Six

I have few memories of being six. In kindergarten and first grade I sat on colored carpet squares. I learned to read, and scrawl characters on paper with three lines, one for the bottom, top, and a dashed line for the center of the letter. Climbing the loquat tree, coloring, painting, and playing with Kyle at Christina Court…

Yesterday a young girl put her palms together and smiled shyly at me in a polite namaste. She stands at most three feet tall, and looks up at me with brown six-year-old eyes. I give her a big smile and return her greeting. She flees behind her mother’s skirt.
Two journalists from Radio Jagaran have brought us to this girl’s home, canopied by guava trees and bottlebrush. The community lies outside Butwal and is picturesque with its verdant paddy fields surrounded by hills. To Nepalis they’re hills, but ask any American and they’re mountains.

In this lush settlement, the young dalit girl in front of me, chewing a guava fresh from the tree, was raped two months ago. A non dalit 15-year-old boy lead her away from school, down a path toward her home, and… I’d rather not think about it as I revel in how tiny she is gnawing on that guava.

I’m unsure how to fathom and comprehend. How can I empathize with this small-handed girl or her mother and family? Our experiences are so divergent, but I realize I am also doing everything in my power to help them.

Although this is the boy’s second offense in 2 years, no legal action has been executed against him. With the six-year-old he raped last year, his family gave hers a plot of land and called it even. No such compensation has been accepted this year, and the family demands justice, not a settlement. By capturing the family’s plight, as well as gathering visual evidence, including the girl leading Prakash down the same fateful trail, Radio Jagaran hopes to use the footage to bring action to the case.

Feeling disheartened, we left the settlement and headed back to Baglung. The image of the teeny girl in a dress and her mother stuck with me. Would I know these people if her daughter wasn’t raped? Probably not. Ethically I’m apprehensive about potentially exploiting such a sensitive subject. At the same time, media may be their only hope for justice.

Being passionate about human rights and the role that media can play in changing people’s lives for the better also takes its toll; it’s difficult to restrain my own empathy. Improving people’s lives, even in a basic way, is one of my great driving forces in producing creative work and teaching others how to produce for themselves. I hope that I’m giving all I’m getting.