Banging on the Beach
Updated: Sep 14
Trigger Warning: Disturbing Themes.
I: The Cameraman
On a sunny Sunday morning, Aparna left her government-housing complex, clutching her brown handbag close. She adjusted her grey-checked chudidar and pulled her chunni tight over her shoulders. The streets were packed with people setting up a stage for the fast-approaching Navarathri celebrations, and though there were a couple of familiar faces, Aparna wasn’t ready to meet anyone’s eyes after yesterday.
She, however, noticed that only a small patch of land where the stage was to be set had been cleaned. Walking beside it, immediately shifting her sight to the ground, Aparna glanced at the narrow muddy road adorned with buffalo dung and potholes. It seemed to her that anything beyond the stage was beyond the deity’s jurisdiction, and the Holy Mother, like all around her, should be unbothered.
Twelve hours after the abuse, Aparna’s mind still could not process what its body and soul were put through. Every sudden movement on the street sent a spike of panic through her chest. Even as she walked quietly through the crowd, she felt the suffocating weight of being watched. She felt like an immoral creature who sold her soul and is now stripped bare to her core, to the amusement of everyone.
Throughout her walk to the main centre of the slum, her emotions swung violently between terror and grief. Her mind kept pushing her to protest, revolt and shriek at the top of her voice about her abuse, though it only grasped a little of it; only for it to also shun her with a reality check a moment later, stating that she was, quite honestly, a nobody. Living through this without a minute of sleep, Aparna, in the early hours of that morning, accepted that there was nothing she could do except quit her job.
She could not live in a reality where she would continue to report to the same man, who abused her at the expense of her job. Aparna hopelessly conceded that there was little dignity left for her, but if she were to live with herself going forward, she should care for the last shreds of it and salvage what she could to ease her unending pain. The pain that will follow her the moment her mind at last lives through what has actually happened.
Even when her world was coming apart, Aparna showered, oiled & braided her hair, picked up her metal lunch box, and bid her mother goodbye, just like any other day, leaving no trace for suspicion. When she reached the centre of the slum, the street tiffin counter was flooded as usual, but unlike usual, she saw a couple of eyes staring at her.
Not feel but see.
Each look felt like a physical prick against her skin. Pretending to be unfazed, she walked past them alongside a pack of street dogs and a couple of youngsters on their parked mopeds, scrambling on their phones.
Reaching the centre of the slum, Aparna took a share-auto to Jagadama Centre. To her relief, not many people were heading to her destination today. Paying twenty-five rupees, she did not even take ten steps to enter a grandiose seven-storey building filled with fabrics of all colours for all ages. Signing into the daily log book at the entrance, Aparna noticed a terrified expression on the aged attendant’s face. He looked like he couldn’t believe his eyes.
Still pretending to be unbothered, she took the stairs and turned back to look at him more than once, only to see him still staring back at her in disbelief. Pacing through three floors, Aparna then, surprisingly, saw their forty-year-old balding sales manager, Geetha, gawking at her, with a terrified expression on her face.
Before Aparna uttered a syllable, Geetha pulled her to her cabin, which was close by, while everyone else just stared at them. Shutting the door and shattering the silence, Geetha bellowed, “Didn’t I tell you to demand a room?”
Taken aback, Aparna stood baffled. Slapping Geetha had crossed her mind more than once for her role in this nightmare, but that anger had vanished, replaced by exhaustion. Geetha eagerly waited for an answer, but Aparna did not offer one. When Geetha shouted, “Answer me!”
Aparna, terrified of Geetha, spat out, “I did… he hit me and forced himself on me.”
Raising her hands in frustration, Geetha hollered, “Miserable fuck...”
Taking a deep breath, Geetha turned away from Aparna. Weighing her options, she turned again towards Aparna. Then Geetha took another deep breath and cautiously whispered, “Don’t panic…”
When her words indeed had the opposite effect, Geetha unlocked her phone and passed it to Aparna. On the screen was a video of Aparna on the beach stones, with their floor manager above her. Aparna’s fingers trembled, and her body turned cold, especially when her mind interjected, stating that their undoing is now eternal.
Tears flooded Aparna’s eyes and, unknowing what to say, Geetha added, “Considering the view, it could be a drone shot.”
Waiting a moment, Geetha suggested, “I’m sure they were not aiming for you, but…”
Aparna’s teary eyes met Geetha’s, and she held her tongue.
II: The Abuser
Three days ago
The thought of rain outside disappointed Aparna, as the clouds seemed to her like ripened trees ready to drop their fruit when she ate her lunch. The floor managers ate in their air-conditioned rooms; the sales managers ate in the head sales manager’s room on the ground floor, and the sales girls were left to their own will. Aparna, along with her companions Nirmala, Sai, and Shanti, often sat on the street bench under the shade of a small tree to eat lunch.
Today, however, it was only Nirmala and Sai. It’s been nearly a month since Shanti showed up to work, and none of them dared to even talk to each other about why. They did not know her well, and honestly, they did not care to ask their sales manager, Geetha, what happened. Opening her steel box with solidified tomato daal and rice mixed for the nth time, Aparna ate with the same enthusiasm a child has for sour syrup.
