I came to Bangalore 6 months ago. To the northern suburb of Yelahanka to be precise. Yelahanka is a conservative place. My college, a design school, definitely isn’t. When conservatism collides with cosmopolitanism, a strange combustion happens. For one, there is resentment from both sides. Secondly, categories begin to collapse. Thirdly, a state of anarchy prevails before new categories are borne.
I’ll elaborate on these states in a later post. But right now I’m concerned about the state of anarchy that prevails as categories collapse.
Three women are walking home after eating dinner at 9pm. It isn’t late. It isn’t a long walk home. 7 minutes. It is, however, dark.
A man, a short man in a blue t-shirt, is walking a few metres ahead. Two women in front, one woman talking on her phone following some 5 metres behind. The man suddenly turns around and walks towards the girls. The women don’t react. They think maybe he’s forgotten something. The woman at the back doesn’t notice him. She’s on her phone. Suddenly, the man lunges towards the woman. Tries groping her breast, grabbing her breast. He’s on his feet. Yet he believes he has the abiltiy, the audacity, to attack a woman. A woman who is decently dressed. A woman who is not alone. A woman minding her own business.
The woman screams. Scared, the man begins to run away. The woman continues screaming, in shock. The shock is soon replaced by an understanding of what just happened. This is soon replaced by anger. She lets go of everything in her hands and chases the man.
They run. The man has a headstart. The woman is screaming as she runs down the street. It is a residential colony. There are houses on both sides. People hear her. People stare at her through their windows. The man turns around, thinking the woman must’ve given up by now. He’s shocked. She is still chasing him. He quickens his pace. His chappals break. He leaves them behind.
The woman reaches the end of the road. She is out of breath. She has no alternative but to stop. The man disappears into a park. He is free.
The women, and her friends, return to the spot where the man’s chappals are. They pick them up. They want to burn them in a public gathering. They want to humiliate the man who thinks he can fuck with a woman. They want to humiliate all the men who believe they can assault a woman, who think it is their right to assault a woman.
The women hide in the bushes, waiting for the slightest chance that the man returns. He doesn’t. They head home. As they return, the conservative neighbours appear at their doorstep. Asking what happened. They are too scared to get directly involved. They suggest the women file a report with the police. The women hear them. But they know better. They have been harassed by the police before – why? For walking home at 2am. Because the night doesn’t belong to women.
For a conservative man to see a cosmopolitan woman, dressed in jeans, smoking, laughing, confidently walking alone at night must be a shock. His traditional idea of what a woman is suddenly jilted. His category has collapsed. He feels a certain sense of insecurity, the possibility that there is a shift in the order of the world. A shift in his world.
What can he do? Can he embrace this shift? Obviously not. Change, especially when it is a loss of power, is rarely appealing. His solution: the transference of fear.
He transfers his fear, his insecurity, into the women. By harassing them. By attacking them. By making them feel vulnerable. There is a certain element of cheap pleasure in touching, groping, a woman’s breast. But it is more than that. As the women grow fearful, they lose their power. They are less threatening. Power returns to the man. He is now strong once again. The man and his ego now have space to grow bigger.
The women have two alternatives. The first is what our mothers tell us – be scared. Be fearful. Stay home. Don’t go out at night. Don’t endanger yourself. They say it out of concern. They want us to be safe. But this is not a solution. It is a reaction, a reaction that encourages men to behave the man more animalistically.
The second alternative is more radical. A reverse transference of fear. Go out at night. Put yourself in danger. Use yourself as bait. With the help of friends, male or female, catch the bastards. Beat them up. Take their pictures, post them up on flyers. Send them to the police. Humiliate them. Make them scared. Make them believe that they don’t have the right. That they’re not stronger. That the night doesn’t belong to them.
Reclaim the night. Your night. No more fear of the dark.
Note: There have been a lot of reports of women being attacked in Bangalore recently. While it’s a new phenomena for the media, the women of my college have been experiencing this for atleast 2 years now. There have been atleast 4-5 incidents a month, where women have been attacked, harassed, assaulted, by men on bikes or on foot. A vast majority of these women have moved away, to the city or to safer residential colonies. Running away is not a solution.
