Street smart

Read this link:
http://www.anniezaidi.com/2006/03/streets-stories-strategies.html

Although she has said it all, I do not think that enough can ever be said about this.

Here are some of my own experiences:
* This came at a time when I didnt understand anything about sex or sexuality. I was a highly protected girl child. I must have been 10 or 11. There was a big function happening at our community hall. The family was helping out with the preperations. I was asked to go backstage and fetch something. I was looking for it when this friendly 'uncle' who worked at the community hall came in from behind and held me from the back. His arms went around my chest.
Although I didnt know what was happening, I felt a distinct sense of unease - I think its built into us girls. I managed to disentangle myself and ran out of the room. I felt an inexplicable sense of shame. And instead of telling my mother about this, I was more bothered about what excuse I will come come up with as to why I hadnt fetched what I had been asked to. Till date, there has been only one person whom I have shared this with.

*While in school, I was walking back home from the bus stop when this man started following me. It wasn't exactly conspicuous. I could have easily missed it if I hadnt been alert. It kept happening for one week. Then one friday he approached me. Got pretty close before I started to run. Ran all the way home. Didnt say a word to anyone. I was tensed the whole weekend and even tried to come up with an excuse to miss school on monday. But I could not work up the courage to confide in my mom.
What's interesting about this episode, now that I look back at it, is how we girls, in our shame to speak up about such things, actually protect these B******* Can't think of where this sense of shame comes from though. Would you keep quite if someone stole your bag? If someone stepped on your foot? If someone insulted you?
So why is it that when we are stalked, felt-up and abused we choose to keep quite about it?
The third time I kept quite about it was when a cyclist brushed his arm across my breast while I was walking back from school.

But here are a few times I have retaliated:
My sis and I were sitting on the kinetic , outside a shop in majestic, waiting for mom. A couple of guys passed us by. One of them whistled, the other made some comment. My sis and I looked at each other. There was uncomfortable silence for 4 seconds. Something inside me ticked. I turned aroudn and shouted at the guy "oyyyyyyyy" He barely gave me a glance before moving on. Sis and I never spoke about it.
I know it wasnt much. But it was a start.

After that I protested when drunk men tried to pass comments when a bunch of us girls were travelling on an overnight bus. I spent an uncomfortable night on a bus where the guy next to me kept pressing into me.
I yelled at an old uncle in a bus in pune.
Oh, let me mention here that I prefer Bangalore buses to one in any other city any day! Here we, the ladies, are atleast a bit safer up in the front of the bus. The conductor is the only man who has to squeeze past. Some buses nowadays have female bus conductors. I really admire these ladies for their courage. They have to squeeze past men, exposing themselves to groping, grabbing, rubbing when they go to the rear of the bus to sell tickets.

Let me stop here.
I do not have as many incidents to narrate as so many other girls in this country and the world.
I suspect I have been extremely lucky in this aspect to get away with
ONLY a feeling of unease and fear while walking the roads and not actually having faced anything. And yet everytime I am walking alone on the road, riding an elevator with one other man, travelling in an auto at night, travelling alone by train or overnight buses, I live in the fear of being raped.
The last time I was travelling alone by train, I had to alight at my destination at 11 p.m which is late by train standards. Most passengers are asleep and the lights are off. I was getting bored and restless so I went and stood by the door. I noticed someone next to me. Turned to look and this man who had 'rapist' written on his face was staring at me. I had to cross him to go back into the compartment but I gathered the courage and fled. For the next tortourous one hour, he kept staring at me. I tried everything - buried my face behing a book while my heart was beating loud enough for the whole compartment to hear, tried to get onto the upper berth but he managed to see and make himself seen. I was scared to death and prayed that my dad came to the station to pick me up on time. I have never been so glad to see my parents on the platform as the train pulled in. And mercifully the 'rapist' didnt alight at the same station.

But that's nothing. Like Prof Mathew used to say:
Imagine you are a woman. You are Indian. You are a dalit.
That is fate at its sadistic best. You are a free-for-all.

A couple of days ago I had to walk for some distance on bellary road at night. That was when I realised that the footpaths are a completely different world as opposed to the road itself. The road was choc-a-bloc with traffic. But the footpaths were dark and scary. I did not want to look behind me all the time, so I kept looking at my shadow falling on the wall to keep checking if anyone was following me.

I have travelled alone in europe. Let me tell you, when darkness falls, it is quite bad out there too. Plus if you are a brown woman in a predominantly white country you are crying out for eve-teasers.

There is one tiny country in this world where I have felt completely secure at all times of the day and night, in deserted trains and in crowded ones. Singapore. The men there are so well behaved that at one point I felt insulted that not a single man gave me a second glance :)
One more interesting aspect - EVEN the indian man in Singapore is so well behaved.
I suspect it is the fear of the law that makes those men the way they are.

But it was in Singapore, for the first time that I felt free, in the true sense of the word - as free as a man!!