Surrendering to the Menacing Darkness of Silence,...

â€Å"A woman’s garb covers me from tip to toe. Inside, made of stone, a hardened heart alone Can stone ever be molten by tear’s ebb and flow?† -Binodini Dasi. Violence against women is a worldwide phenomenon which spans all social classes and age groups. Violence in both its subtle and blatant from is so deeply embedded in cultures around the world that it is almost rendered invisible. To quote Charlotte Bunch – â€Å"Opening the door on the subject of violence against the world’s females is like standing†¦show more content†¦Leela and Bhaskar, an urban middle-class couple have been hearing the terrifying screams of sexual assault on a woman for several weeks in their neighborhood. Leela discloses her fears and persists on Bhaskar to call the police, to which he acts unresponsively calling Leela â€Å"oversensitive† about the issue a nd he also points at the difficulty of persuading the police about the credibility of the crime. At one instance it is revealed that though Bhaskar has apparently no desire to do anything for the crime being committed freely before their eyes day after day, nevertheless he does watch it, as Leela’s dialogue makes it evident, â€Å"We don’t even really watch, do we? I don’t. But†¦you do. You watch it!† (Padmanabhan, 6) And Bhaskar admits to this. Bhaskar’s friend Mohan comes to their house to see the â€Å"crime being committed†. The perpetrators of such inhuman violence have commanded the inhabitants of the locality to put their lights out at night, thus succeeding in throwing darkness