This morning’s Times of India did not just carry a headline. It carried a memory.
Three men sentenced to death for gang rape and murder. Clinical words. Legal words. Necessary words. And in the middle of it all, the name of a young man who had tried to stop them. Bibash Nayak. Twenty-six.
Murdered because he stood between brutality and two women.
I remember Bibash.
Six years ago he was part of my small class of seventeen aspiring writers. A quiet youngster. Not the type to dominate discussion. When others performed their brilliance, he listened. When he finally spoke, it was measured, thoughtful, almost shy. But when he wrote, he blazed.
His assignment was titled A Bookmark. A story about a homeless artist near Flora Fountain, in Mumbai. I opened it again today. The sentences still breathe. The observations still sting. There was compassion in his writing. There was restraint. There was depth. The boy could see people.
And now he is gone.
Did those men in Hampi know who he was? Did they know that the young man they bludgeoned had wrestled with adjectives and metaphors, had dreams of books with his name on the cover? Of course not. To them he was not a writer. Not a son. Not a student. He was an obstacle.
That is what lust does. It reduces human beings to obstacles.
And then I look at our politics and I see something similar. Powerful women in West Bengal speaking with clarity and courage. Even Rahul, flawed as all politicians are, attempting to articulate dissent. And what do we see? Ridicule. Lampooning. Dismissal. Sneers.
Talent treated as nuisance. Thought treated as threat.
There is a strange insecurity in power that cannot tolerate brilliance. Like those ruffians, some in authority see articulate voices not as contributors to democracy but as stumbling blocks between them and their unchecked lust for power.
The pattern is disturbingly familiar. First dehumanise. Then dismiss. Then destroy.
We are becoming a nation where standing up is risky business. Where defending a woman can cost you your life. Where speaking truth can earn you mockery instead of engagement. Where talent is inconvenient.
I weep for Bibash. Not just because he died bravely, but because he lived brilliantly. Because he saw a homeless artist and found a story worth telling. Because he believed words matter.
And I weep for us.
If a society cannot protect its women, cannot honour its brave, and cannot respect its talented, then it is not merely losing law and order.
It is losing its soul.
Bibash, you were not ‘A Bookmark.’ You were a whole, unfinished book. And we are poorer for the chapters we will never read…!
The Author conducts an online, eight session Writers and Speakers Course. If you’d like to join, do send a thumbs-up to WhatsApp number 9892572883 or send a message to bobsbanter@gmail.com
