Sunday, December 20, 2015

Suzette Jordan, the girl who refused to take crap

“I’m just another woman. Just another simple woman who loves her family, loves her children and will not take crap.” That’s how Suzette Jordan described herself the first time I met her. She was a single mother with two daughters to raise, practically penniless, unable to find a job despite her best efforts, stigmatised by society, vilified by the state and dealing with the trauma of brutal rape. Yet Suzette had chosen to fight valiantly, not just for herself but also for other survivors of sexual violence. Suzette radiated courage and a unique kind of grace.
The year was 2013 and just a few weeks ago, Suzette had waived her right to annonymity as a rape survivor and revealed her name and face on television. It was an act of outstanding courage and when I asked Suzette why she chose to do this, she replied, “I want to fight wide open so that people can see me and see my pain. This is my way of fighting. I’m not a victim, but I have suffered and I want my pain to be felt. Besides, I have nothing to be ashamed of.”
That day I felt her pain, in every syllable Suzette uttered as she spoke of the events of February 5, 2012, the night a gang of men committed rape on her in a car in her hometown, Kolkata.
“As soon as the car started, the main guy, the one who is still missing, grabbed my body part. Spontaneously, I slapped him. I tried to open the car but the door was auto locked. And then I knew I was in big trouble. He started to really beat me up. When he shoved a gun into my mouth I thought it was the end. I couldn’t breath or swallow. I could taste my own blood. He had slapped me so much, my mouth was bleeding. And then he laughed. They guy next to him was cheering him on. I was semi-conscious by then, but I could see him. He was so close to my face, trying to strangulate me. I felt I would not make it out of the car alive.
 “There’s a lot that they did to me, which is hard for me to put into words. I was consumed with fright and rage. It’s a terrible feeling -- like you’re alive but somebody has buried you in a coffin and you’re trying to get out but you can’t. You want to breath because you are alive but you’re held down and confined. I kept telling myself it was a bad dream. But it was not. At some level I knew it was happening to me. I was being raped and beaten. And the rapist beat me with so much of violence it was as if he had some age old vendetta against me. But in fact we didn’t know each other at all. He kept asking his friends to rape me, actually insisting and forcing them. And the bashing up just went on and on until I passed out totally. It was like he had control. And he had the power to do that to me. And that made him feel good about himself.”
Battered, barely alive, Suzette was thrown out of the moving car after a few hours by her attackers. Hiding behind parked vehicles she managed to crawl to a taxi. Only  one thought kept passing through her head – “I am alive and I want to go home to my children”.
Suzette told me that she was raised as a very independent individual, made to believe in her own strength. Having lived at a boarding school from the age of seven to seventeen, she had learnt to fight her own battles. But that night, she felt utterly helpless and defeated. When she finally reached home, it was her older daughter, the teenaged Rhea, who stood beside her like a rock. “She was like a mother to me that night,” said Suzette. “So compassionate, understanding. Rhea just held me and let me cry my heart out. She nursed me and took care of me.”
For three whole days Suzette was unable to leave her bed. Four days later, Suzette was at the police station to register her complaint. “I made a conscious choice to file a complaint. Lots of people told me that I should just keep quiet and forget about it. That going to the police is traumatic and I would be buying myself a lot of trouble. But I wanted to fight for justice.” Two strong role models, Suzette told me, had shaped her personality very decisively. One was her “strict and straightforward” school-teacher grandmother who told her never to tolerate nonsense and the other was her “compassionate, loving and understanding” mother who taught her to stand up for her beliefs. Both her role models were willing to support her decision.
As she described to me her first ‘real’ brush with the police, Suzette actually burst out laughing. “I went to Park Street police station to file my FIR. I thought, you know, here I am, dealing with the fact that I have been raped and now I will have to fight and the police will be sympathetic to me. But I was so wrong! Filing that FIR was just horrible and humiliating. Each and every policeman there, came one by one and asked me, ‘Are you sure you were actually raped?’ ‘How it was possible to be raped in a car?’ ‘What were the positions in which you were raped?’ So much so that the Park Street police station is small and there was a prisoner in the lock up there who had been held for the  rape of an 11 year old girl.  Even he heard the entire conversation.” The doctor at the public hospital too was no paragon of compassion. Said Suzette, “He asked me to narrate my story in full public view. Then during the physical examination, he actually commented on my tattoo! ‘Hmm. Nice tattoo,’ he said.”
Suzette’s determination to pursue her case came at a huge price. There was public humiliation at the hands of chief minister Mamata Banerji who had recently come to power and insinuated that Suzette’s story was cooked up to malign her government. Sections of society dubbed her a prostitute. And then there were the death threats from her attackers. “It’s been very hard, said Suzette. “Can’t people see that a rape survivor has already gone through so much pain? How much more can we put her through?”
For months Suzette kept a chopper under her pillow. Awake all night, she would pace through her home. “Behind my mask of strength, I am still very frightened,” she said to me. “But there have been many angels too. My family. Some friends. And police officers like Damayanti Sen who investigated my case and concluded that I was speaking the truth. These angels give me hope and keep me going.”
After our first meeting, Suzette and I became friends. I was always bowled over by her celebration of life. There were many terrible days at court, she had very few means and she was finding it hard to get a job. Yet she always managed to laugh.  She pursued happiness with determination. “Just because I have been raped, people feel I have no right to live and I certainly have no right to be happy. I feel as if  I am being blamed just for being alive. Punished for wanting to live my life despite being raped. I will prove all of them wrong,” she would say, the clinking of her bangles punctuating her words.
Suzette also became an iconic figure raising the concerns of survivors of sexual violence at various fora across the country. She articulated difficult and important issues such as the rights of survivors in the legal process or the need for social support for survivors of sexual violence, with vehemence and empathy. Being actively involved with the protests against rising cases of seuxal violence in her home state, Bengal, brought Suzette face to face with other rape survivors and bereaved families of victims who were raped and murdered.  She sometimes said to me that if she were ever rich enough to have a big house, her doors would be open for women in need. Her heart of course, was already open.
Suzette was so sparklingly alive that her death came as a terrible shock. In March 2015, Suzette succumbed to encephalitis. At a memorial meeting we organised in Mumbai after her death, dozens of people spoke about how Suzette had touched their lives very meaningfully. Yet most of these were people Suzette had never met. Among the speakers was a teenaged girl who called  “Suzette Didi” her “inspiration”. This young girl told us that Suzette’s struggle and the fact that she chose not to hide her identity had given her the courage to fight the acute discrimination she faces as the daughter of a commercial sex worker. I was reminded of something Suzette had said to me: “If I had chosen to just accept injustice submissively, would I ever be the right role model for my daughters?” Yes, Suzette wanted to be a good role model for her daughters. She ended up being a fabulous role model for the whole world.
When I visited her grave in Kolkata, I felt Suzette’s smiling presence as I gazed at her photograph, lovingly placed by her children on her grave stone. Suzette had sometimes spoken to me of her desire to leave Kolkata. “I wish I could go away from this city. Fight my case from somewhere else.” Now she had gone, really far away. How on earth would she fight her case from where she was, I wondered. There was news that her attackers on hearing of Suzette’s demise, were distributing sweets in anticipation of their freedom. I was deeply troubled and worried about the fate of the case.
Clearly, I had underestimated the power of Suzette’s determination. Even in death, she didn’t take crap. On December 10, 2015, a Kolkata court held three men guilty of raping 37 year old Suzette Jordan.
Her beloved younger sister and closest friend Nicqui, went bald, to celebrate the victory. She explained, “Suzie had said she would shave her head if she won. So I did it for her.” I smiled, trying to imagine Suzette bald. I couldn’t. Her glorious curls were her signature. She’d once said to me, “You know, during the rape, they pulled my hair so hard, it was coming off in clumps for weeks. I have some bald spots now.” And then she quickly smiled, tossed her head and continued with a laugh, “But I don’t care. I have lots of hair and it’s just beautiful.”  

  

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