I promised myself that I would never write about Baby Falak or Baby Afreen. To write farewell notes to battered to death babies is such an inadequate response. We feel sorry, revolted, angry, maybe shed a tear or two. Write sentimental or passionate elegies and we go back to our lives and our realities. And nothing really changes except that we become  a tad more aware of how inhuman our race can be. Baby Falak was battered by people not linked to her by blood but Baby Afreen’s father routinely tried to kill her by stuffing a dupatta in her mouth, biting her, burning her with cigarettes, swinging her crib too fast, poisoning her food etc. In the end, she did die. Of brain injuries and a broken heart. I was discussing this with a friend and wondered why the mother could not have left earlier. At the first instance of violence against the baby and she said it would not have been easy for someone with no choices and cited the example of countless battered women who  put up with violence because their real families do not want them, they have no education and no options. In this case, the mother-in-law would justify her son’s bestiality by saying, “He is the father. He has some right over the child too.”

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Isn’t that the key word? Right? In the  scheme of things it seems, everyone has a right over a woman. Any molester, eve teaser, abusive husband or parents with blood and honour on their mind. Just like Baby Afreen had no right to be a girl child, her mother had no right to defend her. The deep rooted, almost pathological hatred towards the girl child is not news in India. It manifests in foeticide, in abandonment, in mistreatment, sexual abuse, dowry deaths, honour killings and more.
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Women have  responsibilities. They must be made accountable for everything right from the colour of their vaginas, their virginity, their clothes and they must answer even for how others behave towards them. So if they are eve teased or raped, it is their fault. If they are found alone at a certain time of night, by a sex offender, it is their fault. If  a woman is chopped up and burnt in a tandoor by her husband, it is because she was having an affair. If she is shot through her head in a bar, it is because she refused to serve a drink. If a 16-year old is gang-raped, it is because her mother was a divorcee and living with another man. Watch our serials. Our advertisements. Our films. Most of the time, a woman is a role. An idea. A perception. A dress. A body. A skin colour. A gender. Rarely a person. Seldom her own person.
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I learnt pretty early that girls are a hunted gender. They can rarely if ever feel safe, within their homes or outside them. Having grown up in a small town where eve teasing was routinely violent, I would walk into the street leading to my mohalla with my college books shielding me from boys on cycles who would pounce and then peddle away laughing. I learnt with time to answer violence with violence. Both verbal and physical. I would swing my books at anyone who tried to get too close, I would swear like a truck driver and chase anyone who tried to violate my space.
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I was lucky that my father was insanely proud of me and was often accused of spoiling me rotten and never teaching me to be less aggressive, less opinionated, less talkative. He never ever told me after any eve teasing incident that it was my fault, that I was asking for this kind of violence by wearing jeans in a mohalla, that I was asking for trouble by not accepting that just because most girls are violated, it was okay if I was. He protected me when he could but most importantly, he taught me to protect myself, to think that I was not just a gender but a person of value who deserved respect.
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This validation helped me subsequently to never seek validation from the wrong people, to stand up for myself in personal and professional situations, to make sure that no matter where I am, I am safe and careful in the choice of people I surround myself with. I have no time for anyone who cannot see or accept me as a person of value. I will not work with disrespectful people. I will not associate with friends or relatives if they have only labels for me and no genuine need to connect, with anyone who judges a woman for her relationship status and her ability to blend in noiselessly, no matter what the picture is.
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And yet, when I was expecting my son over 14 years ago, I spent weeks in a state of anxiety. I wondered how I would  protect my child from the kind of situations I had faced as a girl child. I had survived but would I have to fight all over again for a daughter? For her right to a safe, gender neutral childhood? Did I have the stamina to go through the pain if she ever went through the same challenges that I had? I knew I would always worry about my baby girl. About her safety and well-being. Having a son I realised later, was only marginally different because now I worry and fret over raising a gender sensitive child who will respect women and not objectify them. But I still ask myself how I would have raised a daughter with all my anxieties and the painful struggle to show that just because I was a woman, I would not take violence of any degree or kind, quietly.
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I don’t know the answer to these questions but after I saw on news, a little white bundle that was once Baby Afreen, being carried out in her grieving mother’s arms from a Bangalore hospital, I promised myself one thing. If I ever have a daughter, I will raise her like a little fighter, unapologetic of her gender, fearless but watchful of predators, someone who will know the meaning of being free and yet connected to things and people who nourish her. I will teach her that she has a right to ask for respect in every aspect of her life. That she does not have to prove anything to anyone. That she is enough.
We cannot bring back Baby Falak or Baby Afreen but we can promise our daughters the love that was denied to these two babies. That is the least we can do.