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“In place of a firing squad, I stare down the barrels of endless interrogation.
Why did she not run away?
Why did she not use the opportunities she had for escape?
Why did she stay if, indeed, the conditions were as bad as she claims?
How much of this wasn't really consensual?
Let me tell you a story. Not mine, this time around.
It is the story of a girl we call after the place of her birth, lacking the integrity to even utter her name. The Suranelli Girl.
Forty-two men rape this girl, over a period of forty days.
She is sixteen years old.
The police do not investigate her case. The high court questions her character. The highest court in the land asks the inevitable. Why did she not run away? Why did she not have the opportunities she had for escape? Why did she say, if need, the conditions were as bad as she claims? How much of this wasn't really consensual?
Sometimes the shame is not the beatings, not the rape. The shaming is in being asked to stand for judgement.”
― Meena Kandasamy, When I Hit You: Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife

“nd the more familiar the strange becomes, the more and more strange the familiar appears. That’s how the once-upon-a-time fiery feminist becomes a battered wife. By observing, but not doing anything. By experiencing, but not understanding. By recording but not judging.”
― Meena Kandasamy

“Hope - as the cliché goes - is the last thing to disappear. I sometimes wish it had abandoned me first, with no farewell note or goodbye hug, and forced me to act.”
― Meena Kandasamy, When I Hit You: Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife

“I never understood rape until it happened to me. It was a concept- of savagery, of violence, of disrespect. I had read my share of Kate Millet and Susan Brownmiller but nothing prepared me for how to handle it. Within a marriage, fighting back has consequences. The man who rapes me is not a stranger who runs away. The man who rapes me is not the silhouette in the car park, he is not the masked assaulter, he is not the acquaintance who has spiked my drinks. He is someone who wakes up next to me. He is the husband for whom I make coffee the following morning. He is the husband who can shrug it away and tell me to stop imagining things. He is the husband who can blame his action on unbridled passion the next day, while I hobble from room to room.
I begin to learn that there are no screams that are loud enough to make my husband stop. There are no scream that cannot be silenced by the shock of a tight slap. There is no organic defence that can protect against penetration. He covers himself with enough lubricant to slide part my resistance. My legs go limp. I come apart.”
― Meena Kandasamy, When I Hit You: Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife