Speak Up!

Annie touched a raw nerve when she wrote her story for the Blank Noise blog-a-thon. I emailed her post to a number of my friends and asked them to read that and the other ones at Blank Noise. I thought Annie's post said it all. It had stirred my own buried memories: of attacks, of conversations with other women where all we needed was for one woman to start her story before the rest of us jumped up and said "that happened to me too!"

Some of my male friends emailed back saying that the post was revealing and that they were shocked. One told me that some women flirted and pawed men and that this issue should be the larger one of violation of personal space and not just harassment of women. Another added that maybe such violations were a 'culture' thing - India being a sexually repressed country etc. That is when something in me snapped. I was thinking of just linking to Blank Noise today and leaving it at that. But not any more. I have the same stories as the rest and they have to be heard.

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He was a cousin, a nice handsome guy in his early twenties. I was barely five and all of innocence and trust. He sat me on his lap and while India played cricket on television, his fingers steadily moved up my thigh. I kept moving his hands away thinking it was a game to scare me and he brought them back repeatedly. It was ten years later that I realized what had happened that summer afternoon.

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It was a normal working morning and I was rushing up the stairs to catch my train. Up the first flight and onto the flat middle path. No one else was around except for this slender guy in a dark blue shirt and a red cap. He looked around, then lunged forward and grabbed my breast. Time stopped completely then. He had moved a few steps away before I screamed at the top of my voice. For a busy station during peak hour, that was one morning when no one came.

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There are many such stories and many, many more of us who carry them deep inside. And no, this is not some silly cry about flirtation. This is not a rant about an inevitable dash in a crowded bus or train. This is violation and harassment. One in four women is a victim of such harassment in this country. This is serious and rampant. Please do not trivialize it as some pointless exercise in attention grabbing. Go to Blank Noise for more.

You cannot touch a woman without her permission. Period.