Bleeping out the breasts

Remember that much-dressed and undressed statue outside my building? I’d written about her less than a month ago. The nearly nude white female form, minus arms, who was installed on the premises by the builder. First, some residents put a nightgown on her. Then the nightgown was stolen. And somebody put a shirt on her. Then, the shirt was stolen too.

Recently, as I walked past, I glanced at her to see what stage of dress she suffered now. I discovered that her breasts had been hacked off.

That statue has now become a source of tremendous, daily anger. And bewilderment. So is this who we are — people who have such a morbid fear of the female body that we would rather destroy it than acknowledge it?

I wouldn’t have felt so bad if they had just gotten rid of the whole thing. The residents of a neighbouring building did just that — they replaced their nearly nude lady with a Sai Baba temple. I suppose they have the right to change their surroundings as they see fit.

I wouldn’t have minded if someone had set up a lamp-post or a letter box or a lean-to shed for the watchman or even a dustbin in place of our statue. But to hack off the breasts and leave her there as gristly reminder that the sight of a woman’s body is offensive, a reminder of the daily violence in flesh-and-blood women’s lives — it is unbearable.

When I wrote last time about the silly urge to cover up the statue, somebody left a comment saying it was probably only a prank. I wonder what they’d say now. And I wonder how to begin to argue with the people who did this?

For that matter, how do I talk to the censor board? How do I make them see that graphic violence is much more harmful to audiences than the sight of the human body? How to make TV channels see that the word ‘breast’ is not dangerous and they don’t need to bleep it out?

Morality is a funny beast. It turns us all into funny beasts. And it turns our nation into a funny nation where policemen spend the better part of a day trying to fine a young man for indecency when he hugs a friend and kisses her on the cheek, but take days to file an FIR about sexual assault. It makes policemen do strange things like forcibly hugging a man to prove to him that hugging is a kind of violation that deserves to be penalised.

How do you win arguments about ‘public morality’ and ‘decency’? There’s no way to win, it seems. Scream yourself hoarse, change the laws, but you cannot win against anyone who hates the human body and its needs, or seeks to control everyone else’s behavior even when it isn’t violent or abusive.

How do we argue with religious bodies who want to prevent consenting adults from having sex? How do we argue with the logic that the rest of us must punish one citizen for desiring another citizen who desires him/her back?

How do you talk to an elected representative in West Bengal who questions the morality of a mother-of-two, separated from her husband, who files a rape report? Do you ask whether their response might have been different if the victim bled to death like another gang-rape victim in Kolkata — also a mother, also separated from her husband? Even if the victims’ morals didn’t match their own, what do they hope to accomplish by harping on morality?

How do you even begin to argue?

Annie Zaidi writes poetry, stories, essays, scripts (and in a dark, distant past, recipes she never actually tried)