Dancing with Dogs: Eve-teasing

Eve-teasing

Beaten by colleagues for protesting eve teasing, Kolkata cop dies

Kolkata, January 6: Police sergeant Bapi Sen, who was beaten unconscious by five reserve force constables of the city police for protesting against eve-teasing on New Year's Eve, died on Monday.
Police sources said Sen, who was in deep coma since January 2 and on life support system, passed away at 0630 hours, IST.

Eve-teasing, or non-euphemistically sexual harrassment of women by good-for-nothing men in public places in India. It is awful and in some cases, an extremely dangerous practice. This is something that the women are supposed to either just endure, or are accused of bringing it upon themselves.

Just imagine, that you are on a moped driving on the busy streets and then there are these guys on a motorcycle trying to drive right beside you and to get as close to you as possible. One wrong move, and there will be a collision. I have been there - I have been in situations where guys were driving right beside me, and were trying to get hold of my "chunni" (a shawl -like piece of cloth you wear across your chest, with churidhars). What was supposed to happen to me and the person riding behind me if these guys succeed in getting hold of it and manage to tug it, all the while in traffic? Luckily, my dad taught me an evasive maneuver - slow down to the lowest speed you can drive at, usually to around 5-10km/hr - it almost always worked, since the "teasers" tend be show-offs, who love driving fast, and are also usually incapable of slowing down to that speed.

A similar incident happened to me and my friend once when we were going back home in the afternoon from our college's girls' hostel, after celebrating "Holi", the festival of colors. We were completely drenched in colors (which means in street terms, we were fair game), and were driving back on my moped to my home. That was when suddenly we saw a big group of men ahead, all carrying colors, in the "spirit of the festival". The road was pretty deserted, and if we were caught, that surely would have been it for both of us - I don't even want to think about what might have been. It took me all my courage to speed up the bike and plow through the group - they did a good job of scattering away, once they realized I was going to go through them regardless, and not stop. I thought I had made it, when it hit me on my waist...they started pelting me and my friend with raw eggs. We were lucky we escaped with nothing more than a few bruises and some awful smells all over the body - we escaped alive and pretty much intact.

That hasn't been the case with many other girls - there were incidents when girls fell under the city buses and died, because their chunnis or saris were pulled by these "road-side romeos". Some girls were harrassed so much that they killed themselves, because they couldn't take it any more. Parents (mine excepted) are usually not much help, since they end up blaming the daughters - "why do you have to wear a tight churidhar?", "why do you have to wear the jeans?", "why not cover up more", "why do you look at those guys?", "why don't you stay at home and not go out so much?", stuff like that. What is a girl to do? If the police are called, the guys are usually let go at once, or in rare cases, let go after a very small punishment. Then they are back to harrassing the women. It is a horrible situation, that can be made better only as the society changes and the law enforcement situation imrpoves.

Posted by shanti at January 6, 2003 02:10 PM