Maya sighed. Laila continued playing with her hair and commented on the fragrance of her freshly shampooed hair. Maya stretched out her hand in an invitation for Laila to rest her head on her arm. She took the hint and snuggled into her. Maya pulled her close and gave a peck on the lobule of her nose and Laila smiled. She put her leg on Maya’s and commented on how their skin colour was alike – just like their interests and intellectual curiosities.
Chuckling, Maya shared that she found the movie scenes where the female actor smoked cigarettes after sex very tantalizing. Laila disapproved, “Cigarette smoking is injurious to health.” Maya wrinkled her nose and decried Laila’s practical wisdom which punctured her salacious utopia. Laila guffawed saying, “You’re a prisoner of your own imagination!” Maya retorted that at least it was better than the reality in which they were living.
Laila understood what she meant. Maya had been deeply upset by the verdict of the Chhattisgarh High Court in February 2025 which led to the acquittal of a 40-year-old Bastar district resident who was accused of forcing his wife to have ‘unnatural sex’ against her will, which ultimately led to her death. In reversing a lower court’s order, the High Court even dropped the charge of culpable homicide not amounting to murder because the court said the wife’s dying declaration could not be relied on. The judge’s premise that “sexual intercourse or sexual acts by a man with his own wife is not rape and therefore if any unnatural sex as defined under Section 377 [of the Indian Penal Code] is committed by the husband with his wife, then that too cannot be treated to be an offence” was a deeply flawed interpretation of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Navtej Singh Johar & Others Vs. Union of India Ministry of Law and Justice. The 2018 ruling had made it clear that Section 377 was irrational, arbitrary and violative of Article 14 of the Constitution as it made adult consensual relationships in private spaces a crime and subjected the queer and transgender communities to discrimination and unequal treatment.
The five-judge bench had unanimously held Section 377 to be unconstitutional and read it down to the extent it criminalized consensual sexual conduct between adults, whether same-sex or otherwise, in private. However, the court clarified that consent must be free, voluntary, and devoid of any duress or coercion. Consent was the cornerstone of the ruling, but it was blatantly disregarded in the Chhattisgarh High Court ruling. Very conveniently, the disquieting idea of volition was sidelined to uphold the sanctity of an intimate relationship between husband and wife within the sacrosanct institution of marriage.
Maya was rattled by the disturbing account where a person’s bodily autonomy was subsumed under the grand narrative of preserving the hallowed social institution of marriage. How long will society turn a blind eye to the misery that many people endure in the name of adjusting within the holy communion of marriage or in preserving male dominance?
The simmering discontent will burst forth someday in a tragic manner as happened in the case of the 20-year-old BTech student Prakriti Lamsal from Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology, Bhubaneswar who died by suicide on February 16, 2025. The devastating event was the culmination of months of alleged harassment and blackmail from Advik Srivastava, a fellow student. The emergence of a viral audio clip in which the male voice, purported to be of Advik’s, verbally abuses the woman, who is said to be Prakriti, is an alarming revelation. The male voice hurls abuse at the woman and calls her a whore and forces her to call herself the same demeaning term. The woman sobs as she keeps apologizing. She sounds helpless and broken as she keeps whimpering in complete resignation.
The tragedy had a profound effect on both Maya and Laila. Maya was particularly incensed as it reminded her of a similar incident earlier in her life when she was younger and had a boyfriend. Once during a fight, he called her a bitch. She was aghast. Never in her wildest dreams had she thought that the man she loved would call her a bitch. She was too shocked and stunned to fight back and had remained silent. Though he later apologized for his behaviour, the memory had stayed with her. She turned her luminous eyes and unburdened herself to Laila, “I feel like a hypocrite. I’m angry with Prakriti for putting up with her boyfriend’s behaviour, and yet I can fully identify with her, because I too had kept quiet then. It’s not as if I was afraid of him. It’s just that I was so overwhelmed that I couldn’t speak out.” Tears pooled in her eyes. Laila gazed into her eyes for a long time and with sadness in her voice tried to assure her, “I’m sorry for the battle that’s going on inside of you. Everyone isn’t the same. Some people retaliate immediately and others never do. But just this one incident doesn’t define you. And you forget how you perceive the word now because of your feminist consciousness.”
Laila reminded Maya how feminism had helped her reclaim the word ‘bitch’ as the strong-willed, assertive woman whom many people did not like. It took time but Maya got there. Now, she can be proud to be called a bitch because for her it would mean no longer keeping quiet to accommodate others at her own expense. Women must take back the words that men have fabricated with meanings to make women feel ashamed of themselves and keep them ‘in their place’. Words are given meanings and these meanings create perceptions and realities. If a man has multiple sexual partners, he is championed as a stud among his brethren, while a woman with multiple partners is shamed as a slut or whore. For that matter, it is not just women but queer and transgender persons too who are actively reclaiming words that have been used to debase them for centuries. The term ‘queer’ was pejoratively used by John Douglas, the 9th Marquess of Queensberry, during the infamous 1895 trial of Oscar Wilde. The negative connotations associated with queer have now given way to queer studies, an interdisciplinary academic field which examines the social, cultural, and political aspects of gender and sexuality.
Emboldened Maya volunteered, “In the feminist perception, a whore is a woman who’s sexually independent and isn’t bound to anyone. Society is bound to be fearful of unrestrained female sexuality because it goes against the heteronormative procreative aspect of sex. I so wish I could’ve made Prakriti see this side of the word and made her feel proud of herself. Alas, another innocent life lost and for what?” Laila cradled Maya in her arms as she soothed her, “The terror that’s taken residence in your mind because of insensitive acts and even more inconsiderate judicial verdicts is understandable. But we cannot hang up our boots now. Our foremothers have fought too hard and too long so that both of us can read newspapers, comprehend world affairs, and discuss them with each other in such an intimate situation without feeling guilt. We can’t be discouraged now. We owe it to our past and future generations.”
Maya teased Laila, “Woman, you can talk!” Laila crooned “It’s only words . . . and words are all I have . . . to take your heart away” from Boyzone’s Words sung in 1996.
Photo credit: The frolicsome Fairy on Unsplash.
