I have yet to recover from this scene I witnessed a couple of years ago.
Hearing some commotion on the street outside our building, I ran to the balcony. There was some sort of brawl going on among the slum dwellers who resided nearby.
The noise grew louder and while I watched, a woman suddenly pulled off the clothes of another woman in the crowd. The victim had her young teenaged daughter too with her.
I couldn't get the whole picture, but it seemed they were being accused of some theft somewhere. The daughter's clothes were torn off soon and while other male and female onlookers stared, the duo was paraded along the busy road to the nearby police station totally naked,holding on to their clothes desperately.
Traffic is usually at a peak during morning hours.
I felt my heart sink.
How many perverted eyes may have been gazing at their vulnerability!
How could this be done to these poor women? That too by a woman.
Confirms my theory that a woman's greatest enemy is-
a woman.
I don't know what happened next. But the image lingers with me.
If it was done in a village, I would have understood or perhaps condoned it a bit. This happening in a 'happening' place like Mumbai?
What a terrible punishment for a small crime!
I wonder where those hapless women are.
Will their scars heal?
