Diary of a Lucknow girl: A sexual harasser's paradise
It was a sweaty May afternoon when our help, the good old Suttu, and I boarded the second class coach of a train that was bound for a destination a lot cooler than the banks of the river Gomti. I was a Lucknow girl and spent my childhood in the elegant to the extent of being called lazy, city of Nawabs.
I had just passed out of Class 5 with A plus grades and as a reward I had earned this trip, my first without family. My destination was a small town of Rajpura that lay in the foothills of Nainital. I had chosen to spend my vacation with my newly-wed sister and brother-in-law.
It was soon sunset and we thought of sleeping early as we had to get up early. As I cuddled myself on the middle birth I was excited at the thought of meeting my sister after many months.
I was tired and didn't take much time falling asleep. Little did I know that within hours my sleep would be disturbed. I felt something crawl up the back of my knees and then as if a bit uncertain crawl back to my ankle, cupping my calf muscles in between.
As I was trying to figure out what it could possibly be, the action replayed almost in desperation. I felt a chill go down my spine. At the tender age of 12, I could not understand what was happening but just that it was something very bad.
My legs felt heavy as I wanted to push the hand that was feeling my thighs. I cursed myself for wearing shorts, perhaps if my legs were covered this would have not happened. It was pitch dark and the few passengers in the bogey including Suttu were in deep slumber.
My face was buried in the middle birth, I looked through the corner of my eye and saw a dark shadow. Who was it? I had seen this black coat earlier in the day, it was worn by the TT uncle who was checking the tickets.
The frantic pace at which he ran his nervous fingers up and down my legs made me feel repulsive. I was losing time and I needed to act soon, very soon. What could I do, scream or shout? In one loud scream I could wake everybody up in the compartment and end my misery... but my throat was choked. I felt like throwing up. Then all of a sudden I took a deep breath and put all my strength to kick the black coated man as far as I could. He lost balance and went scrambling away never to return.
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| It's time that Lucknow and in turn Uttar Pradesh come out of hypocritical sharafat. |
That day as a girl I learnt my first lesson - trust no one, stay alert and always believe you can punch above your weight. For days and years that scene played out in my dreams but with a different end. In my dreams I would beat up that savage mercilessly. After that incident I hardened up, erased everything from my personality that would make me vulnerable, meek and an easy target.
We were four sisters and as we grew up and went about our business we realised that the tehzeeb ka sheher Lucknow had lost its soul. I would see my older sisters take extra precautions while heading to Hazratganj for the famous Ganjing (shopping). They would carry knuckle dusters, pocket knives and chilli powder in their bags for self-defence.
In the 1990s, sexual harassment had become a part and parcel of the culture of Lucknow. As young girls went on a cycle-rickshaw, middle-aged men would trail them on motorcycles. They would be helped by the fading natural light and more by fluctuating and sometimes absent streetlights. A squeeze here, a slap there or sometimes even a burn by the butt of a cigarette and then the ghosts would melt into the darkness.
Torn sleeves, bruised arms, a scratch on the back or redness and lots of obscene expletives were some common takeaways from an evening with friends. If you were on foot you needed to keep your fingers crossed that you were not groped in the dark. There would always be those obscene elements in the dark corners. Drunk men pretending to urinate on the roadsides but using it as an opportunity to indulge in the most outrageous vulgar acts without any shame.
It was in this backdrop that we sisters were taught to brave all odds and not to be victims of sexual harassment. So we decided to raise an alarm and retaliated by taking our perpetrators by surprise. All of us were trained in some form of martial arts and we were quite a handful for the pot-bellied paan chewing uncles or skinny boys who were looking to have some "fun". Many a times we dragged these eve-teasers to police stations.
Even cycling to school had its share of duties for me. In the senior school at Loreto Convent, I remember my friends would request me to tail them on my bicycle from home to school to stop the so-called "romeos" from following them. They said they felt safe with me. If I saw someone following the cycle rickshaw for long I would pick a public spot and shout "hey brother, why are you wasting your time, will you mind your business or should I call the cops right now?"
Confronted and shamed, these men would scurry away. I would discuss the incident with my sisters and find new ways to embarrass the roving loafers. It helped that my parents didn't ridicule us nor did they ban us from going out for fear of being eve-teased, instead they encouraged us to stand up for ourselves.
After 22 years when I revisited this topic in Lucknow in relation to the furore over the anti-Romeo squad constituted by the new Yogi Adityanath government, I was shocked to learn that things had moved from bad to worse. People narrated to me how over the years, eve-teasers had become more brazen. Outraging the sensibilities of a woman has become a new fad that is often taken for granted.
When I asked a college student why was she covered her face she said "you think we cover our face to avoid the sun but the truth is that I wear this scarf whenever I move out of home or college, even at night. I feel that if my face will not be seen, then I will receive less attention and less people would stare or pass lewd remarks. I feel safer covering my face."
It's time that Lucknow and in turn Uttar Pradesh come out of hypocritical sharafat and moral nudity and restores the sense of safety and security among women folk. The beginning should be made from each home, that means the daughters need to be taught to say no, enough is enough. Every parent should teach their son to respect women. If a high dose of antibiotics is needed to get rid of the menace of sexual harassment, so be it.
It's not a surprise that the anti-Romeo squad, even though the name is out of sync, has got a thumbs-up from the common citizen. Hopefully, this new measure would let young girls sleep peacefully in trains, allow friends to go out fearlessly for Ganjing, make the techie feel safe working a late night shift and so on. Even if the dark spots in the city persist, let there be strong will to eliminate and pull out the leeches that are stripping the state naked.