Poornima, now 17, looks vacantly outside her room’s window. Her mystic eyes conceal a lot of sadness and hide the numerous broken dreams she once used to have. At 15, she was married to a well-off businessman, settled in Faridabad. He was a man in his early thirties, and was already married once, the wife now deceased. Her family had little choice, and with a paralysed father, the only relief for her family was that their daughter was off with no dowry at all. Little did they know, and she imagined, that on her first night, the SUHAAG-RAAT, as she was waiting coyly for her husband, an unknown man in his fifties, drunk and stinking, would open the door and force himself upon her. She was sold off, to a brothel in G.B Road, by her so-called husband, a pimp in reality. The first customer did pay a rather huge sum for this cute, precious virgin, for her NATHNI-UTARNA. But Poornima’s mind couldn’t think even of that two-year-old incident. Her mind was full of dread, because it was 5 in the evening, and in an hour or so, she will be visited by a plethora of perverted men, full of lust, who, for a sum of money, will earn the right to eat, bite, molest and tear her clothes off for the next few hours. For the world, she was a WHORE, the untouchable. In her mind, she still wanted to be with Deepak, her shy neighborhood boy, whom she fancied.

Natasha, the confident 25-year-old Team Leader in Synapse Corps., looked at her just-finished work on the monitor of the laptop at her desk. She felt confident and smiled to herself. She saved her work and sent a mail to Arvind Narang, her manager, informing him about the development. The gleaming, overweight 41 year old came almost rushing to her cabin, with a wide lopsided grin and mischievous eyes. “Nats, my babes! You make me proud again. You are a darling”, he added as he pressed her arms with a rather brutal force and hugged her forcibly, making her uncomfortable. She never liked the old faggot, but had to tolerate his antics, she was hopeful about making it as a project manager pretty soon. And she knew, that minus offering such perks to the bosses, she had little chances of being recommended, however talented she might be! The office gossiped about her, she was aware, called her a WHORE. But she cared little. She loved her independence, confidence and the money her paycheck brought. She is not willing to get back to the sobbing teen, underconfident, which she was 4 years back, when her fiance dumped her for offshore opportunities.

The “whore”, a tag so easily and mercilessly used by men to tag women they hate, are scared off or could not get in their beds. An identity used to describe promiscuous women, but created by perverted males since ages. The dirt of our society, which so effortlessly (may be!) consume the lust of our society’s masculine scum. And the others, who don’t live in brothels and yet are tagged as such by their frustrated peers, onlookers and so-called admirers. The other half of us, who never could get equal share of our facilities and hence were forced to either compromise or learn to satisfy the sensual pleasures of men, to be on an equal footing with equally or even less-talented men. Unfortunately, some of them are our own blood. Daughters, siblings or even friends. The mighty “whore”.

Swami Vivekanand once mentioned that if society be a bird, men and women are it’s two wings. A bird cannot fly with only one wing. So can’t our nation prosper, as long as we keep our other (and better) halves in veils.

And speaking of “whores”, Mary Magdalene was one of Christ’s most favored disciples. The Lord was never skeptic about embracing the one, whom the rest of the world had estranged.