The Only Sin

On a windy morning when the sun shines bright, you get ready for office and walk towards the bus stop, oh such a nice day it is. You are walking by the road on the pavement and suddenly a guy on a cycle passes by and spits the reddish contents of his mouth on your trousers and wheezes away. Your get all angry and scream on him but he’s gone. Your clothes stained and wet and dirty, your mood is sullen and anger is building inside you; what a start to the day you say. What that cycle guy did to you, is that abuse? Can you possibly classify that as abuse? Yes, but a very mild one, perhaps done inadvertently and yet it feels so filthy, bad and leaves you in such a bad taste. But you as a mature and smart adult, that you are, will cajole yourself and forget it in sometime. You will reason out with yourself on whys and hows of it and come up with a plausible explanation that will calm you down. Now magnify this abuse a million times and I’m afraid you still won’t be able to compare it to anguish, fear and pain that a child abuse victim experiences. Not under-estimating capabilities of a kid’s mind, children too know how to reason with themselves. Which is why, when they are correctively yet mildly made aware of their mistakes they do feel bad about it but slowly reason it out with themselves and get calm very soon. But the behaviors a kid’s mind can never reason out with are strong scolding, bad thrashings and the worst of all, a sexual abuse. Sexual abuse scars kids’ mind forever because they simply don’t understand why it happened to them, infact they don’t even understand exactly what is happening to them. It fills them not only with pain and fear, but also guilt, for they consider themselves as at fault for what’s happened to them. Such abuse during childhood deeply scars an individual and leads to so many complex situations for the victim even during later years. Worst thing with child sexual abuse is that in some of the cases it becomes recursive; where the victim when grows up turns into an abuser himself or herself, there by creating more such life-chains of negativity, abuse and ruined individualities.

Sin

Let’s talk of a hypothetical world which can be as practical as it is allowed to be; a world without any morals, any laws and any ethics what so ever. And if you are asked to decide one law that shall govern all the populace of this world, one statement which would define all ethics, morals, values, all good and bad, what would it be? A sensible and logical generalization would be “You shall not hurt anyone in anyway.” Very ideal you say, very impractical in a way. Yes. But hurting someone, abusing someone is the only sin you can commit. And a kid, who is like flower, like a plain white piece of cloth, like pure water falling from zenith of its source, untainted, unstained, gullible and weak everywhere in mind and body; hurting such a sweet creation of our nature, I believe is the greatest wrong one could ever do. One may not believe in God or religion or any ethics and morals, but if you consider yourself a human being you do believe in humanity and you then know that abusing a kid in any way is the greatest sin.

Solution

A solution is only to a problem, right? And yes CSA is a problem which is corroding our young ones and demeaning the base of our very society which eventually will further decimate the health of our so called civilization. What’s the solution? An ideal answer is don’t view the fight against CSA as a solution, but as a way of life, fight it at every nook and corner of your life, educate and empower your kids about bad touch and bad people. But to practically implement this we need a practical way, we need to make a start, which is SPEAK. No that is no fancy acronym I am going to expand here. It’s the simple word ‘speak’. How-ever bygone it may sound but parents in India are still shy or wary or ignorant to talk to their kids about sex, about sexual abuse. Yes we are supposedly conservative, but at what cost? At the cost of our kid’s physical and mental health, perhaps our kid’s whole life? Speak to your kids about Child Sexual abuse, encourage them to speak out if they even sense wrong intentions and most importantly don’t be embarrassed to confront and speak out to an individual, WHOEVER HE OR SHE IS, if your kid hints about him or her. A few words spoken at right time can prevent your kid from heinous treatment at hands of abusers, just a few words of courage, confidence and affection can provide your kid with a healthy environment and well being, which he or she very well deserves. Just SPEAK.