New Delhi 153 (Photo credit: kenseals)
I was born in 1980, in Chandigarh, India. As is customary in Northern India, my mother shifted from her in-laws’ place in New Delhi to her parents’ home a few weeks prior for her first delivery. I am the first-born of my parents, and came into this world exactly a year after their wedding. My arrival three weeks early, on the same day as their first wedding anniversary, meant they had to alter their plans for that evening to include the unexpected but certainly not unwelcome guest.
My parents and relatives are, by Indian societal parameters, well-educated, well-to-do, and liberal. So, as an infant girl, my life was in no danger of being snuffed out prematurely – in the womb or out of it. I had the most loving family waiting for me outside my mother’s womb, and didn’t lack for anything – care, attention, or affection.
Once I was about three months old, we went back to New Delhi, where we lived in a joint family. I already had an older girl cousin, who was been born six months before me.
Growing up, I was showered with love, concern, and all the TLC needed. Grandparents, uncles and aunts, relatives and friends – there were a ton of loving embraces, and many welcoming laps in which to bounce and play.
At four, I was ready for Kindergarten, and got admission to the most sought after private school in the city. This great feat was achieved purely on merit, without having to fork out a hefty ‘donation’ to the schoo. It was made possible thanks to my mother’s dedication in preparing me for the entrance test (yes, you read that right).
While we were comfortably off, we were certainly not rich, with my fatherbeing a first generation businessman, just setting up his factory; so, cash was always tight. In spite of this, my mother made sure that she bought me books, toys, took me to for plays, to the movies, and fulfilled my wishes to the best of her abilities and means. By now, I also had a younger sibling, a cherubic little sister, and she too claimed her rightful share of love from everyone in the family.
In 1991, when I was eleven, my mom gave birth to her third child, another daughter. I’m sure that my mother (and other family members) was a little crestfallen at first, as she had been fervently hoping (and praying) for a male child this time around;
However, daughter number three, or the ‘third try for a boy’ as she labeled herself when she was just seven years old, walked into everyone’s lives and hearts, and became the adored, fawned-over, hopelessly pampered baby of the family. In fact, it is not the first two, but she, the ‘afterthought’, who has always wielded this inexplicable ‘power’ over our father, and has him firmly by his heartstrings.
So, even though it would’ve been nice to have had another male besides Dad in our midst, we are a family of all-daughters. I know for sure that our parents do miss having a strapping young man to call their own. If they had a son, he would’ve escorted his sisters home from late-night parties, accompanied them (albeit unwillingly)on shopping trips, and his mere presence by our side would have sufficed to keep potential ‘eve teasers’ at bay.
So, a son, apart from rounding out the family perfectly, would have come in handy as a home-grown bodyguard for the females! And, I really cannot blame my parents for feeling this way. For, as the parents of every girl who has grown up in India, particularly in New Delhi, know, it is definitely not a safe world for women out there.
While we girls were living were at home with our parents, my father could not and would not go to sleep until each one of us was home safe. Now, our gulit is somewhat assuaged, because he is free of that constant anxiety and nagging concern. We have all moved out of Delhi; the older two are married, and all three live abroad. But, while we were still living at home, and even now when we visit our parents, just going out for dinner to a friend’s place ten- fifteen kilometers away is a project. It means that my father will force himself to stay awake, reading or watching television, waiting to hear his daughter come in. And it’s not as if he’s being paranoid or overly protective, he’s just being responsible… and realistic.
Starting when I was a studious pre-teen, I faced sexual harassment almost on a daily basis. Walking home from the bus stop in the afternoons, my sister and I had to pass by a ‘Government’ school, an all-boys school at that. I was about thirteen, and my sister must have been nine. I clearly recall trudging home with my super-heavy backpack, little sister in tow, walking the one kilometer or so distance every afternoon. The bus would drop us off at the side of the busy main road, and we would make our way inside, towards our building. Around the same time, the boys’ school would also be out for the day, and they would be loitering outside its gate, or sitting lined upon along the boundary wall.
As the kids from the private schools would be dropped off by their school buses, these boys, ranging in age from twelve to eighteen, would be waiting. As soon as a school girl walked by they would quit squabbling and fisticuffing among themselves, and would turn upon us. Catcalling, whistling, and the singing of Bollywood songs with double-entendre would ensue. Some would chuck stones at us, and the bolder ones would walk right up to us, blocking our way, and say things like ‘darling, ILU ILU’ , or “Madam, I wants to frandship you.” This may sound innocuous enough, even funny, just like a ‘comedy’ scene from a slapstick Bollywood film; in reality, it was anything but.
We felt helpless and vulnerable, and would just keep our heads down, eyes fixed on the road ahead, hurrying home as fast as our feet could take us.
On our way back from swimming at the neighborhood club, there was a narrow footbridge over a nallah that one needed to cross in order to get home. It was hardly a two-minute walk from the club, but for women pedestrians, it was fraught with menace and very real danger. On both sides of this foot bridge there was thick vegetation – trees, unkempt bushes, long, wild grass, and shrubs. And this was the perfect spot where perverts, some as young as fourteen or fifteen, lurked, literally lying in wait. One remembers being flashed in broad daylight by a man who had been hiding in the thicket. He emerged from behind a tree just as a friend and I walked by; school was out for the summer, and we were both in the seventh grade. Walking home after a happy morning spent splashing about in the pool, we were horrified and scared out of our wits. In fact, at the time I don’t think we even realized what we were being subjected to, clueless as we were.
The above two are the relatively ‘harmless’ incidents of harassment routinely faced by girls and women in Delhi. The kind that did not result in physical abuse. The kind that only resulted in our dignity as human beings, and our self-respect being eroded, chipped away at.
Later in life, as a Times of India summer intern travelling daily on an overcrowded DTC bus, as a newly-recruited employee going in for a mandatory physical examination at a shady hospital (owned by a relative of the CEO) in a run-down locality, and as the patron of the neighborhood beauty parlor going in for a head massage, my private space has been violated time and again by the frustrated, sick men that inhabit the capital. Never mind the fact that most of those men belonged to a socio-economic strata much lower than mine; by dint of their being men, and my being a woman, they are ‘entitled’. And, all the women who live and work in the city, irrespective of their age, education, accomplishments or profession, are fair game.
Why does the ebullience and vivaciousness of youth have to be marred by these sordid episodes? Why is it that when these criminal acts are brought to light, the victim ends up sullying her own reputation? And why are the countless, happy childhood memories all-but obliterated when even one such ugly incident comes back to haunt me?
As a woman, I started to feel safer only after moving out of Delhi. Ironically, it’s my hometown, my city where I feel the most susceptible, laid bare; at the mercy of the perverts who fearlessly roam the streets, smug in their manhoods. Every where else, I can be myself – If I wear shorts in summer, I’m not being licentious, only dressing weather-appropriately; If I go out jogging after sunset, I’m not tempting fate, and risking rape; I’m just a non-morning person trying keep fit.
If you think that taking in a late-night movie with my boyfriend amounts to ‘indecent conduct, keep your opinion to yourself. And if my girlfriends and I want to let down our hair and party till the wee hours, we’re not being loose or reckless, we’re just being ourselves. Not that we owe anyone an explanation.
To conclude, I will just state a simple truth, “It takes guts to be a woman in Delhi.”
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