Helpless…

I feel like I am not even entitled to write this because this doesn’t even come close to what is happening in India.

I have to tell someone and who better than a bunch of strangers. It is the best kind of therapy without worrying about the repercussions of confessing in someone whom you already know.

Here goes nothing…

It was around 4 in the morning. I was returning along with three of my friends from a birthday party.We took a train from Churchgate area in Mumbai till Andheri. We had our male friends with us but they had to part ways with us since they lived in the opposite direction. So we decided to take an auto to go from station till our flat. Now an auto is supposed to carry only three people but we said what the hell, and rather than taking two autos we squeezed ourselves in a single auto.

I was sitting on one of the corners so naturally I was little bit outside of the auto.Auto sped off and suddenly out of nowhere there was this guy who was crossing the road with a Styrofoam cup of tea in his hand.Imagine an elephant crossing the road now instead of an elephant imagine a man in his place.Auto Driver had to put break all of a sudden our auto skidded a little.

Then the guy comes to my side of the auto and starts abusing the auto Driver as if it was his fault. Auto Driver said few things but then started to accelerate the auto so as not to engage that stupid guy. Then suddenly I feel a loud slap on my ass. I reacted instinctively saying “heyyy” but the guy shouted with more vigor like he was entitled to.I stopped from replying further because I got scared.

It is a pretty common scenario in India for a girl to react on something wrong just to face something much worse. That slap was not on my body but on my confidence. I was shaking.

My friends asked me what happened I didn’t reply for some time because I couldn’t form the words with which to describe what just happened. And then I did the most cowardly thing possible I said “Nothing”. I don’t know why I couldn’t bring myself to tell them they were my friends after all.

But I couldn’t.

As the auto sped up towards our house I wished for that person to die.

In my entire life I never even had a bad thought about a person but that day I really wished for that person to be dead.

How is it that with such a careless and shameful act they were able to shatter my confidence?

I have always prided in the fact that I can do things alone on myself and that I don’t need a male or a female company if I just wanted to wander in the city but that night all my pride left me.

I thought that is being a girl that helpless in this country that I might need a male company to go somewhere in my own country, my own city just so I could feel safe.

I feel so helpless at my inaction, my inability to retaliate.

I am a small town girl who has been hard wired from childhood to let such things pass lest they become into much worse incidents. I can’t blame my parents for doing that because looking from their point of view it is the only logical thing they can do. They cannot ask the world to stop being cruel and partial rather they can only ask their daughter to be extra nice, extra tolerant.

I know girls all over the world may have faced incidents far graver than mine and that makes me even more sad. Is it because of girls like me this guys get their strength and since I didn’t say anything next time he will resort to even more serious offense against some other poor girl.

I am clueless how to quench my feeling of helplessness and as days past the vibrations of that slap still haunts me.