Everyday Musings > On the sidewalk

I grew up in Andhra, Delhi, Calcutta, Mumbai, Bangalore, and have travelled across the country. But when I had to decide where in India I would like to live, as a single woman, of the 29 states and 6 union territories, Mumbai was the only place that felt relatively safe. It was the only city I could see myself being on my own, having the freedom to live and travel and use the public transport, all alone, after 8 pm.

It unsettles me. This lack of choice. And makes me wonder why it is so.

At the Kalaghoda Fair, there was an installation, a maze created by walls of saris stretched across a frame that you had to walk into. It was called the Labyrinth. It was narrow and one didn’t know where it would lead to. And had signs hanging from above...of incidents and places where women’s freedom had been violated. It was a claustrophobic experience, one that I wished I could run out of. I felt the fear I feel on a semi-deserted bridge or subway, in a nearly empty bus or in a crowded market.

I pick up the papers and read about women being raped, physically assaulted, paraded naked or threatened with acid. TV reports recently showed a bunch of college girls being manhandled and beaten in full view of cameras by hooligans and paid hands. And if these seem random, one only has to step onto the streets to feel the stares, the gropes, the lecherous looks that strip you from head to toe, faces that leer, voices that come close and whisper obscenities or 'hello baby' in your ear. I have waited to cross the road and have seen decent looking guys from ‘good families’, on bikes, with their sisters or girlfriends sitting pillion, air-kiss or letch openly at women on the sidewalk.

My friend M recently posted on her blog about a new taxi service for women in Mumbai city. She said “It’s not only safety concerns that have prompted the move of such a concept in Bombay, it’s a need, when women sit in a taxi, they don't feel comfortable - it’s everything from hygiene to the driver gawking at you in the mirror to the attitude and behaviour of rudeness and belligerence one has to put up with especially given that you don't seek a free ride in the black and yellow! In fact I know of some colleagues who arrive by the last flight into the city late night, and hire a cab from the airport, often pretend to be on mobile phones when alone with male drivers to create a feeling of safety.”

What is this India we live in today? It clashes with every value that my brother and I have been taught as children, every value that I am sure every Indian child has learnt. We pray to so many goddesses, revere and respect our mothers and sisters and yet see our women facing so many unmentionable atrocities. Why do some men treat women like this? What is it that they are trying to prove? Who are they trying to be? What makes them step out of home and do this and go right back and touch their mother's feet?

A fan of Phantom comics, I remember the picture of a beautiful woman dressed in Gold and a blurb that said “Old jungle saying - A beautiful woman clad in the finest jewels may walk in the jungle safely at midnight."

Societies, old and new, would to date count themselves safe if they could make a claim like this. We probably had this kind of peace and freedom from fear a long time ago, during the rule of some benevolent kings, when we were called ‘Sone ki Chidiya’(the golden bird) perhaps. But the India of today has traveled far from Phantom’s just world. I pray it doesn't lose its way completely.