I’m not sure when exactly it was that I discovered that my sex made
me different- more vulnerable, more susceptible to a certain kind
of look, touch, interaction, and, of course, violence.
It may have been when I was twelve- standing precariously on the
precipice of puberty, trying to make my peace with a rapidly evolving body- and
a visiting uncle (who ironically, even today, claims to have held me as an
infant as I peed on his brand new shirt) prodded at my barely there nubile
breast. It may have been when I decided that I shouldn’t bring it up with
my parents- a twelve year old child’s considered decision based on sheer inability
to articulate what had happened to her. It may, perhaps, have been when my
period did arrive in all its awaited glory, and my mother gleefully declared
that I was a “woman”, and that I was not to pray during those painful days
because, as she patiently explained to me, I was “unclean”. To be fair at that
age, religion and prayer were mere rituals to me, but my sense of justice-, I
remember-, was acutely offended because there I was, not being allowed to do
something, only because I was a girl.
It doesn’t matter, in any case. After twenty five years of being a woman
in this country now, it simply does not matter when I discovered that I was
“the fairer sex”, fair game for every boy and man. It seems insignificant to
remember when I discovered that my interaction with the world will always be
different- at odds with, even- from the way my father, my brother and my male
friends experienced it. It doesn’t even matter that as I gleaned this reality
of my difference, my girl-ness as a child, I did not realize that
it would only be the first of many such battles I would fight and inevitably
fail at.
As an independent urban twenty-something, I fight some battles every
day. Heck, as the elder daughter in a mostly conservative middle class family,
I’ve been fighting them ever since I can remember. As a young girl, my
earliest interaction with patriarchy was when I found it residing most
comfortably in my own home. In retrospect, the battle I waged with my mother
because I was expected to clean up after dinner, and my brother was not, seems
almost laughably petty now. More recently, I was on holiday at home in Kerala
and my mother told me about Thiruvathira-
an auspicious day on which unmarried women across the state undertake fasting
and prayers in the hope of bagging good husbands. Oh, I thought I was being so
cocky, so with it and feminist, when I asked her if she thought there was a man
out there fasting so that he may bag me, glorious and beautiful that I am.
Looking back now, I realize that these battles were pathetically
irrelevant in the larger context of a deeply misogynistic society. The
futility, however, of these wars I waged privately never occurred to me and I
remained steadfast at the front-line, fighting for what I was convinced was a
worthwhile cause. In my first year of college, when I was living with my aunt,
I discovered that my younger male cousin was free to stay out after classes,
watch movies and plan trips out of town with his friends, and I was not. I was
outraged, of course, when my uncle tried to explain this discrimination to me
using a famous Malayalam proverb – that of the thorn and the leaf, and how it
didn’t matter whether the thorn fell on the leaf or the leaf on the thorn, it
would always be the leaf that would be considered “damaged goods”. And even though I was extremely indignant at
being reduced to a leaf in my battle for “equality”, it was only after I went
to law school and discovered feminist narratives on the patriarchy of language
that I would fully appreciate the ridiculous sexism of the analogy. As a young
girl, I always fought these battles with an unwavering conviction of purpose,
because it was about me and my right to lead my life as I saw
fit. I argued about language and age-old customs that reinforce the deification
of the woman to the exclusion of all agency on her part. I believed that these
lonely battles were a significant albeit small part in championing the cause of
women. And, yet, as I look back, I have failed so miserably in my own liberated
life, it’s shocking.
As I grew older, of course, even as I continued to wage the war at home,
I began to sense the very real danger lurking at every corner in the world
outside. As I championed the cause of the maid’s daughter who did not wish to
be married off back home, on my way back from college I only pretended to not
have seen the dirty old pervert who sat at the bus stop every day, with his
penis held out in his hand, hungrily watching girls in their school
uniforms. Even as I mocked my grandmother’s favourite television serials
and the distorted reality they represented, I only walked faster, holding
myself a little tighter, when I was followed by a young man on my way back from
college, walking past my own house and entering a friend’s, so he wouldn’t know
where I stayed.
I thought I was a rebel, one more worthy revolutionary in this endless
battle as I stood outside college and smoked my morning cigarette at Amma’s,
much to the chagrin of our many chauvinistic professors, both male and female.
And yet, the one time when I was in real danger of physical violence, of sexual
assault, when a bunch of Karnataka Rakshana Vedike rowdies barged
into a friend’s house where we’d been hanging out – yes, barged right in, to
that most sacred of all spots, one’s home- and started
threatening to have their way with us, taking videos of us on their phones,
laughing at us in sheer delight at our helplessness, our fear- this one time, I
recoiled in fear, I pleaded with them in my broken tear-soaked Kannada to leave
us alone, to let us be, to let the girls leave without harm.
After college, when I moved to Bombay, I revelled in the freedom the
city brought me- not only in terms of financial independence but also the more
cosmopolitan outlook I knew the city afforded its women. I took cabs back home
from work and nights out at two in the morning, and I dealt with my perverted
landlord, my lecherous plumber and my nosy neighbours with the same irreverent
attitude. I took offence at the slightest indication of what I thought was patronizing
at the workplace, argued about the inappropriateness of the jokes the boys’
club in office were sometimes prone to cracking, and generally played the part
of the strong independent woman I had always wanted to grow into. And yet, when
the cab-driver took a route not known to me, I looked around in dread, and
stared straight ahead at the road, my face set in pretend-fearlessness Even as
I argued almost too passionately with a friend- who very rightly pointed out
that the discourse on safety should not be lost in our frenzy to assert women’s
independence, in the context of the recent
rape of the student from my college-on my way back from a friend’s at two in the morning, when the auto
broke down for a bit and a bunch of drunks started asking me “where going,
madam?”, I only pulled my stole tighter around me, praying that the auto would
start again. Even as I returned home, slightly drunk from a glorious night out
of spending hard-earned money, I only averted my eyes as a guy on a passing
bike jerked his hands in an indecent gesture. Even as I raged against the
Salman Khan who reportedly demands final edit on all his movies, replete as
they are with dialogues like “pyar se de rahe hai,
rakh lo, varna thappad maarke bhi de sakte hai”, I
only retreated, crouched away in crowded places so the men could pass first and
I could pass safely later. Even as I complained about my friend’s boyfriend with
a roving hand, I walked in meek cowardice past the fruit-wallah who broke into song every single time that I walked past
him.
After twenty five years of battles big and small, it destroys me today,
right now, as I slowly and surely realize the futile it has all been. How naïve
I have been waging my private war with male chauvinism- much like every other
woman in this country- a war that now appears to me to be so irrelevant and
insignificant, I might as well never have tried.
For every man who has made me feel a little less confident and a little
more vulnerable, I have allowed another man to get away with exactly that. I
remember one occasion when I did respond to a pervert thrusting his groin
against me in a bus in Bangalore, when I raised my leg and kneed him right
where it hurt. I remember he moved away, surprised, even a little scared,
and writhing in pain. I probably got lucky that one time; I realise that he
could have responded in kind, that he could have grabbed me, punished me for my
impertinence, that even if I had yelled and attracted attention, it would have
evoked nothing but apathetic stares- from men and women alike. And yet, on an
impulse, I ran the risk. I have, of course-since, and before- kneed, and
elbowed several hands jostling my behind, grabbing my breasts, but it was
always in passive defence- to protect myself, to get away from the situation.
My parents, perhaps, were justified in telling me to “be safe” and not
my brother- because they spoke the risk-averse language of parents who’d rather
see me safe than brave; but how was I justified – young, hot-blooded feminist
that I’d deluded myself into thinking I am- in never reacting with such violent
anger as I felt on every occasion, never telling the men that they could not
get away with it? I did not walk up to the obscene creep at the bus stop and
ask him to put it back in or suffer. I did not ask the disgusting man who
followed me what he wanted and whether he would like for me to report him to
the police. I am the victim, and I am beginning to wonder, maybe, I should blame myself.
Here I am, fighting petty battles against the insidious patriarchy of
language, rebelling against a matrilineal heritage that expects my womb to
produce a thoroughbred Nair girl to keep the family lineage alive, and
protesting the callous use of words like ‘rape’ to describe a bad interview.
And there she was, fighting rape itself, fighting off six men
who thought it was well within their right to taunt her because she was out and
about in her city, fighting off a rusty iron rod that was repeatedly used to
sexually assault her, until her insides were twisted beyond redemption, simply
because they were drunk and they were men and it amused them to destroy a
woman, a weaker human being, with such heinous design. Girl X has made me see
the error of my ways. In staying alive and in wanting to know “if they’ve been
caught”, she inspired a fearless confidence in me, and in death, she has made
me realize that it will be too late, far too late, if I wait for things to
change.
It would be, I know, unfair to claim that women do not react out of
cowardice- because that is not true. I do realise that the battles I have
fought are not entirely insignificant, that these lonely battles every one of
us women fight today are very necessary to bring the attitudinal shift that
this nation needs today. Girl X, however, has made me realize that this is
simply not enough. Misogyny and its various manifestations, most particularly
rape, is- at its core- a power trip. A
power trip rooted in the knowledge, cultivated by generations of men and mostly
women, that they can get away with it, because the woman will bear the burden
of her "shame" silently. The most urgently necessary solution to this
problem is, of course, reform of the criminal justice system and sensitization
of the police force. Discourses on the punishment adequate for rape are
also, obviously, an integral part of this narrative against harassment of
women. Attitudes may or may not change, but I do not want to be at the mercy of
the mere shadow of a hope. And maybe, the first step I can take as a woman is
to react against what they believe are the little things- a grope here, a leer
there- which builds up to this pervasive culture of misogyny.
I realize that I may be advocating recklessness, but somehow, it seems
to me that the time has come to become reckless. To reclaim the night,
the day and our streets. When the country has been gripped with such fervent
indignation, when the cause is being championed by people who have thus far
preferred to pretend that nothing was wrong- now IS the time to be reckless, to
revolt, to tell every damned asshole exactly what I think about him when he
chooses to undress me with his eyes. I may run a risk, but never has the Indian
situation been more amenable to such a risk, and I intend to take full
advantage of it. I am an angry woman, and I must, I need to,
and I will express this anger. I am a victim, but I shall not bear any responsibility
for being victimized again.
