I read a post on Twitter today written by a prominent blogger, and/or his wife. Few blogposts affect me this much. So i decided to write how I feel.
I am a Delhi girl. I’ve lived in Delhi for 22 of my 27 years – Jamshedpur for 2, and have now been living in Mumbai for the last 3.
Firstly, I, am not here to ‘compare’ Delhi and Mumbai in the ‘safe for women’ aspect – I can do a whole series of posts on why ‘I’ like Delhi or Mumbai more – but with safety, Mumbai is the pinnacle of being safe, being open, being forward, being free. So just for five minutes, let us leave Mumbai aside.
Are you trying to tell me, that I can, wear a skirt, have a few drinks, and return by cab alone post-midnight without worrying one bit in, say, Kanpur? Lucknow? Ahmedabad? (No drinks there, sorry). Chennai? Kolkata? Chandigarh? Indore? Cochin?
Half the places above I can’t even wear jeans, forget a skirt. Drinks? In a pub? COME HOME ALONE BY CAB? I doubt it. Maybe I can, but it's definitely not the best alternative. How many women actually do this?
Ok, you could say this is an elitist, extreme example. Fair enough. Let’s talk about roaming in the streets. Are you saying women don’t get stared at, whistled at anywhere else in this country? Are you saying no man ever brushes past women in crowded streets?
In my 22 years in the glorious capital, I have thankfully, by the grace of god, karma or even perhaps being over-protected, never been molested or manhandled. Sure, I’ve been whistled at, kissing noises made, called ‘baby’. But has that never happened to me elsewhere? Of course it has. It does. Every other day, all the time. I am letched at routinely, wherever I go, wherever in this country I may travel. Our collective mentality, the Indian mentality, is the same everywhere.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not using the ‘Everyone does it so it’s ok’ argument here. Delhi IS bad, sure. There are more 'reported' rapes in North India than anywhere else. But why generalise, trivialise? The post in question is so horribly generalised, perhaps exaggerated, I don’t know whether to feel angry or sad. If any of the Delhi families I know had 6-7 year old boys saying ‘Main tera rape kardoonga’ the elders would probably kill themselves over their failures at parenting. The post makes Delhi sound like a city of impudent GIJoe-toting boys walk around raping little Barbie girls. Which men say “Zyada bak bak karegi to uska rape kar denge”? This is ridiculous. Raping women to assert their masculinity is not what the uncles I know discuss at dinner time. I feel terrible that the author of the post knew such people. But if you tell me all your fathers and uncles are like this, then perhaps you and I both need to get to know more people.
I do not, for a minute, doubt the post's accuracy. Horrible things happen. But the manner of the post makes it appear so commonplace, makes a reader wonder if there are any respectable men and strong women in Delhi at all.
There was a mention of joint families in a palatial house. Take any city, town in India. How much do the women in these palatial houses speak up? How much freedom or activism do they demonstrate? Are all women in say, Haryana, Gujarat or even South India, venturing out alone, speaking their mind, wearing what they want?
Again, I repeat, the fact that every city is bad doesn’t make it ok for Delhi. In fact, I hope with all the protests being prefixed with a ‘Delhi’ – my city will probably get better soon. There will be closer monitoring, more awareness, more laws, hopefully, much much less tolerance.
I do agree with parts of the post. My mom would perhaps throw a solid fit if I, dressed in wedding finery, with jewelry, decided to walk for ten minutes to get to a venue. In fact, it would perhaps not even cross my mind to do this. However, the primary fear here is not of me getting raped or molested. It would be of getting robbed. My well-wishers would stop me from doing this whether I was in Delhi or in Bombay. This is not about the city. This is our country. Why make it about Delhi?
All this dramatic outrage I am doing is not only to defend my city. It is for preventing it from getting worse. In India, known with our 'chalta hai' attitude, how long before people start reacting to rapes like:
‘Oh, another rape in Delhi? That city has gone to the dogs’
‘What? A rape in Mumbai? How dare they? We need to demand action. This is just not done. Mumbai is safe for women, we have to keep it that way’.
See the difference? Generalisation slowly results in acceptance. Lets not accept the fact that Delhi women are subjugated, are used to being molested. No amount of ‘eve-teasing’ – how I hate that phrase – or subjugation, or conditioning - makes me adequately prepared to deal with molestation or rape, be it mine, a friend's, or the horrific one of a 23-year-old physiotherapist I’ve never met.
PS: link to the blogpost that initiated this. http://daddysan.wordpress.com/2012/12/24/the-subjugation-capital/
