Fear and Rage

I moved to Delhi eight years ago as a seventeen year old, excited about a new life as an architecture student. I lived in the city for seven years and came to think of it as my city. Inspite of the high rate of crime in the city I was comfortable because I did everything 'pragmatically'. I loved the city for allowing me to live my life at my own terms.

The rape and brutal murder of a young girl suddenly jolts me out of my sense of comfort and I wonder if I was really living life on my own terms. I could not leave my house after sunset without feeling extremely aware of my surrounding. Everytime I found myself in a quiet street, even walking from my car to my apartment, I would instinctively reach for a sharp object, so I could feel safe. I often clutched at my keys, as if jabbing them at a potential rapist would be of any help. Wearing a short dress in the street is out of the question, unless you really enjoy being ogled at by a mob, no less.
There is no way of knowing how many parties, birthdays, concerts, dinners and dates I might have missed out on because me or my family was too afraid.
Once in a blue moon, when you dare to feel comfortable while walking in a street with a friend or a sibling you let your guard down, you might get groped and be left to feel sick to your stomach, too shocked to even cry as you watch a hand retract into a car speeding away. Such memories, that had been so carefully repressed, begin to surface.
Small measures like calling and letting your friends know you have reached home safe and sound are a way of life. Fear, is a way of life. So much so that I never even realized it.
A young woman got raped and tortured in the city that was home to me. I am angry. Not because of what happened to her, but because I know it could have happened to me, or worse still, it could have happened to my friends, my sisters or my aunts. I am angry and I want change. We all want change and we, the people of Delhi, take to the streets to ask for it.
Some of us in the streets realize that this change cannot happen overnight. Some of us ask for some small measure that we think might catalyze this process. But most of us are just there because we are angry. With the government, the system, the patriarchy, the violence, but mostly because we refuse to live in fear any longer.

Feminism from my eyes.

A girl gets brutally gang-raped and tortured in a bus in New Delhi and suddenly, after decades of delay, the city wakes up from it's deep sleep. I am convinced that every report of a rape troubled the people but somehow this time 'what can we do' turned to 'whatever we can do'. This one fact is extremely encouraging.

Personally, this issue affects me immensely. It fills me with emotions I cannot quite comprehend and makes me reflect on how this system that treats women so much more inferior than men has affected me my whole life. I grew up in a small town where the purpose of a woman's life is to get married, bear children and take care of her home and family. Somehow I got lucky and landed the two people who thought I could be more than that for parents. But growing up in the small town, I saw women feel pressurized to have another child so that this time it might be a boy. I've lost count of the number aunts who wanted to know the sex of their foetus, so the pregnancy could be terminated were it a girl. Mothers are supposed to fast once a year for the long lives of their sons. I have a younger brother and once he was born, my mother was expected to fast for his life too. My mother would hide and eat a bite of food she wasn't supposed to because she cared for both our lives, not just his.

I grew up being told that I was too immature to understand when I asked them why they wanted sons. I was too immature to understand why a girl should lose half her weight before she may be 'shown' to prospective grooms (or their families). I was too immature to understand why my grandmothers lived in mortal fear of my grandfathers, despite the love that I know they shared. I guess I never understood because I did not want to accept.

But now if the women of this country are to have the same rights as the men, if they are to be safe walking in the streets be it night or day, then the system must be challenged. It is not I who should consider accepting the system, but those in the system who should accept a new way of life, it is them who should accept me.