Rattled But Resilient

It was just waiting to happen. And am sure that like me many other women in this city were well aware that it was just a matter of time. When it happened in Delhi, I wanted to pen my views but could not. A strange numbness would take over my mind each time I wanted to express myself. I would relive all those moments when I had been groped and pawed as a young girl. All those times when I would hate myself for being born a woman. I wanted to cover up my body in layers and layers of clothing, be invisible or would pray to God to bestow me with some magical powers to punish the perverted animals. It was all the more confusing because the two men at home, my dad and my brother gave me all the freedom while the men on the streets exposed me to the inhumane side.

Fate brought me to the then Bombay and I took my first breath of freedom. In a crowded bus I would anticipate something to happen but nothing happened. I was scared to join an evening college for my post graduation but my brother laughed off my fears. And as I learnt to live without fear, I realized that I didn't need a male to be besides me always and slowly I fell in love with my life as a woman. In those days when there were no mobiles for my mother to reach out to me, my deadline to be home was 11PM. Can you beleive it? I could be out without a male escort till 11 in the night!

Then, I started working and my job demanded irregular working hours. I have driven back home in the middle of the night, all alone. The cops at the nakabandi were a positive assurance of my safety. I have never been scared in this city, of walking up to a cop and asking for help and they have always been there. The few shameful incidents that ever happened didn't daunt my trust in them and still hasn't. 

One day, in the evening at around 5PM, I was driving back  from Lokhandwala. A group of youngsters returning from their routine cricket match shouted out some comments. There and then, I knew that my city has changed. The daily newspapers loaded with horrific crime incidents confirmed it all the more. Initially I tried to pass it off  as wild imaginations of my mature age. But then when I exchanged notes with my friends, I knew I wasn't wrong. Somewhere the city had stopped respecting its female inhabitants while the women on the other hand, got more and more self dependent. Is it this insecurity that has forced the males to turn barbaric towards the womenfolk?

The system of law and order is crumbling and we are talking the same things over and over again each time the youth of a girl is humiliated. Our demands are heard but not paid heed to and heard too only because they are in the form of an outrage. They talked about speedy trials when the rape happened in Delhi. That was December. Eight months and where is the verdict? As a woman I don't see it as a fast track case anymore. And neither will any pervert male waiting to pounce on another innocent female! 

The accused claim to be minors the moment they are caught. Why not consider only those who can produce a proper certificate acquired at birth as minors and the rest be treated as majors no matter what? How many more to be victimized to guard the human rights of a wrong doer? Do they even deserve to be allowed to cover their faces from the world?

Since childhood a woman in India is taught not to step out without a male as an escort. But now one male can't save us. So should we start moving with a posse of males as our security guards. Oh No! We should now ask for police protection each time we go to a lonely place!! 

I can go on and on like the endless debates going around. But I can't, because the more I talk about it the more suffocated  I feel. But come what may, as a woman I refuse to let my spirits be dampened. I am answerable to all those males who have let me be alive in my mother's womb, to all of them who have held my little fingers and made me learn to walk, to all those fellow students who have been besides me whenever I excelled, to all those colleagues who have believed that I can reach the skies and to all those friends who have been besides me in the hour of need. So the ones who have not been able to adjust to the strong headed independent woman of today can sit and sulk because there will be an uproar each time a heinous crime is committed against a woman in my country, till the laws are strong enough and the lawkeepers are left with no option but to provide a safe environment to us.  And above all every modern day mother will bring up her sons instilled with tremendous respect towards women. Because after all, the onus to change the society has to be taken by us, to make it a better place for our own survival.