Front Page - English

Mala was sitting at her desk in the office of « The Changing Times ». It was already seven in the evening. Suddenly, the phone rang. It was her boss, Mr. Thakur. He asked her to work on an article, a sensational story on that damned woman, the writer. He had even suggested a title for the article, laughing all the while in his special derogatory manner – “The author of Why Rape? raped by 3 people”. Mala was stunned. Slowly, she had taken a few pages, yellow with time, and had begun reading them but it all came back to her even without reading. It said, “Why do men rape? Is it a test for them to check their virility? Or is it a way of expressing all their frustrations? What is it? … … … The victims are – a three-year old child, an eighty-year old grandmother, a sister, a mother…” Mala continued to read as if in a trance. Some lines underlined in red. “God is neither a man nor a woman. Because the world, God’s creation, needs the energy of both the forces – masculine and feminine. So, how can we define the gender of God? Gay? Lesbian? What?...”. Mala remembered the huge public outcry against the writer. And today the people of the civilized world had succeeded in getting their revenge… Mala walked out of her room, her office. And on her table, she had left an envelope containing her resignation letter. Outside her office, Mala felt a sense of absolute peace. It was not an open war but maybe it was a first step of a generation who knew their values well and who could make these sacrifices – however small for things that mattered, small but at the same time powerful like the single stone that heralds a landslide.
PS: Here is the translation of the last post...on popular demand due to the millions of emails I received from my imaginary fans...:).