminishing returns.
