Sexual assault? Public Transport? The Joke's On You!

Sexual assault in public places cannot be dealt with at the level of prevention: the focus absolutely has to change to what happens after.  For prevention is immediately made the potential victim’s prerogative: cover your chest in crowded areas, don’t make eye contact, don’t stay out late, don’t walk back alone, dress ‘decently’, don’t go where you don’t need to go. Every woman, no matter where she lives and what air she breathes has been fed on a diet of what-not-to-do-to-not-get-raped tips since the time she realised she had a body. 

Nobody gives a damn about an assaulter. Nobody even bats an eyelid. The police don’t want to register complaints, and the public in the public space somehow merges with the assailant and they all become one solid block of penis that is outraged because you think you have a right to seek legally available action against someone who has committed a legally defined crime against you. 

A friend posted a link on facebook sharing the action of Dharini Bhaskar, a Delhiite who also thinks the women’s compartment is a terrible idea and travels in the general compartment as a practise. She was slapped across the chest by a wobbly old man, she had the strength and courage to make a noise and not let the metro move until the police arrived. Let it be noted (according to her note) that she was accused of holding up the metro for fifteen minutes by making a ‘mountain out of a molehill’ whereas it was actually the Delhi Police (With you! For you! Always!) who were responsible for the delay by refusing to take action against a defined crime in the Indian legal system. 

As I’ve mentioned before, I very strongly object to the creation of the bubblegum pink Ladies Compartment on the Delhi metro, not because I’m an idiot ‘equalist’ but because I think that this move sets BACK the objective of gaining access to and a right to un ‘sanitised’ public spaces (for women)  with the knowledge that any violation against the body would result in, I don’t know, an actual realisation of the laws that exist in the Indian legal system.

My experience of travelling in the general compartment has been largely unremarkable because I do it every day, twice a day for 1 hour ten minutes each way. The only incidents that come to mind are of a man trying to touch me at a station while I waited with the crowd for the slightly delayed train. I stomped hard on his toe with my shoes and left it at that. Another time, a man took 'charge' of me and attempted to shield me from the crowd entering and exiting the train. I was highly bemused, as I did not need help, had not asked for help and yet had lost control of my body to a man possibly younger than me who pointedly told his brother that he had a responsibility to remain in that position and that ‘mummy theek bolti thhi’ (Mother was right)- presumably referring to me in the context of the ‘girls are responsible for the bad things men do to them’ school of thought.  

One positive learning from this experience is that it is possible to travel in crowded (and I mean so crowded that people’s noses and cheeks are squished up against the door of the train) space and not  be rubbed against by men Earlier when I used to think about women and public transport- especially in the context of buses where it is so common to have male genitalia grind against a female body or atleast to be made aware of male genitalia that would touch you where you sat or stood- I used to wonder if it is inevitable. I’ve had conversations amongst friends (mostly female as I went to an all-girls college for under-grad) where we’ve seriously wondered whether men  genuinely cannot help the situations where their genitalia become expressed to fellow female passengers. Well, after having frequented equally crowded situations on the train for several months, now I do know that it is possible for men to stand in ways whereby they minimise touching body parts. 

Nobody can prevent sexual assault: by now that’s a pretty well established fact. It’s completely stupid to therefore address this issue at a policy level from the viewpoint of prevention. Action after is the key: and we will go nowhere on sexual assault as long as the apex court of the country legitimises compromise in rape cases.

All you could see of him were his bald, round head and shiny, bulbous eyes. A film of water stretched like a membrane over eyeballs that looked up into the face of every tall person that stopped near its toes. Who knew whether it was a boy? At three and a half feet and six years of age, they all look the same. 

The hem of the crisply starched kurta brushed his toes, soaking up the puddle that had built at its feet. Its presumably pudgy, childish arms lay lost within the sleeves-he looked like he smelled of surf excel and whatever his mother used to make the kurta crack like paper dosa when yet another tall person brushed by the bald delinquent.

I saw him from the distance, and I wanted to stand on his toes too. I wasn’t wearing a starched white kurta. He was standing absolutely still, bald head tilted, bulbous eyes staring, starched white reflecting. I wanted to reflect too, reflect, deflect, look up at the sky with a clean shaven brown head, brushed with vegetable oil so it would photograph well.

The it thing, he, she, turned its stare from the lamppost to my face, full of scribbles, of lines written and lost, retrieved and lost, the pen having left scratches, etches of broken skin. It stared and I stared, and stared and stared, as the slipstream of trucks and buses buffeted us-not his starched white kurta- until-he grew and I shrank, my hair became his, its eyes mine and I was finally wearing the starched white kurta that made me impervious and I became it.

S.O.P.

It's my autonomy.
I am not producing myself for your benefit,
For your easy categories;
And this is not a declaration of war,
Stranger, I come in peace.