Why the word chedkhani couldn’t receive its seriousness? Why people don’t
consider it a matter of concern? Why they don’t feel its intensity? Why when people hear to a woman complaining
for a teasing behavior of boys they laugh as if they want to say you should
have cherished that moment in spite of complaining.
Just a couple days back, when I was returning from my office at 6 o clock.
Some rough youth started passing unpleasant remarks on me. I ignored it once…
because I was somewhere used to this (if you are a girl, you can understand it
well) and worse still, this is quite common. We women taught to live in a
culture where a good and sensible woman should not complain or report any
violence done to them.
They didn’t stop and again passed some bad remarks on me. This time I
couldn’t stop myself. All that values about good women which society taught me,
this incident made me forget and I jot down their bike number and complain to
the police on emergency number. Police came and asked me some questions. One of
them also asked to me how much do I earn. I don’t know what made him to ask
this question. I answered their all questions honestly. They promised me to
take an action and moved on.
I returned back to home and informed about this incident to my parents and
friends through phone. And I got expected suggestions from everyone though my
mother showed some amount of happiness for my action but that incident made her
so much worried and now she was much more concerned regarding my safety issues.
Some of my good friends also suggested me to change my place for my safety
reasons.
Just after the next day of this incident I went out with my friends. One of
my colleague asked another male colleague to drop me at home and while asking
for this favor she quoted isse kal kuch ladko ne ched diya tha.
Immediately after listening this he stared laughing as if I should have enjoyed
that incident. Our culture celebrates misbehave and violence against women.
Anyways he dropped me at home. I thought now I am safe in the four walls of my
room. But I was wrong. A friend was trying to justify how my attitude is
trouble maker. And I got a huge list of suggestions for improvement in my
behavior. I suggested not to response when people are misbehaving with me. I
suggested not going out alone after evening. I suggested returning back to my
home town and leaving my job.
I remember an incident when I was doing a fellowship. I was in one of my
school for field support; headmaster and teachers were discussing Delhi rape
case. I was silently observing their reactions. One of them argued that a good
woman never gets raped and if she is then it is her fault for going out at late
night wearing short sleeves and baring her arms.
I, a privileged citizen of the country, have witnessed women are not allowed
to go out without accompany of their brothers and father. I have witnessed
women are not allowed to wear clothes of their wish and not even free to speak
out publicly. Unfortunately I have witnessed in my own maternal family women
barely get a choice regarding marriage.
New Delhi Time
