26th March '13
I read in the paper today, a 4-year-old picked up from the pavement where she was sleeping with her parents, raped and then dumped 300 m away in the bushes. Everyday we read news stories of rapes and crime. After the much talked about incident in December where Nirbhaya was raped and brutally beaten, the cases of rape are in the limelight.
Have we ceased to be humans? How can a man hurt a woman this bad? And in the 4-year-old's case, she is just a baby. Not only this there have been reports about such young girls being raped by neighbors, uncles, family friends and if all these are not enough just random men on the street.
No, I as a young girl do not feel safe alone, not even in the nearby market. And I don't think any of the female friends I have do. No matter how much you talk about women empowerment and respecting women, no, it is not there out on the street. We do not see the reality tucked away in our upper middle class homes.
For a girl everyday stepping out of her house whether to go to school, college or work is a struggle. She has to get mocked, stared at and even touched to live in the world out there. I do not have one female friend who has not had an unpleasant experience on the street. In fact I do not have any female friend who has not had such experience.
Should people on the street help? Another news story, a bouncer stopped some men from eve-teasing a 11-year-old girl on the street. Next thing, those men kill the bouncer for "interfering". The savior in such cases also has to pay for doing the good deed. I am not even going to touch the topic of the police.
It it anger, repressed sexual feelings or just the urge of keeping women in their power that lead men to do such a heinous crime? I was once watching a show in a popular channel where youngsters were talking about gays. A guy sitting among them commented, "I do not feel comfortable about being with gays because if he would touch me in a different way or make a pass, I will feel uncomfortable." How great, if a guy makes a pass at you because he is gay you will feel uncomfortable but there is no problem in staring and commenting on a woman just walking down the street.
Not only on the street, you can hear your male colleagues talk about women. The kind of words they use tells us the mentality they have, and this is the educated, young, intelligent men in our country. They cannot talk without using derogatory words and abuses among themselves.
I do not know how to react to rape cases anymore, but yes, when someone tries to tell me to stop going out of the house if you want to stop being stared at, that makes me angry. Why should I stop living my life just because there are some lesser humans on the street?
I don't even know the solution to this crime against women. I just know that every time I hear such news, I feel a little more angry and a little more enraged. To inflict pain on another and give them a scar for life is a bigger crime than killing the person. I just know that the people who can commit such a crime are not to be called humans. They are just not human enough.
I read in the paper today, a 4-year-old picked up from the pavement where she was sleeping with her parents, raped and then dumped 300 m away in the bushes. Everyday we read news stories of rapes and crime. After the much talked about incident in December where Nirbhaya was raped and brutally beaten, the cases of rape are in the limelight.
Have we ceased to be humans? How can a man hurt a woman this bad? And in the 4-year-old's case, she is just a baby. Not only this there have been reports about such young girls being raped by neighbors, uncles, family friends and if all these are not enough just random men on the street.
No, I as a young girl do not feel safe alone, not even in the nearby market. And I don't think any of the female friends I have do. No matter how much you talk about women empowerment and respecting women, no, it is not there out on the street. We do not see the reality tucked away in our upper middle class homes.
For a girl everyday stepping out of her house whether to go to school, college or work is a struggle. She has to get mocked, stared at and even touched to live in the world out there. I do not have one female friend who has not had an unpleasant experience on the street. In fact I do not have any female friend who has not had such experience.
Should people on the street help? Another news story, a bouncer stopped some men from eve-teasing a 11-year-old girl on the street. Next thing, those men kill the bouncer for "interfering". The savior in such cases also has to pay for doing the good deed. I am not even going to touch the topic of the police.
It it anger, repressed sexual feelings or just the urge of keeping women in their power that lead men to do such a heinous crime? I was once watching a show in a popular channel where youngsters were talking about gays. A guy sitting among them commented, "I do not feel comfortable about being with gays because if he would touch me in a different way or make a pass, I will feel uncomfortable." How great, if a guy makes a pass at you because he is gay you will feel uncomfortable but there is no problem in staring and commenting on a woman just walking down the street.
Not only on the street, you can hear your male colleagues talk about women. The kind of words they use tells us the mentality they have, and this is the educated, young, intelligent men in our country. They cannot talk without using derogatory words and abuses among themselves.
I do not know how to react to rape cases anymore, but yes, when someone tries to tell me to stop going out of the house if you want to stop being stared at, that makes me angry. Why should I stop living my life just because there are some lesser humans on the street?
I don't even know the solution to this crime against women. I just know that every time I hear such news, I feel a little more angry and a little more enraged. To inflict pain on another and give them a scar for life is a bigger crime than killing the person. I just know that the people who can commit such a crime are not to be called humans. They are just not human enough.
