Kalki Koechlin on being sexually abused as a child: full transcript

New Delhi: Actress Kalki Koechlin spoke to NDTV about sexual abuse of children and her own experience.

Ques: You've broken your silence on child sexual abuse and of your own experience. What can you share with us? Why haven't we heard about this before?

Kalki: The reason you haven't heard about it is that I don't like to talk about it, for me it's not a one day headline, it's something that's a reality I have lived with for a long time.

For me it's an important issue and I wanted to talk about it. It is not about giving you my history as a person who has gone through sexual abuse but to put forward the idea. So many of us have gone through it and most of the people that I know especially close friends of mine who are women have gone through some form of CSA (child sexual abuse).

So it's just so out there, so much of it that I think it's not something that should be ignored. Right now 53% of the nation is going through CSA that's more than half the country and that's only the official statistic. I think there's a lot more happening because we know in a lot of families we brush it under the carpet and because of social, cultural pressure we don't talk about these things.

So for me it was important to mention that but I don't think public platform is the only way to talk about CSA. I think sometimes it's important to speak about it, break the silence, other times its important to have a place to go to where you can trust somebody whether it be a psychiatrist, a family member, or a social set-up, an organization which helps when you talk about these things or your school or your teacher.

The problem is that we don't have these trusted areas to go. And the problem about talking about it publicly is that there's also the danger of it becoming a shocking headline.

Somebody who has gone through CSA is not a headline, that's a reality they have lived with all of their life so it has to be much deeper than that, there has to be other ways of expressing it, talking about it and of course the government support and laws implemented.

Ques: Many Indian celebrities don't talk about these things. So in that sense you're doing something new and bold just by speaking out even without the gory details. You may encourage a lot of other people to come forward and speak.

Kalki: I don't think it's just celebrities. We always expect celebrities to be the ones who talk but none of us talk about these issues, I know a lot of people who are not in the film industry who feel they can talk about it so definitely I think it's important to put out my experience if it helps somebody or makes them confident to talk about but it goes beyond that.

As I said, it's not so important just to publicize it but to deal with it, really search into it and do not make it a taboo, I think that's a highest problem it's a mentality that we have that anything that has to do with sexual abuse is taboo. So children just feel they have done something wrong or this fear of what their parents would think how they would be judged by anybody around them. That taboo needs to go and that comes from seriously looking at sexual education at schools and in home environment. Right now if you look at sexual education it's like a Biology subject, very removed from the reality of it, you see diagrams and it is very cut off from the social side of it. Whereas the social aspect of sexuality is as important, it should be a subject as serious as maths or science.

Ques: As you say it's a huge issue. In India we have talked more and more about sexual violence since the nirbhaya case. Are more people willing to talk about this or because it involves families, it's so much more difficult?

Kalki: It's extremely difficult to talk about it because in 50 per cent of cases it is somebody known or one of the family members who has abused a child so that makes it so difficult. Once you come out with it you have to confront that person and that is pretty much re-living the whole pain of it again. It is tiring, exhausting and traumatic for the person to re-live the experience with the psychiatrist, family member or abuser, so it's a sensitive and difficult subject to tackle. There's also the sensitive issue of treating the child who has gone through that, giving them a comfortable space where they feel they can talk about it.

But before anything happens, the question I want to raise is why are people doing this? Why is somebody you are close to abusing you in the first place? I think there's a social question there - of repression, of not being able to express things and it's really important that we address that as well. An awareness that we talk about, something that Rahul said. There's an analogy, if a child has a broken arm he is able to talk to his parents. Similarly a child who has been abused should be able to talk about it and get rid of that taboo.

Ques: Did the abuse change you? Has it shaped the kind of person you became?

Kalki: I would say every experience you go through shapes you as a person. So obviously yes, it has. It took me many, many years to even come and talk about it. It's also how you choose to go ahead with it and what you choose to do with it. For me my writing and my art, my acting is therapeutic, it's my way of releasing things out. I think everybody has different outlets as long as there are places where you can do that. Not everybody has privilege to talk about it openly.

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