There is no outrage. The social media is not enraged and enflamed. There is no one taking to the streets even to march silently or register a “peaceful protest”. And this is no “breaking news”.
That is because it perhaps doesn’t matter when a 45-year-old woman was found locked up in a room with windows blocked with bricks, for past 25 years in a hamlet of Bhandarwada in Sanquelim. It perhaps doesn’t matter that her family members, who behaved like absolute brutes, and kept her confined in a room for 25 years – yes 25 years. It’s a miracle that she has survived the ordeal but it’s very likely that she’s scarred for life. It also perhaps doesn’t matter that her neighbours and the surrounding village did nothing for 25 years.
It has to matter. As a society and one that calls itself civilized, the least that is expected is outrage. Not to disrupt but to wake up. An outrage that all this does indeed matter. An outrage against those who perhaps knew that a woman spent her early adulthood to her middle ages entrapped and imprisoned in her own home by her own family members, including her own mother. An outrage that transforms into a demand by the right thinking people of Goa to do at least one thing right. Inquire and investigate and conclude what is prima facie clear, that the family shut her off in a room for 25 years, and take action against them. They have no right to go scot free.
This case has to be treated as a “rarest of the rare”. Why should this phrase be used only when there has been a brutal murder? The victim Vidduta Vasudev Mandrekar, may have lived and god-willing, after her rescue, will get back her health. But her confinement for 25 years in a room is a cruel act which falls under the category of the rarest of the rare category.
There can be no justification for this. The facile logic of keeping her locked up because she was mentally unstable, makes the act even more serious. Instead of attempting to give her treatment, they literally left her to die and it is perhaps her will and of the almighty that she survived, till she was rescued at last by the Bicholim police.
The contours of this case also brings us to a realisation that we have failed as a society and have a lot to answer for. Yes we fight for causes dear to us, we fight for our land and water, we fight against pollution, but do we fight enough when such cruelty is witnessed. Strangely, for all of Goa’s fame as a land which opposes vehemently and takes up public interest issues, there is strangely not enough on the ground protests against the menace of trance parties and drugs too. Here too keep in mind, that locals live in those villages. They are literally tortured by the loud music and the noise and the sheer weight of “tourism” which falls on them through the night, shattering their lives. Can anyone recount a major rally or public hearing or demonstrations or memorandums being submitted on this, exactly in the manner that taxi drivers and owners held the state to ransom just because they did not want to put speed governors on their cars?
A study of the anatomy of outrage will reveal that it is often closely linked to the interest of some of the pressure groups (though there are public spirited issues taken up too) while genuine causes that of a humane nature are taken up with the same ferocity of conviction. That should end.
Goan society must wake up to fight for this Sanquelim woman, in the name of humanity and values that we in Goa, hopefully still possess which makes us different.
