The Accidental Activist - Cries in the dark By Venita Coelho
It was one of the big pre monsoon storms last year. I woke to the roar of thunder and the downpour of rain. But what had woken me was the shrill sound of children screaming. Screaming in hysterical terror. Our servant lived with her husband and four children in the servants quarters at the top of the hill behind my house. In panic I ran out and began struggling my way up the hill, blinded by the rain, in pitch darkness, slipping in torrents of mud. The children screamed on and on. Halfway up the hill I found them huddled under a tree, pointing at the house, unable to do anything but scream in fear. In the house I found their mother cringing in a corner. Her husband was mercilessly beating her. Blood ran from her nose, her face was swollen. He was drunk. I shoved him off, threatened him and hurried mother and children down to the main house. The husband followed, and began circling the house, hurling threats and abuses. I called the police. Two policemen arrived on a motorcycle in the pouring rain and gave the husband a talking to. The children kept shivering with terror long after the police had removed their father. That awful night came back to me in full force two days ago. Our current maid arrived, limping and swollen faced. Her husband had got drunk and beaten her. She is the mother of four children and told us that her husband beat her regularly when she had the first two girls. Only when she produced the boys had the beatings become less. This time he had got royally drunk and let himself go. Not just she but the children had been at the receiving end of violence. The horror of it is that I have not had a single maid in all the years that I have been in Goa who was not beaten on a regular basis. Every single one has at some point or the other confessed that she has been at the receiving end of often brutal violence. And in each case the reason given has been the same 'He drinks'. Goa is that wonderful place where liquor is half the price it is anywhere else in India. I have often asked why and been told that it is because drinking is part of Goan culture and therefore the government has made allowances for it. Shall I therefore presume that wife beating is also part of the glorious Goan culture and tradition? There is certainly more than enough evidence to back up that presumption. I have also been told that it is all part of that wonderful idea of Goa sold to tourists worldwide, where sun sand and feni are available everywhere and it's party time always. That if this idea was tampered with, then the tourist industry would suffer. In the meantime the women of Goa suffer. The link between liquor and utter misery seems to go completely unremarked in Goa. And yet I am reminded forcibly of it time and time again. The misery is not limited to maids or the lower classes. A few years ago I climbed the Hundred Steps at Anjuna to check out the view. It was a still afternoon and spread out below me were the houses of good solid middle class Goa. Carrying on the still air was the sound of a woman begging for mercy as she was beaten. I could not make out where it was coming from - but it came from somewhere among the middle class lives below me. I cannot tell you how disturbing it was to hear that pathetic voice begging and to know that there was nothing I could do. The official figures say that 23% of women in Goa have experienced spousal violence. 54% of women who's husbands drink have experienced violence. My own little encounters make me certain that the percentages are much higher. These figures are merely of those who owned up to actually being beaten. It is a well know fact that domestic violence is also rampant among the middle class, but is rarely reported in this strata. Even if you take the official figures at face value, a quarter of the women in Goa are being beaten by their men. And more so when those men are drunk. It would be facile to suggest raising the prices of liquor as a solution. Far more to the point would be to honestly look at ourselves and question a culture that puts no taboos whatsoever on drinking to excess. To question a culture that allows one in every four women to live in terror of violence without condemning the root cause. That talks with fondness of the joys of feni but chooses to be entirely silent on the darker aspects of what it produces. The next time you extol the joys of cheap liquor in Goa at least be aware that what is being sold at a discount is the misery of our women and children. (ENDS) =========================================================================== The above article appeared in the May 26, 2009 edition of the Herald, Goa
