Creating some noise...

So, I read MM's blog and her experiences and thought I should put some of mine down. I'm sure every female reader has her own experience and her own horrifying details to add. My blood boils when I think of it. I'm talking of street abuse, or eve-teasing, or sexual harassment on the street. I've spoken about it before. Here I go again.

I did my Masters in Hyderabad. I'm from Bangalore, and technically grew up in one of the busiest areas in Bangalore. An area full of ALL kinds of people, the poorest of poor, the richest of the rich. My dad grew up in the same area and we knew everyone there. I was the pet of the whole wide road when I was a kid. So, I'm not one of those super-sensitive people, thankfully. The first time I was coming to Bangalore in a bus from Hyderabad was a big deal for my parents. They didn't want me coming alone in a bus, they didn't want me travelling alone. Period. You know how parents can be! I just brushed their fears away and decided to go to Bangalore as a spur-of-the-moment decision. I had short hair that time. I sat on my seat with a woman next to me. Smiled, chatted for a minute and decided to try to follow the horrible Telugu movie showing. Those days, I thought I'd learn some Telugu. Suddenly, I felt something on my hair. I thought some mosquito, some insect, some bag's handle touching me and just brushed it off. After some time, I felt the same again. This time, when I ran my hands through my hair, I felt I touched something solid. I suspected it to be someone and not something anymore. Me, being me, I decided to teach him a lesson. I put my head back, threw my hair back and waited for him. It was around 12.30 or so in the night. I knew if I screamed and raised a ruckus like I always do, I will be the one off the bus and that was the last thing I wanted. So, the next time I felt something touch me, I quickly put my hand, and touched 'it.' It was a man's hand. The man sitting behind me. In an impulse, I pulled it forward, bit it hard and threw it back. I heard him wince and after that, he stayed away. Of course, I spent the whole night leaning forward and trying not to sleep with nightmares of him doing something to me and how I'd attack him back. Sigh.

Ever since I was a kid, I've been practicing moves in my head to beat up a man or hit a man who touches me wrongly. I do it to date. Atleast it gives me confidence to walk on the streets. It helped me once. Once, in the busy Panjaguta area of Hyderabad where the infamous Hyderabad Central lies, I got off the cab and crossed the road on the zebra crossing to get into the mall. The road was busy, and many many people were crossing the road from both sides, vehicles in abundance, noise levels deafening, it was a busy city at 7 PM. There was a woman walking in front of me. Nothing special about her, really. An average Indian woman in her regular attire of salwar kameez, shoulder length hair, returning home possibly to go cook for her husband and kids, mid thirties, running with the urgency that I see on young working wives/moms' faces. Then I saw him. He was coming from the other side. He slapped her bottom. She just stopped midway. In shock. I stopped. I actually saw this guy lift his hand and slap this woman's bottom in the middle of the road in front of 1000s of people with a grin on his face. She said something like: aeeeee, but my blood boiled and I do not know what came over me. He was walking towards me and I pulled him and screamed out aloud and threatened to take him to the police station. Ironically, the police station was across the street. The woman was shocked, but she regained her composure and came along with me to the police station with him. To date, I do not know what made me do this, and how I summoned the courage to pull him into the police station. She filed an FIR and I told the police officer there to keep him for the night atleast. Atleast until that woman reaches home and I finish my shopping at the mall and reach home, only to narrate this as another of those everyday incidents in our lives to ourselves and maybe, our girl friends. That day, I did my usual weekly 2 hour grocery shopping in 15 mins flat and ran home. Literally.

Who said trains are the safest of modes of transport for women? Who said you can make friends on the train? I travelled regularly for over 4 years between Hyderabad and Bangalore on the train. There have been very few times when its been eventless. I know of my friends who carried a thick blanket even during Hyderabad's horrible summers. We all felt vulnerable. I never did. Not because I was bold or anything. I always forgot. I always ran from office to the railway station just in time. There was one time when I got the side-berth (I never learned to book tickets on time) and I lay down reading a book. I was dressed in a pair of jeans and a long sleeved kurta. There was this guy on the upper berth on the other side. He kept staring at me. I adjusted my position, I sat down, I threw my stole around any exposed part of my body (my feet!). Nothing worked. I even glared at him. It did not work. I lost it. I've never had too much patience, and not with men, ever. There were two others. One Tamil boy 20-21 years of age accompanying his grandmother. I usually avoid Maamis and Patis on the train for obvious reasons. This time around, I figured I should use them.

I lay down in a comfortable position, and waited for him to watch me again. He had this mean, crude grin on his face and I was determined to see it off. The moment he looked at me, I let him be. Then a good 5 minutes later, I looked at him and said in a continous stream: "Do you want this seat? Or, am I that pretty that you cannot stop staring at me? Or is it something else you are looking at? Do you want to talk about what interests you so much?" The Pati got up, asked the grandson to take my seat and muttered something against the guy. The guy, you ask? He was too embarrassed. I asked him way too many embarassing questions, you see.

I once got angry with a guy in my class (who was half my size then, and now is double my size) and lifted him from the collar and screamed and threatened to beat him up in school. Do you want to know why?

I used to be the class monitor and was asked to dictate Civics notes when the teacher wasn't available once. Everytime I said: "The constitution......irrespective of class, race, gender, sex,...," he'd ask me to repeat the sentence and would repeat only one word loudly after me as if he was learning to articulate the word and wrote it down clearly. You know and I know which word it was. And every answer in that particular chapter had this line. I lost it. Call it hormones, call it plain anger at being harassed in a very differently 'sexual' way, I walked up to him and lifted him and threatened to beat him up. It hurt his male pride and he hasn't let me forget it. I haven't because I do not regret it.

But, why? Why should I hide everytime? Why should I feel embarassed about myself every time? Why am I the only one who feels this whole staring, touching, maliciously grinning, winking is wrong? Why should I feel the brunt of an aisle seat instead of a comfortable window seat? I know that my parents'd have gotten worried and not let me travel alone again. I may not have been allowed to carry on with my life in Hyderabad all alone again. My mom would have come to school and spoken to my principal and at 15, I did not need that. Everytime I rant about this, there are many who agree and then the discussion moves on to CSA and then they exclaim: "Nowadays, even boys are being harassed. Do you think they will let the girls be?" So? Does that mean that since boys are also harassed, and its not like only women are harassed so, we should just take it in our stride saying that it happens to the boys too, and shut up?? Everytime I talk of these particular experiences, I narrate them as a funny anecdote of the kind of person I'm. You know why? Because the first time I spoke about it seriously, I had a crowd laughing their hearts out about how feisty and jhagdaalu I was. But you know what, everytime I narrate this as a funny anecdote, I'm laughing at all you people. All you people who stand and watch women who are harassed, all you people who laugh and such stories and call people like me incorrigible. All you people who forget about it until the next party and say: Yaar, tell us how you bit that guy's hand no? It is my fault too. But you know what? This is the only way you will hear the story without telling me : OMG, stop it. Its horrible! So, I say it this way. Laugh all you want. As long as you want to keep on hearing it, coz I will keep on saying it. It happens everyday to me, so I keep coming up with a new tactic to keep myself safe, a new move to use against all the perverts. A new story to entertain you all with.

I recently read somewhere about how some men started an organization to protest against their wives who beat them. You know what? Just like we women deserve to be harassed or raped because of the way we walk, or talk or the kind of clothes we wear. Mebbe, if I wear a burqa, you will want to see more and still harass me. Mebbe if I wear a mini skirt, you will want me more and harass me. Just because I'm a woman.

Mebbe you deserve to be beaten, unjustly so. Just because you are men.