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A review by deetalkz
The Good Girls: An Ordinary Killing by Sonia Faleiro
5.0
What is the shame worth?
This the question that kept nagging me a day and night after I turned the last page of this book.
The image is chilling - that of two teenaged girls hanging dead by a tree branch in an open field. What could have caused this? Who must have lead to this? How did things come to this? These are the questions @sonia.faleiro sets out to answer in her book ‘The Good Girls.’ She tries to be the objective journalist looking for answers, but how “objective” can one be when such two young girls have been found hanging dead in a field. The girls had gone off to the field as their homes did not have proper sanitation facilities. Taken out of school the girls were expected to be married off soon. When they went missing their family feared more for their honour than for their safety. The police chowki was habitually incompetent and arrogant owing to the prevailing caste dynamics. But still, what could have caused this catastrophe where little girls had been unsafe in their own household?
Every few pages the book kept introducing me to a rural India I wasn’t prepared for. One where not only did women amount to nothing, but men of caste had their own daily headaches. Caste and gender had morally, ethically and financially corrupted our system and the rot was now out in the open.
In 2014, two teenagers, cousins, in Katra Sadatganj go missing one night. The next day they are found hanging by a tree in an open field. The imagery of this goes viral provoking the collective conscience of a people who had risen for Nirbhaya just two years back. However, all the “wokeness” had fallen short of preventing this incident and an incompetent system kept failing these girls time and again.
It is nearly impossible to not be enraged for Padma and Lalli after reading this. And so, I urge all of you to please please please be enraged for them, for us and for more to come because we deserve better!
This the question that kept nagging me a day and night after I turned the last page of this book.
The image is chilling - that of two teenaged girls hanging dead by a tree branch in an open field. What could have caused this? Who must have lead to this? How did things come to this? These are the questions @sonia.faleiro sets out to answer in her book ‘The Good Girls.’ She tries to be the objective journalist looking for answers, but how “objective” can one be when such two young girls have been found hanging dead in a field. The girls had gone off to the field as their homes did not have proper sanitation facilities. Taken out of school the girls were expected to be married off soon. When they went missing their family feared more for their honour than for their safety. The police chowki was habitually incompetent and arrogant owing to the prevailing caste dynamics. But still, what could have caused this catastrophe where little girls had been unsafe in their own household?
Every few pages the book kept introducing me to a rural India I wasn’t prepared for. One where not only did women amount to nothing, but men of caste had their own daily headaches. Caste and gender had morally, ethically and financially corrupted our system and the rot was now out in the open.
In 2014, two teenagers, cousins, in Katra Sadatganj go missing one night. The next day they are found hanging by a tree in an open field. The imagery of this goes viral provoking the collective conscience of a people who had risen for Nirbhaya just two years back. However, all the “wokeness” had fallen short of preventing this incident and an incompetent system kept failing these girls time and again.
It is nearly impossible to not be enraged for Padma and Lalli after reading this. And so, I urge all of you to please please please be enraged for them, for us and for more to come because we deserve better!