How safe are women in India?

Recently I was speaking to one of my male friends about women safety and blissfully ignorant of the ground realities, he said “Women in India are safer than any other country in the world”. He even took the liberty to compare the safety of women in India to one of the most powerful nations in the Globe and hypothesised that our women in the metropolitan cities are safer. I could not believe someone said that and so I decided to ask my other male friends about it to gather what they felt about this issue. Some others did know a little more about it but a whole lot of educated Indian men were far from reality. Hence I decided to write something about it, to make them aware of the sufferings of the women in India and make sure they come out from the dark and save the women in India from the torture.

I dedicate this piece to the women who have suffered and the ones who are still suffering every day.

A couple of years ago, I moved to a metropolitan city for my education. One evening I was walking back from my university campus to my hostel, a good 10 minute walk. It was a small lane next to my hostel where I was walking at around 6pm. The lane was deserted at this time. I could hear a motorcycle approaching from behind. I had heard all sorts of stories from my seniors about bikers smashing the face of girls with helmets, among other things. They had advised me, “When you hear a bike approaching start walking on the edge of the road, don’t run and never show that you are scared”. I did the best I could do that day but the biker came as close as possible to the edge of the road, spanked me and sped past. For a moment I could not believe what happened. I was ashamed and was humiliated. I asked myself questions of the sort “Is being a girl such a crime?” I told my friends about it and warned them against taking that lane. We also decided that we will never walk alone, be it any time of the day.

A couple of days passed by but the fear of walking alone never left my side. It was a Sunday night. We were not provided food in our hostel on Sundays so we decided to go out and eat. We were 6 girls in all and we decided that we will go get some dinner at a nearby restaurant at around 8. We left at around 8:15pm and we started walking towards the restaurant which was 5 minutes walking distance. We saw 2 bikes(2 rider+2 pillions) approaching us from behind. The bikers came from behind, one of them squeezed my friend’s arm till she was about to cry and another one abused my friend and they sped. My friend was nearly in tears. We were left in a state of shock but we somehow gathered courage and decided to go ahead with the dinner plan. We reached the restaurant and just as we were about to cross the road, we see the same bikers performing wheelie on a busy road. We just took a parcel and returned to the hostel by 8:45pm. We decided not to walk in that road at night.

Another couple of days passed. This time I was sitting with my friend at the gate of a park of a colony at around 2 in the afternoon. The parks are closed at this time of the day in nearly all the residential areas in the city. She was in a bad mood and I was trying to cheer her up. Since it was a colony, not many people were seen around at this time of the day. The occasional voices of sabziwalla or the paperwalla interrupted our talks. We were so occupied in our talks that we did not realise when a man parked a scooter opposite to the gate. After about 5 minutes or so I reached my bag for my water bottle when I noticed something was wrong. This man, who was in his 30’s, his hand was in his unzipped pants. I immediately looked away but he realised that I knew now. I asked my friend to not look at the man and start walking. But typical human nature dictates us to do what we have been restricted. She looked at him and the man was had the courage to stare her right in the eye. We got scared and started walking towards the main road as fast as we could. He realised and he started his scooter. We ran as fast as we could and reached the main road. We did not have the courage to look back. We just entered the nearest restaurant and sat there. We decided never to go near that park again.

There are numerous other incidents that happened after that day. We girls get used to it, the shame and the humiliation. In the worst case, we accept it as a penance for being born as a girl in a country which claims to have traditional and cultural value system. I was so used to getting humiliated by the end of 2 years that it no more felt ashamed. I felt that it is a part and parcel of a girl’s life, to be humiliated, to be objectified. Yes I had learnt something else also by this time. I cannot leave my hostel past darkness, never leave alone and never walk in a deserted street alone. I always called one of my male friends to accompany me if I needed to go anywhere “unsafe”. We developed several other mechanisms to avoid such situations. You might argue that the place I lived was “bad”. I would like to add here that the place I lived is considered one of the posh places in that metro and some of the public figure own houses there.

Today, I live in a different country and till now have not even for once experienced such humiliation. I would like to return to my country but will I?