Just a Game?

I have been meaning to write this for a while, especially because this incident happened two weeks back. But back then, I was too involved, too incensed, with what had happened to allow for this post to make any more sense than a mere rant against the evils of the world.

But time has lent perspective to my understanding of the event and it is with this insight that i’m writing this.

Two weeks back, two friends of mine had decided to spend a free Sunday at a local mall in Chennai that is quite far from our college. The most economical and speediest way to get there is to take the local train. Now a local train station is a stone’s throw away from our college- it is the Indira Nagar MRTS station. The station, is like all other local train stations in Chennai, in an absolute state of abject dereliction. It has two entry ways, the latter one being in that part of the building that has been abandoned where you’ll see construction material lying stacked and rusted and water collecting in imitation of miniature cess-pools.
Now, my two friends had chosen to walk through this second door, as we all generally do because its closest to us when walking from the college.

It’s 3 o’clock. It’s a bright, sunny day and the girls are walking to the ticket counter that’s just a couple of feet away.

This is when they see a man walking towards them. He seems like every other man that you’d run into while travelling on one of these trains. Except, he wasn’t.

He suddenly lurches towards one girl, puts his arm around her in a half nelson hold and starts dragging her behind the closest pillar. All this while he keeps trying to shove his face into hers, while the girl too shocked by what happened, remained immobile.

My other friend, realising what is happening and quick to react to the situation- hit the man on the head with her phone and started screaming for help and trying, unsuccessfully, to pull the man away- all at the same time. The sudden screaming jolted my captured friend into action and she started screaming as well.

No one came to their rescue. The girl finally managed to release the hold the man had on my friend. The startled man stumbled back and began running out of the station. The two girls ran after him, not aware of what they were going to do even if they did catch him.

When they reached the entry of the station they were horrified to see the man run pell-mell into the incoming traffic, with nary a concern for his life or those driving the vehicles that he was running into.

The man never looked back and the girls watched him run into the very lane that goes to our college.

Noticing the girls shouting, a group of boys (they mustn’t have been more than 20 years of age) crossed the road and entered the station and started walking towards the girls.

Before the girls could reassure them that they were fine, they heard a piercing whistle followed by the lyrics of a bawdy hindi film song.
The startled girls looked at the boys with absolute disbelief. The people they’d assumed were trying to help them, were on their own little eve teasing trip.

Being clearly outnumbered, the girls hastened to get out of the train station and out of the line of fire.

For many days after this incident occurred, my roommate was traumatised. She refused to step out by herself and she’d jump every time she saw any man walk towards her. She’s still adamant about never setting foot in that station again.

She had just one question after the incident occurred. ‘Why?’, she asked me.
Why, is what i asked myself.

What was that men are after? What drives these men to such acts?

The intent in the above scenario clearly wasn’t rape. And more often than not, eve teasing is never about causing any physical harm to women.
It’s more about the power that you enjoy over that individual- that brief moment where you know that you have the ability, should you choose to use your ‘masculinity’ in that manner, to stimulate mind numbing fear in an unsuspecting female.

Do these men otherwise feel so emasculated that the only way to remind themselves of their burgeoning manhood is by violating the personal space of women they don’t know?

Or is the reason more personal? Why is it that more often than not, it’s the poor men from the slums, who are otherwise mostly unemployed, uneducated, generally part of a ‘gang’ that resort to such activities that more often than not are directed towards women from the middle/upper classes of society?

Is it their way of bringing natural justice to themselves for the lot that they were given?
Something else that is intriguing is the attitude that most women take towards such incidents.

Obviously, there is the initial element of shock. ‘How could this have happened to me?’
But, what galls me is how, more often than not you always wonder- ‘Should I do something about it?’ You’re asking yourself, what is the appropriate reaction?

Why are we, as women, so scared to do something? And this is something that I have noticed is generally the norm with women from the higher echelons of society- the ones from middle/upper class. The women from the lower middle class or from the poorer sections of society surprisingly will react to eve teasing with more immediacy, outrage and firmness.
They won’t hesitate to put these men straight and they will make a scene. [Obviously, some women from the upper classes I am referring to will also react similarly in some cases]. But the fact still remains, that there will be more times when someone will tell you, ‘this happens all the time. It’s happened to all of us. The best thing to do is to not react.’

And we’ll listen.
I know there was a point when I did. When I was so incensed with how violated a man made me feel when he flashed me on a crowded train.
But, I didn’t react.

And in hindsight, the answer becomes obvious. I didn’t want to make a scene. Somewhere in the back of my head, I was wondering if I’d done something to provoke him. I didn’t know how the man would have reacted. What I would have done?
I consoled myself thinking the man was mentally sick- that he needed help.

I’d been raised to avoid confrontations. It’s easier to sit back and accept that this happens often. That it happens to everyone. That, men are evil. That, the best thing to do is avoid such situations.

But, the answers are never that simple and straightforward.
A lot is at play here. Can we women unlearn decades of what has been told to us repeatedly?
Even if we can, how much can be unlearned?
Is the society that we live in, the society whose wrath we are so often scared to incur, willing to accept such changes?

And what upsets me more than anything else, is that it takes incidents like these and considerable hindsight, that bring about the change in any individual.