“But you’re a Girl!”

The weather was great yesterday. Occasional showers but the day remained sun-less and pleasant. Sitting inside my basement office all day, I went up and stood at the top stair, avoiding the rain.

The Dukaans Outside Office

In front of my office is a line of shops, bicycle tyre repair, small chai ki dukaans, nai ki dukaans. In short, shops full of vela young men and judgmental old men. So as I stood to enjoy the rains and the lovely breeze, at the back of my mind I was waiting for one of the guys to come out of office and ask me not to stand there because its “not a very good area for a girl to stand alone.” (Luckily no one did but I couldn’t stop thinking the following!)

Now, it’s a little unfair slash sad slash irritating for me to be advised to do or not do certain things because I am a girl. Some things are understandable, because for the men that live on this world, we women have to be a little cautious if only but for our own good. But otherwise. Let me judge for my own good how much of a risk I’m willing to take by standing outside my office or going to a Raju Bhaiyyas chai ki dukkan at 11pm in the safe company of the ‘safer sex’.

I cannot stop being a girl and I cannot stop doing the things that I want. I cannot not walk out of my own house, sometimes at night, alone because I have to, just in case somebody from the ‘safer sex’ decides to make me unsafe. I have to be cautious but sometimes circumstances allow otherwise.

I don’t think men realise that it’s not that hard being an ‘alone girl’ walking around in the ‘big bad world’. We girls are used to the staring and commenting and occasional stray hands on our bodies. Its not we are okay with it because we;re used to it. But we know how to deal with it. Chances of any of the above happening at 12pm in a really good locality are the same as them happening at 11pm in a not so very nice locality. If we were to be careful, we’d be sitting locked inside our own homes. And for some unfortunate girls, thats even more unsafe.

But its funny. Put together any group of boys and that commenting, staring seeing a girl happens. The very friends who pretend to be so caring and manly and warn us against the world are the same ones doing it to other girls. My friends stand around and do all kinds of embarrassing things to girls all the time. It annoys me. Annoys me that they behave like that and then annoys me that they act all ‘protective’ about me.

That’s not the point here.

The point is that, in this entire process of girls being harassed by boys, it is only the girl who is asked to make compromises. ‘Girls should not go out at night.’ ‘Girls should not wear revealing clothes.’ There is never any effort to try and change the attitude of men. To train them, keep negative elements away from their minds! Just because men are brain-dead when it comes to woman, it doesn’t mean that we have to stop living our lives, or to be less dramatic, do what we please.

At least I am not going to and I’d really like it if boys were not to come to me and tell me to not do something or not go somewhere. They should fix themselves and their friends around them first!

(Customary excuse for my non-clarity of thought: I wrote this over a long period of time with continuous people interruptions!)

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