Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Mind it rascala!


I haven’t blogged in a very long time, nothing tempted me to sit and write on something but this thing just had to be typed down. Why now? maybe this incident is just the trigger. Ofcourse I am talking about the gang rape, eve teasing, manhandling and every other form where a woman is touched without her permission.

Last week while crossing the road, I saw a school girl being manhandled, by the time I screamed at that person, South Bombay being SoBo, cars started moving and I couldn’t do anything about it. I wondered why that kid didn’t stand up for herself, my blood boiled that she didn’t say a word and ran towards her school gate. I kept thinking why… and took me back to the worst memory of my school days.

It’s a taboo to come out openly and say yes, I was a victim, whereas the fact is every god darn women in this country has been one at some day. If you think I am wrong just go and ask your girl friend, ask your best friend, you will be startled to hear those stories. When I was a victim of eve teasing in school, I prayed every day that there will be a divine intervention and it will stop and I was not the only one there were more like me,and then ofcourse you fight back.... now eve teasing is a word which is commonly used in our Asia Pacific region –mostly in India and its neighbouring countries. I always thought why, I guess may be because we don’t have the guts to call a spade a spade. Let’s get it right – Its sexual harassment. Period. When a bunch of guys would touch you and you can’t do anything, they leave you with nothing but emotional scars. They leave you with memories which haunt you every time you walk alone and you see men staring at you.

They leave you with the fact that, hell you have to fend for yourself.

It happens to girls when they are in school, it happens as we walk on the street, in the general compartment of train, while crossing past the crowd, from anywhere to everywhere. There is some or other guy waiting to touch a woman. I don’t understand what pleasure can one derive from this behaviour, I don’t understand why cant you touch your own woman? Why come after strangers?? and the worst is when guys react after a woman screams back at them at public places.

What gives the right to a guy to touch any woman? It’s a punishable offence just that I rarely see anyone being punished from stories that I have heard from friends. Infact once a guy took the address from the police station and landed up at the girl’s house the next day when she was alone and asked her to pay off for the fine which he paid at the police station when she had lodged an FIR against him. Don’t believe that? Trust me, there are worse than this.

Why is it so okay for men to think they can touch woman and get away freely with that? More often than not I have seen woman either ignore or not react to what was just done to them. And when one goes silent, in most cases everyone prefers to shut their soul and walk ahead, my question is why?? if it hits your self-respect so badly, if it gets tears in your eyes, it boils your blood, and then why not stand up for yourself? What ails?

So when the pare-medic student was gangraped for giving it back to the men in the bus and no one has been caught yet, what point are we driving home? That we can’t hit back at men for our safety?
That the male ego just wouldn’t have it? Where are we headed? And to hell with the statement that Mumbai is safer. The mirage about Mumbai’ safety standards can be clearly stated with this year’s NCRB report. In a report released in June this year, Delhi registered 568 cases of rape, compared to 218 in Mumbai in 2011 according to National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) records. In the 2007-2011 period, Delhi topped the chart, followed by Mumbai, Bhopal, Pune and Jaipur.

But will something change?apart from the fact that crime rates are incessantly going up? I guess nothing will, the only thing that can change is how we react to the situation. So if you are reading this and you have wasted time to read this crap, then next time when someone purposely brushes off against you in that Dadar flyover or touches you in that busy train-stand up for yourself, don’t give in…. *Data note from ToI article via firstpost.

4 comments:

Stuti Shrimali said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Stuti Shrimali said...

bloody hell.. d assam case s dead alrdy... ths ll b too..sm hulla gulla in parliament for a day or two n den sm political controversy ll cm up burying this most vulnerable topic deep under..

we stand up for us, guy frnds too.. bt the assaulter jus come do the damage n vanish..

thr shud b capital punishment for such creatures..

Pooja said...

I really dont think anything will happen anytime...so keep the pepper spray ready as always!

Pooja said...

@sanket: you should see today's live mint's front page piece which has some startling data on women sexual harrasment...
sadly noone raises their voice....