Darkness To Light!

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This post is not for the faint hearted. YOU WILL FIND PORTIONS IN THIS VERY DIFFICULT TO READ. It is quite Graphical,as I have written as is. Read ONLY if you are strong enough. I write shamelessly, without mincing words. We cant sit in cocoons and expect change to happen. We need to get up and speak up, else male child sexual abuse will always be a myth. This Post is Autobiographical

Someone just asked me an insensitive question- he asked me "So, are you the same famous Aham who was sexually abused"... Child abuse is no Joke. And i pity his  ignorance. But acknowledge that darkness  is universal, light needs a source.

After you read this longish post. Dont offer me your sympathies. I now live in my present, and not in my dark past. I just visit darkness, because I know someone is there, lost and blind. And I know the way, i could  lead them to  light.

I have no intention of drowning in my sorrow or looking for Pity. But, you can make your presumptions. It matters not to me. 

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AHAM- Who Is Aham

let me begin with an incident this dates back to the year 1985 -86, when a child of 6 so innocent.
went to have bath with his uncle.
it was just another day for him.
he and his uncle were nude.
not a piece of clothing in either bodies,
the uncle gets close to the child and soaps him to rich lather and suddenly starts playing with the child’s penis.
the child didn’t know how to react. the child didn’t mind it.
guess it felt nice, though weird.
the uncle asks the child to do the same to him.
and the child obliges.

then the uncle teaches the child a new trick. he asks the child to suck his penis.
the child resents, as the child finds it distasteful.

now that’s not what the uncle would like. would he?
he forces his penis on the child’s mouth.
the child struggles.
the child moves off
and cries loudly.
the uncle scares the child and tells him that he will be killed and so will everyone in his family if he opens up to any one.
the child gets scared.
the uncle asks him again to suck his penis.
the child obliges.

the bath is over.
uncle spurts out a white liquid on the face of the child.
he gets scared looking at that.
he waits to run out of the bathroom and hug his aunt.
suddenly, there is a knock at the bathroom door...
'i will be back in a while' says the aunt.
the childs face turns pale.
and there is a twinkle in his uncles eyes.
something that said 'baby the game has just begun'.
the child is lifted with a pair of lusty hands and pushed on the cot.
the uncle still nude, turns the child around and pushes his penis into the childs anus.
the child tries to scream in agony.
 his mouth is gagged. tears flow through the childs eyes continuously.
until the tears dry.
the child surrenders to the pain.
he gives up his protest.
the child feels his anus with his hand.
and his hands get soiled in a red liquid.
the liquid is blood.


this is the beginning. just the beginning.
then, again and again, the child goes through the ordeal .
and this continued for 10 long years.

what do you think teh child wouldve done?
would he have committed suicide?
taken to drugs?
become an alcoholic?
or turned an abuser himself?

well all your assumptions are wrong.

this child is living.
he is smiling.
he doesnt look for hope.
he is the hope.
he is giggling.
he remembers his painful past. it is a part of his being.
but looks at it as an opportunity to empathise with the pain of others who have been through similar chaos.

the child is writing this blog.
the child is me.
thats why i call myself aham.
'aham' because it is about the 'me' in me that i never realized for 10 years.
'aham' because if read in reverse, aham reads as 'maha' or humongous... that’s what the degree of my pain has been.

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Be Not The Flame, Be The FlintStone

a child was i, in shy gay abandon...
didn’t know, i, to smile, to cry,
when boys were busy lifting skirts,
and girls played games with their fingers,
neither with boys nor with girls,
i didnt ‘do’ any, nor did the thought trespass between my ears.
all that i liked was to listen to was my inner voice…
the echoes moved in my heart that bled, seeking in life, a choice.
just a choice of a life. not another life, but a life, within my life.
in school i was just a bully, a little tall panzy bully,
not effeminate, but scared,
scared so much, that all my expressions were incomplete.

there was this boy by the name of santosh who used to tease me. and every time he would tease me i used to go deep into my shell. real deep. you know.
i played no sport. i never liked those boyish things like pinching each others asses, discussing sizes and all that.
i was sentimentally related more to the girls and to some boys who used to sit all alone. alone and aloof.
i dont even remember most of them. but this one i cant forget. i remember clearly there was this boy. he was my senior. he used to look into my eyes with great empathy. i didn’t know what those eyes said. i dont know what they meant. i cant even decipher what i felt.
was this love. was this a crush. i donno.
it’s all so difficult to describe, and even difficult to comprehend. i never spoke to him.
but,i saw a ray of hope in those eyes. wanted to cling on to him. but. i never saw him again.
those eyes left an imprint in my fragile mind. an everlasting imprint.
but. he was a phase. just a phase. a phase that phased out.
i was deserted. as always.
little things in life bestowed me with a lot of joy.
in school, we had a 30 minute period devoted to dance. boys used to have sports or craft then, but i stayed back and looked at the girls dancing bharatnatyam. unintentionally, unknowingly, i use to ape the girls and make mudras with my long artistic fingers.
the teacher noticed. she pulled me out. she asked me to dance with the girls.
i danced. i danced. i really danced.

this was a new beginning for me. i was very close to just one male friend in school. didn’t feel sexual or anything. not even remotely. just that, when you don’t have any male friend and you trust only one, you would absolutely love and adore him. i just didnt adore. i hero-worshipped him. i put him on a pedestal. i trusted him completely. he knew it all. i told it to him one day when in ninth standard. he said 'it happens'. i thought 'every one goes though similar abuse. else how would they know about sex'.

he was the only person who knew about my abuse.
but when i moved to college, i noticed, that one (not so fine) day that all my acquaintances (had no friends) knew about my abuse. how could they have?
(i don’t want to engage in any banter against him hence wouldn’t take names)
my heart wasn’t agreeing to believe that my friend was the reason, until he confessed that he did tell the world and had a kind of expression on his face which said ‘what’s the big deal haan’.
and soon there were college toilets adorned with graffiti that read: ‘for gay sex contact harish’ and things like that.
you know, people like to speak. especially, creative juices flow endlessly when the topic is sex or anything remotely related.
(they didnt know that children could be abused. or they did know but didnt accept, i fret when i realise that, now they must have become fathers, hope the ignorance was shortlived)
the earth for me was rotating in the opposite direction. but i was not gay then. i was not straight either. i was asexual.
i was teased again. again i was bullied. i tried eating pills to die.
but death doesnt come that easily for those who arnt happy enough that they crave to experience death.
i got up in the morning and thought that im dead and in heaven. but i was alive.
then again i tried. again i was alive.
and then again for the third time and i was alive again.
i don’t know how i survived. i don’t know why i didn’t try again. may be i just didn’t muster the courage. may be i was a coward.

i was very scared of dogs then, and my uncle (not the abuser) got home a german shepherd. i was so scared that the dog was behind me, my lungi was down and i was up the tree. but this boy (my four legged jimmy) was a real sweetheart. he used to lick my tears when i cried. i loved him. i took up animal rights. started speaking up for them. the boy who didn’t ever utter 'b#st@rd'. started hurling flowery hindi abuses on fatherch@#s who ill treated animals.
i saw a new ray of hope in animal welfare.
i loved animals, but they loved me more than what i did, and that too, immensely and unconditionally.
i fought with parrot walas, people who ill treated their pet dogs and cats, vagaira vagaira. soon, i saw that people were scared of me. but more than that what gave me happiness was that i was being helpful to someone.

infact i need to share this with you.

you know, more than me jimmy was an animal lover. one rainy night he brought home two kittens that were drowning. one after the other.
he lifted them just the way a mother cat would lift her offspring.
i pasted him up thinking that he was eating them. only to realise that he was mothering them. he is and will be my inspiration. he could save a member of another species and mother them! he was beyond biology, people say he is a 'dog'. i agree, but if read, in the reverse.

he gave me the courage to say no. and yeah, i did say no. my uncle pounced on me. i pushed him and screamed. screamed like mad.
and he fled. he hasn’t touched me after that. i started living. started discovering myself. was in the quest of my own identity and to find answers to the questions that raged a battle in my head.

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Author: Aham | Published Aug 04, 2009 | 01:01:09 PM

Young, Vervy, Thoughtful, Passionate, Creative, Compassionate BlogActivist -- thats me. ...