Chocolate Should Be Sweet - So should childhood. But beneath the civilised veneer of society are tales that children tell. Of sexual abuse

Dear Reader...
Have you been sexually abused in your childhood.
I shall be as direct:
Yes.
But yes, read on. For Pinki’s well-researched book tells you facts that shock. Like how one in ten children in India are subject to sexual abuse. And how, most of it takes place within the safety of the child’s own home. Shocking? It may well be, for research has shown that Child Sexual Abuse or CSA knows no class barriers.
It is hard not to be affected as you hear Pinki Virani talk about child abuse to a select but fairly large crowd that had gathered at Crossword, the bookshop, last Friday. It is hard not to be affected as she talks of the different kinds of abuse that a child could be subjected to. It is hard not to be affected when an excerpt is read out from the book. A page from Genevieve’s past that replays a memory of childhood abuse and the lingering bitter taste of that remembrance. It is that kind of book. It is difficult to read through, yet hard to put down. Bitter Chocolate is a harsh rendering of a harsher reality.
Addressing a gathering to talk about her book and about CSA was a frightening experience for the journalist-author. “The thing is, I wrote about it and when it was actually time to stand up and say, look it happened to me, I realised it was easier to write.”
It was a gathering, very much like the one in Chennai, listening, and understanding. Then something surprising happened afterwards. Three women approached Pinki, and before she could react, hugged her tight. “There I was, forty-one years old and I had just been comforted by hugs by three strangers,” recalls the author, “I felt like a child.”
Researching the book was not easy. Listening to young victims relate what they had gone through upset Pinki, giving her nightmares. But she carried on writing, talking to psychiatrists, social workers and others. “At the end of it,” she says, “If 50%... no at least 10% of the people who read it, who hear me talk, go home and protect their children, it’s enough.” The book is a comprehensive, almost frightening collection of little tales of abuse, of insensitive adult reactions and of pathetically inadequate laws. At the end of the book, Pinki has provided detailed data, including phone numbers and e-mail ids of people who work in the field.
The response from the public to her tour to publicise Bitter Chocolate has amazed and surprised her. “One woman got up and said, `...it happened to me. I’ve never said it before.’ Another boy got up and said, `it’s happened to me too’.”
For Pinki, it’s been a catharsis, though it wasn’t intended as a book, she confesses. “It is such a private bloody thing,” she says intensely, “The last thing you want to do is deal with it publicly.”