The Resilient Indian Woman By Shutapa Paul Last year an American student wrote about her experience of sexual harassment in India. Her story shocked much of the world, but not me. And I daresay very few Indian women flinched at her tale.
For a foreigner, living and travelling in India can be an alien experience. The instances of verbal and physical sexual harassment is hard to comprehend and, as in the case of the American student, often scarring. But we Indian women have internalised the pain inflicted from sexual harassment.
Over the years we have been taught by our mothers, fathers, teachers etc. to turn a blind eye to harassment. We have been asked to ignore the lewd comments on the road, we have been shown how to walk away quickly with lowered heads when groped in a bus or a train, we have been tutored to never react to lechery, leave alone anything else. We have been made to accept sexual harassment on the road as a perfectly natural part of daily living. But it really isn't OKAY.
And that's why we need more women like Shenaz Treasurywala coming forward and speaking up about their experience. Every woman I know has a plethora of scary stories to share, one more shocking than the last. But very few actually have stories of how they took their perpetrators to task.
I remember while in college in Kolkata, a batchmate had slapped a man who had decided to give her breasts a feel. The incident, both the groping and the slapping, happened in the afternoon right in front of the Park Street Police Station, which is right opposite, St. Xavier's College. I went and shook that girl's hand. To me, that day, she was a hero. She had not kept quiet, she had spoken up and well, done a lot more.
Speaking up is important. But it is more important is to speak up during the time of harassment. More often than not, if you confront the pervert, he will get scared. Aboard a state bus from Pondicherry to Chennai, I remember a man brandishing his penis at my friends and I. We shouted at him loudly. He panicked and hurriedly got off the bus.
So while we must not be foolhardy, we have to be courageous. And this courage can come only if we, like Shenaz correctly said, believe that it's not our shame, it's their (the men's) shame. So women, speak now or we will for ever hold our silence.
