“I called him last night but he wouldn’t answer.”
“It all happened because of Diya. Total b****.”
“I don’t know where I went wrong Aakanshaa. I loved him so much. Am I not beautiful enough? Have I ever acted grouchy with him?”
“No babe, it’s not your fault. It’s his loss that he chose Diya over you. You deserve much better and trust me, his stupidity will cost him big one day. The good awaits you. Let bygones be bygones.”
“Medha, dinner’s ready.” A shriek voice is heard from upstairs and Medha walks up to the kitchen.
That night, after dinner, Medha limps back to her room, crawls up to her bed and rolls into a ball underneath the blanket, sobbing silently feeling wrecked.
A 14 year old girl, who was “in love” with one of her classmates just had a breach in her relationship and she thinks her life lost its meaning.
A day passed. Two, three, five, seven, ten and so on. One fine afternoon, as she was browsing the web scrolling up and down and up and down her seemingly favorite site to keep her head off the ongoing, with as less an interest as a sleepy child kept up to complete her school assignment, a note popped up- Arvind wants to connect with you. He’s a cute looking boy she thought and tersely confirmed his connection request.
It’d almost been two weeks and as they say time heals everything, she was gradually getting out of her seclusion.
A caterpillar had just metamorphosed and advanced to a new phase of its life.
……………………………………………………..
“Hey there.”
“Hi, Can I talk to you for a moment? It’s important.”
“Yeah, hi”
“Thank god, you replied.”
“What is that important thing?”
……………………………………………………..
That evening, the conversation stopped there.
Three days later, Arvind texted her again and they started an amicable conversation. Arvind seemed to be an interesting person to talk to.
Maybe, all that Medha needed was someone or something to lift her up from the unpleasant set of circumstances that had happened to her. Maybe the early teens have this innocent rage of vengeance against anyone that hurt them and that they could replace them with the other just as good or better. Medha was no different. She shared the same crib.
Meeting someone unplanned, getting to know them and discovering that your preferences match and that person is the kind of someone that you wouldn’t mind expressing yourself to is always amusing, more so especially in the beginning. Days passed at Medha’s end.
With the break of every dawn, a pristine hope of talking to that unseen friend began breaking in.
“Did you sleep well?”
“Yes. I had a lovely dream.”
“Really? What about?”
“YOU”
A juvenile excitement of knowing about each other’s day took birth to every sun down. Talking to each other on the web became their most preferred hobby exhilarating their lives just like wine exhilarates the drinker. The baited-breath wait to talk to each other online became a routine they wouldn’t afford to miss a single day and that’s how the attachment started getting stronger.
Texting grew towards sexting and all those quirky feels in her belly that she used to feel while with her ex started tickling her all over again. The texts that Arvind sent her warmed the cockles of her heart and the sexts that he projected towards her wormed all the way to her womb.
She enjoyed all of it to bits already developing a ripsnorting will to do anything and everything that Arvind wanted or convinced her to do. Days were sober but nights lured their internet intimacy under its cloak of darkness and simultaneously gave way to the inevitables, yet most feared.
One rainy evening, Arvind asked her to send nudes. Medha, a little taken aback, refused at first but when Arvind fooled her for the need of a little oomph in their relationship, she assented.
People haven’t just made it up that humans are the most discontent. With the increase in demands of more nudes, Medha collected more confidence, maybe a feel of assurance from Arvind’s end that he had got attached to her and wouldn’t leave her side unlike her ex.
All this through, Medha hadn’t once seen Arvind except on pictures, nor had Arvind seen her, yet the intimacy.
Many suns rose and many set. Then one growly night, he said-“Strip in front of me.”
The excitement of seeing Arvind over the internet outweighed the requisite of having to flash herself in the webcam. Besides, he had already controlled her mind onto thinking only good of him and turning a blind eye to the red flags .She had already given all of herself to him.
She flashed the top of her underpants and the lock of hair underneath it. He demanded more and she unhooked her bra, pulled down its straps and stood there, unclad, as naked as the day she was born, with her eyes beweighing timidness and trust in equal shares.
As promised, it was Arvind’s turn to show himself up in the webcam and Medha was all excited to see the ‘love’ of her life for the first time.
A cute charming face, twinkling eyes, chiseled nose, and an affectionate smile as she had expected him to be about and the faith she had upon the explanation of himself got lashed down when she saw an about 35 year old man with creases near the corner of his eyes, bald spots on his head, dense bearded fraudulent face topping all of these with the stares from those intimidatingly hurtful eyes fixed on her unclothed body like those of a drooling rabid animal.
Medha couldn’t utter a word. She felt a weapon clamping her throat. She couldn’t clothe herself back nor could turn the webcam off. She couldn’t feel the ground beneath her feet nor the air roaring around her. She got entirely blank about the thought of how she got fooled and used. Everything went pitch dark. She got blind amidst the flashing memories of her internet intimacy with Arvind and the ambiance brought deafening silence, silent enough to hurt her ears.
……………………………………………………………………………………………
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Social sites have become a major junction for cyber molestation these days. Logging online in search of cyber-date, cyber-love and cybersex has been shooting up exponentially with the invasion of human brain by technology (please spare me the conversation of technology being born by human brain itself. You know what I mean.)
Still and all, people fail to realize that the fancy they take to cyber pleasures can eventually mold to cyberbully and cyber assault that they might have to grapple with for the rest of their lives. What’s more, “victim blaming” remains as an inheritance.
A naïve 14 year old girl becomes friends with some random 30 year old man, unknown about his age, believing over the feigned information in his account that says he is 16. She gets conned every bit by her new friend and gradually becomes all about him with bells on, all but hopelessly smitten. When soars their closeness with comfort unfurled, neither the man gets second thoughts on asking her to show her flesh over the webcam, nor the juvenile feels inept to comply. And that is not terrible per se. What is, is that the whole story is nothing but fabricated with deceit, ruinous enough to cost not only her psychological frame of mind but her entire life.
Moreover, do you know what’s even dreadful?
Still in some societies, victims especially females, of sexual assault are often blamed BY OTHERS after being raped or molested, over their thigh exposing skirts or cleavage revealing dresses.
Here, within the frame of cybersex seduction and assault, the victim considers likely to blame HERSELF for her supposed role in “bringing on” the assault to herself. When it’s the devil in your head aiming to hurt you, you need no evil outside to lace into you.
It’s horrifying how a young girl gets trapped into the den of some paedophilic internet abuser and tricked over to flash herself in her birthday suit for his titillation.
It’s hurtful to know how girls as young as 14, who don’t even know what having an actual love affair with someone is like, are taken advantage of by some repugnant paedophilics by luring them in with a fake account. In some face of the earth, young girls, especially those who come from poor background, are pushed into the dens of cybersex where they are forced to perform sex acts for the arousal of customers around the globe who pay big bucks for it and watch from home online and child rights advocates are still lobbying about the worst possible form of child abuse while those innocent children are being swamped with predators from all around the world.
In our part of the world, young girls are deceived for love by paedophilic predators like Arvind and taken advantage of. The UN and FBI suspect that there are upto 750,000 people on earth online at any one time hunting for children to exploit.
What forms the fertile soil for the rise of all this? For a myriad of reasons, girls especially at their early teens are being prey to premature cyber-sex seduction and a lot many instances have been seen where it is done nothing about but overlooked.
People need to understand that it is not only at homes, schools, public vehicles, work places or roads where girls are molested or sexually assaulted. It could also be where young girls these days spend most of their leisure time at- the internet.
And it’s every parent’s duty to raise their children in an environment where they are taught about optimum utilization of internet. Adolescents need to be counselled about being careful who to be friends with. One minute those sociopath predators act like a lovesick pup love-bombing you and the next, like a rabid jackal biting on that baited hook and you won’t even realize that you’ve been manipulated through and through.
These forms of cybersex molestation will keep being resistant to its remedial actions until and unless a tough and detailed policy is had on cyberbullying and cybersex assault.
I am not certain if any such policy exists in our country Nepal. Those cyberpaths who won’t appear as upfront perverts but actually are big time predators, need to be exposed, not just blocked or deleted and the victims should not stay shut.
No one should have the audacity to say to let go and leave it behind. It’s not about vengeance. It’s about justice. With the right and the earliest steps, many young lives can be saved from being misled to the horrendous premature cybersex assaults and thus from being their victims.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ASHMITA KARKI
Ashmita Karki is a jolly girl who is a writing enthusiast, a big time reader and a blogger. She is an undergraduate currently pursuing Bachelors in public health at Maharajgunj Medical Campus, Institute of Medicine, Maharajgunj Kathmandu. Dancing, playing volleyball,playing keyboard,travelling are what describe her hobbies.
P.S: She is a movie freak.
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