Open any newspaper in today’s age and time, a constant
report which always resides is Crime against Women. Naming them will be
disturbing because the human mind has a habit of visualizing whatever it reads
hence I will save you the discomfort. Being a media student I have to read
several newspapers each day. And like a ritual I see these reports sitting in
the middle pages of the papers staring me in the face and screaming ‘this space
is mine, I will never leave’.
But today something happened of which I am very proud of.
Girls all around Bombay and other cities either live in flats or as paying
guests. As me and my friends are also from outside we reside in a PG. There are
five to six guards who sit outside our block and building guarding the
compound. There were several instances of these guards trying to misbehave with
me and my friends by passing sidey remarks, singing songs when we pass,
laughing after we cross them and in one totally shameful incident pushing each
other on us! Preposterous.
While returning from the gym today these guards again looked
at me and passed comments. I told and my friends and we paraded right in the
middle of their animated conversation and asked for their master. As soon as we
started to raise our volume their head approached us asked us our grievance. We
related the whole episode. He scolded the guard in question and asked him to be
in his limits. He also promised that an incident like this will not repeat in
the future.
Though in the end he remarked that in all the five years
that that respective guard was in duty they did not receive a single complaint.
And our only response was that ‘there are girls who will bear the injustice and
keep quiet and there are some who will stand and speak, why speak, shout about
it and say that this is not appropriate behaviour’.
Every girl living alone or even with their family should
speak up about the injustice happening to them. Staring and passing comments is
ethically wrong and moreover lowers ones self esteem.
Unfortunately in some cases speaking up defeats its purpose.
The purpose being to acknowledge the perpetrators that what they are doing is
morally wrong. One example totally gone wrong was the Amboli incident where two
youths, Keenan Santos and Reuben Fernandes lost their lives when they stood up
against such perpetrators. Another such incident happened recently, on 4th
December 2012, in Dombivali where Santosh Vicchivora was allegedly stabbed by a
group of men. He was accompanied by a female friend and a group of men passed
lewd comments, he turned aggressive and eventually paid for his valour by surrendering his life. He was the only breadwinner of his family.
An incident of this nature, happening for the second time,
speaks a lot about the mental attitude of a section of our society. Till what
extent do women have to pay the price for such behaviour? And the more
substantial question remains: What price do we have to pay for Speaking Up?
Nishtha Juneja
Photo Courtesy:
1)http://othersociologist.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/eve-teasing.jpg?w=529
2)http://behance.vo.llnwd.net/profiles16/965897/projects/3544935/c252302d6bf26d745924db20c390bb0d.png
