My Saturday Blog: Don't Pray For Daughters

Sorry for being away, yet again. This week's blog is very disturbing yet it's very real. Not once or twice but several times I feel that the society does not deserve daughters. Saving the girl child in the womb is one thing. And preparing the world for her is another. All we do is prepare her for the world.

We hardly talk about how we can make this world better and more sensitive for her to survive. Yes, survive. A girl is born, some parents are happy some are not, but she survives. She says she wants to study further, some accept but some reject saying it would be a waste of time and money. She goes to school and tells her parents that some boys harass her, they tell her to take few days leave or change the route.

In a village, when the girl says she's got her first periods and there are no toilets. They say don't go to school instead. Now switch to cities where schools and colleges have all the amenities, girls face eve-teasing or molestation at every level. The walls of girls' toilets are full of gross caricatures of men's private parts scribbled on them.

The buses, the autos, the tempos they take to commute are not designed keeping them in mind. A normal CNG auto has capacity of six including driver of which only 3 can be taken by a girl. If the co-passenger is heavy and aged, the actual seat capacity comes down to 2. Girls almost daily commute in pathetic conditions, sandwiched and touched by unknown and unlimited number of male passengers on a daily basis.

I remember commuting by train during my journalism days in 2004-05. How I was scared to climb up or down the stairs, every time I had to board or deboard the train. It was a task to reach the ladies coach, many a times, the train stopped early and I had to board the general coach. How hundreds of eyes scanned the girls. I heard someone talking in the general compartment: Boys are not allowed in ladies coach then why girls are allowed here. Then we have to give our seat as well. So, this was a compromise which they didn't want to make.

Be it yesterday, today or tomorrow. Till the time people do not welcome women in public domain, nothing is going to change. Be it wee hours of the day or late at night, why can't we make the journey of woman from home to work and vice versa safer and comfortable.    

The gangrape of a 23-year old married woman in Gurugram and murder of her 9-month old baby has left most of us shocked. I say most of us, because a majority of them are still arguing whether she should have taken the shared auto with male occupants or not. Also, that it was a secluded stretch. 

Instead of looking at the atrocity with which the culprits committed the crime, all we have to say is that she should not have left her house at midnight. All three men held the crying infant choking her and causing her death before throwing her on the divider.

Had it been a busy road, and the driver would have been sober, can anyone guarantee that such an incident would not have happened? If you have doubts, read next.

Jun 9, 2017: In Mumbai's Thane, a male co-passenger in a shared auto-rickshaw allegedly molested a 23-year-old woman and then threw her out of the vehicle. The victim sustained injuries and was helped by passersby and taken to the hospital.

Aug, 2014: A 24-year-old software professional had suffered serious injuries when she jumped off a moving auto rickshaw in Thane after the driver allegedly tried to abduct her. The incident had also taken place around 9.15 pm, when she boarded the vehicle at Kapurbawdi Naka. (Source: Indiatimes)

Such incidents only expose the state of public transport in India. Not every woman, working or non-working, can afford a vehicle of her own. And has to take a cab, train, bus or auto to commute. We keep telling our daughters to come home on time but we never thought of making public transport safe for her.

You may say, how can we change the society? Government should do something about it. Well, a good or bad society has nothing to do with politics. Society is made by us not the Government. How many parents discuss molestation, physical assault and rape with their male child. All that we hear is that it's difficult to raise a girl, since she's vulnerable to sexual abuse. This is not her fault, it is our failure as a society. Instead of telling our boys how to behave, we find it easy to find faults with a girl's attire, her body language.

Here's an incident that took place in 2003-04 in broad daylight. I was on my way back from college. Some miscreants boarded the DTC bus, I was in. In just few minutes, they started teasing a girl who was sitting opposite me. Nobody but an aged uncle objected. This guy came close, pulled his eyelashes and twisted back. Uncle shouted in pain. All of us were taken aback. The girl was completely silent. I thought, what that guy would have done had she raised her voice. No one dared to utter a word. After a while, he deboarded. We took a sigh of relief.

Today, when I recall the horror. I feel if the driver had stopped the bus and asked the wrongdoer to deboard immediately, it would have discouraged a lot of other demons in disguise. 

We need to stop this nuisance. And both women and men have to raise their voice. Even till date, I mostly commute by shared autos and 99.9% times there are no female occupants at 9 pm. Once when I boarded a cab from Vaishali Metro station, the driver in the middle of the conversation said: "Madam, don't take shared autos. It is not safe."

If you are bound by work to leave late, how can you decide that the auto, bus or cab you take will be safe. Being self dependent can help but not much. Till the time, males around the country don't accept that women also have the right to earn, right to live and enjoy their life, things will not change. A woman goes out of choice or is forced to go out to feed her children is a subjective matter. 

Majority of men in India, still feel women are better off at home. And they take to rape as way to protest. And I am not referring to any godmen, gurus and fanatic politicians who keep making misogynist comments about working women.

Our policemen, who also come from the same male-dominated society, can help make us feel safe instead of harassing us when something bad happens. Rotten mentality and empty spaces damage more than poorly lit streets and vacant spaces in the city.

Here are few more incidents of rape in India where the evil was completely unexpected. None is less horrific than the other.

Feb 1, 2011: An employee of a Kochi shopping mall was travelling in a ladies coach on the Ernakulam-Shoranur passenger train. She was attacked and pushed off the train by a man only to be raped near Vallathol Nagar. She succumbed to injuries at the Government Medical College Hospital, Thrissur, on February 6 that year. (Source: Times of India)

Dec 16, 2012: A 23-year old paramedical student was brutally beaten and raped on her way back from Saket to Dwarka. After a week of treatment, she died in a hospital in Singapore. All the six people were arrested and one of them Ram Singh committed suicide in trial period in jail. Four of them were hanged, the young boy who was 17 years and six months old on the day of the incident was sent to a juvenile home. The juvenile was released on 20 December, 2015. (Source: Wikipedia)

Aug 22, 2013: A 22-year old photojournalist was gang-raped by five people, including a juvenile, when she had gone to the deserted Shakti Mills compound, in South Mumbai, with a male colleague on an assignment. (Source: Wikipedia)