The path to never again.

What’s more provocative to a twisted psyche than his own mind?

I grew up hearing and believing what the women around me often said: that as a girl, you were to sit with your legs closed, your hemlines and your laughter low. Walking down Bangalore’s Brigade Road on a first date with a guy, I felt someone grab my upper arm. “I think that guy just groped my arm,” I said, turning to see a bedraggled man, head tucked into hunched shoulders, fast shuffling through the packed weekend crowd. “Well aren’t you going to go after him and punch him? You scantily clad women I tell you,” he said wryly. (I should have dumped him then and there, but that is a whole other story). Not that it matters to me now, but I was wearing a sleeveless top and a calf-length skirt. Till then, I believed we women were partly to blame, so I shut up, eager to please my date.

Then I saw them, incidents of rape, sidelined to one column stories in the dailies from my own state Kerala. A nun, a baby. None of the rules I was brought up on till then applied here. Where was the rationale?

The man who slithered away into the crowd was to come again as somebody else. He’d come before too. Different bodies, same filthy soul.

Dubai: I’m trying to reach into the cooler to get the cup of yoghurt my mother wrote on a list for me. Am at the neighbourhood supermarket, one I run to at least every alternate day. I know the ‘uncles’ behind the cash counter and around the different sections. But today, there isn’t much of a rush. I feel a man tower over me. He’s in Arab attire, his hair grey. He looks down at me and smiles. Then his hand comes down to my frock, trying to grope me. I grab the yoghurt and squirm away to the cash teller. Afraid it’ll restrain my freedom, I don’t tell anyone. I am 10.

Fourteen years of age. I am late for my math tuition class. It’s at a building a road away from the residential colony where I live. Three-thirty in the afternoon. It’s cold and I have a shirt over my denim ankle-length pinafore, my heavy textbooks in the crook of my arm. I push open the door to the first flight of stairs through a narrow, dim-lit corridor and an Arab boy rushes past. His hand grabs at my chest while he dashes out, all at the same time. An orchestrated act lasting two-three seconds, one only he was privy to. I scream and hurl my books at him. I hear the thud, but by now, I see his shirt-tail disappear around the door. I’m quivering. I’m confounded: How can a shapeless denim top provoke anyone? Again, I tell no one. But I reacted. I’m proud.

A humid day in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. I’m sitting at the back of a KSRTC bus which for once has a lot of empty seats. I feel a poke on my shoulder, above the neck of my kurta. Once, twice. I turn to see a guy, mid or late 20s, standing beside me, one hand holding onto the overhead rail, the other on the bar of my seat, little pinky poking me. “Move your hand,” I say, glaring at him, trying to muster the ‘don’t mess with me’ tone. “Okay,” he smiles and shrugs, getting off as the bus stops. He said ‘Okay’ like he was doing me a favour. “Okay. If you don’t want it, I don’t either.” That’s what he seemed to say. Ugh. “How does this make you feel?” I ask my mum after I get home, jabbing her neck with my little finger. “A guy did that to me in the bus today.” “For some men, even that is a pleasurable experience,” mum said frowning but relieved that I told him to back off. I have an image of little Simba attempting a roar which comes out like a squeak in front of Scar. Is there such a scene in the film? If there isn’t, it probably is just my imagination.

For a 5ft2in, slightly underweight frame, my mother’s spunk in the face of lurking perverts has amazed me. I once stood rooted to the spot as I watched her swing a closed umbrella at a drunk who decided to walk right through us. I should’ve have been the one protecting her, I later thought ashamed. A thought which never crossed my mother’s mind of course, as what I saw there was her protective instincts. Truth be told, perverts leave me so disgusted that my body involuntarily shudders and my toes curl at the thought of having to touch them, even if to push them away.

Bangalore Central Mall. It’s sale season. I stroll over to a display of shoes. The corner has at least three salesmen. I ask the one across me what the price of a model is. He hums a tune, finally mentioning the price. I walk to the end of the row and back again. He sings, again. I look him in the eye and ask a tad loudly, “Why are you singing? Do you want me to complain to the manager?” He shrinks a little, mumbling a denial. Two of his colleagues close in, asking him what happened. I’m determined not to let him spoil my only off day for me. I saunter through the rest of the floor like nothing has happened. As I walk through the doors, I’m smiling at the cool dark evening. I reacted, I am proud.

My brother occasionally showed me a few self-defense moves. But when a colleague playfully pounced on me at work and I put my reflexes to the test, I saw that I couldn’t bring him to budge. Worse still, I spent the first few seconds trying to remember which way to twist his arm. So much for knocking the daylights out of an attacker.

I have a bad case of motion sickness. There’s no telling what can make me queasy. Smells, rides. What I did know was a late-night drop home from work at the back of a Sumo made me sick. Besides, I lived 20 minutes away. The cab driver charted the route to his fancy, which meant, sometimes, I’d reach my place only an hour later. So I chose to ride home. An oversized raincoat, hair hidden under the hood, I’d say a prayer and speed away. Friday and Saturday nights were fine. Revellers poured into the streets from the pubs and discotheques, happy, swaying, concern lining their faces only when arguing with the auto-rickshaw drivers who would take them home. It made me feel like I had company. On this particular night, as I walked to the parking lot, a line of bikers rode past. I sensed trouble at the sound of their raucous laughter. Perhaps I should have walked briskly back into the building. But I decided otherwise then, walking on. They screamed and laughed, riding past as I walked on wanting to melt into the shadows behind the streetlights. The pillion rider of the last bike put his hand out, touching me, baring his ugly teeth. I felt a surge of disgust. How much time would I have had to dig around in my bag and put a can of pepper spray (not that I carried one) to his face? All I could do was turn around and scream a curse. But they were already up the road, laughter bellowing into the night. I was aware of the building’s security guards watching from the entrance. That they didn’t even ask if I was alright hurt me more. I rode home feeling helpless, miserable and violated. I was scared. In the hurry to scream a curse, I couldn’t note the bike number. Besides, even if I did and went on to complain, I’d spend every day after that looking over my shoulder, wondering if they appointed friends on street corners to exact revenge? It felt like one hopeless loop. It hit me then just how much disgust and indignation a rape victim must feel; for a man to touch you without your permission. It played over in my head, the feeling only slightly lifting as I headed straight to the shower and frantically scrubbed at my body. The tip of a hooligan’s finger touches me without my consent and I am rubbing away like a maniac. I realized later that I was so angry I couldn’t tell the water was burning my skin. I tossed and turned in bed that night. I casually asked a guy crime reporter friend how I could own a gun and if there was a place where I could learn to use it. I looked up taser guns on Google. “Are they available in India?” I asked my girlfriends. Not many knew. One or two had pepper spray in their bags. I stopped riding from work a few months later, after a male colleague was mugged while returning home alone. After all, my ‘male-from-afar’ disguise was little defense against muggings. I’ll never feel helpless again, I kept telling myself for days together. But as always, the paranoia eventually died.

Today, I cried in the washroom because of every time I’d betrayed myself. It seemed like the betrayal of every other girl who had been violated. I’d spent the last few days praying she’d make it alive to live out her dreams. Teach the woman politician who said she’d be a living corpse that she could still live with dignity and love in her life. Teach the rogues who left her for dead that she was alive and kicking. Feeling the sun and the rain, holding hands with the people who loved her.  

I prayed even as my mind recalled a cousin doctor say once that they usually put a patient on ventilator and called the situation critical to give the family time to come to terms with the reality of an impending loss. Did they take her abroad as part of damage control? 

They called her a brave-heart. She never asked to be one. She was you and me. She is still one of us, but as ones who have been hurt before, and the ones who are being hurt even as we speak.

I saw a post on FB saying a judge asked for suggestions. Where does one start? I wondered. Who is to blame? The need to rape must come from a mind so twisted. I thought of every decent guy I knew. I wondered what their parents might have done differently to bring them to respect women and see them as equals, as human beings. We ought to say we’ll raise our sons to be men who can do the same. This must be our offering, even if it is the only one, to the world.