Women And Safety: Living With Ghosts Of Kal, Aaj Aur Kal

It's 11:57 pm on a Friday night. You look at yourself in the mirror clutching your scalp. You realise you’ve been losing an unusual amount of hair. You mentally reprimand yourself for not noticing sooner. Panicking, you google - hair loss + women + causes. Hypothyroidism. Underlying hormonal imbalance. Chronic stress. Lack of sleep. Excessive Junk Food. You can relate to all of these symptoms. Well, isn’t that one of the biggest merits of space-age technology- Google could convince you - you have cancer because of a runny nose and the rational thinking being in you would die a slow death witnessing the ease with which you believed it. 

You speed-dial your best friend, “Help me. I think something is seriously wrong with me! Wait I’m sending you pictures. Did you see? It's terrible, right?” You finish with a sniff, wiping at the tears that have rolled down your cheek. “Babe, relax. It's not that bad. Seriously, I promise. Plus everyone loses hair during the monsoon season. I have a really good dermat. Just go to her. Accha listen, have you been seeing the news?”

“Yeah. Vaguely.” 

You answer. 

Vaguely. 

Not wanting to dive into how much of an active effort it has been to cautiously avoid every notification that uses the words ‘Kolkata’ and ‘Doctor’ in the same sentence. 

150 milligrams of semen. 

Inside one woman. 

The words don’t make sense. 

Your brain refuses to register the number.

“I don’t think I can sleep. Or eat. Or function. It never stops, does it? We rage about one incident, but at some point, we move on with our lives and for a little while the world seems like a semi-decent place and then we’re fed gory details of another grotesque case just like the last one and the cycle begins all over again. Does living with preemptive brutality come free with having ovaries? They should print that in the pamphlets for Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana.”

“Stop reading the news. It's like inflicting self-harm. You are going to drive yourself to depression,” you tell her.  

The conversation that started with what was innocuously distressful has led you to anxiously pace the breadth of your room. You can't get her words out of your head. To distract yourself, you find yourself doomsday scrolling through all the looks Blake Lively has been sporting while promoting her new movie. You think about the 23-year-old you who stayed up all night, partly to finish the novel the movie is based on and partly because the images the book instilled in your head were worse than the time your sleep paralysis made you feel there was a demon in your room. You think about how the husband of the protagonist in the book, Ryle Kincaid, was the man you craved would magically find you on a terrace, just like in the book. Hot surgeon, caring, gentle and extremely thoughtful. What more could a girl want? And then you remember reading and re-reading the lines where he held down his wife, Lily, and raped her while she begged him to stop. Because he thought she was cheating on him- which she wasn’t, something the reader is aware of.

You remember being devastated by the disparity between what you see and what you get; by the volatility of a man’s rage, even when he is someone you (and the protagonist of the story, Lily) love. Someone who tied your shoelaces fed you blueberry cheesecake and bought you flowers every day for 365 days. You remember thinking if that is something a man you love and who claims to love you is capable of doing, what could a man who doesn't know you be capable of? 

That's the stupidest thing I've said all week. 

You chide yourself. You were a late teen when Nirbhaya happened. You remember the dread. The shiver that rolled down your spine. The terror it left in its wake. A fear embedded you so deep in your psyche, your bones have now befriended with it.

They invented a wristband that alerts your loved ones if a woman is in danger by measuring a spike in your heart rate. They invented a blade-like tampon meant to slice off a penis when inserted forcefully into a woman’s vagina in South Africa. A student invented a bra-like harness that is meant to send an electric shock to anyone who tries to “squeeze, pinch and grab" a woman's breast. You google “electronic self-defence alarms” and Amazon tells you you’ll find safety in pink and blue colours guaranteeing its delivery within two business days. All of a sudden, you decide you can’t fight this unfounded torrent of nausea that has been picketing on your windpipe since you got off the phone.

It's 3:37 am but your finger taps itself on an image of a pocket knife in the shape of a teddy bear. Its description says “perfect for the safety of your teenage daughters” and that is the last thought to float in your head before you sleep, fitfully, miserably.

You meet Mrinalini for coffee on the weekend.

“Am I going insane?”  She waits for a beat before saying:

“No really, think about it. I saw my acne getting worse this morning and I thought well, that's bad, but at least I’m not a doctor in a government hospital. Things could be worse and then I felt like a monster for thinking that. But then I recited a long prayer before stepping out the door. There are women being raped while I pride myself on standing up to the Bumble guy who told me I'm a slut because I wouldn’t sleep with him on the first date? Or because I managed to tell my obnoxiously sexist colleague that was not finished speaking when he interrupted me for the sixth time during my presentation? I don’t want to live like this. I don't think I can anymore. I would rather dilute myself, dumb myself down, turn myself into a foot mat than think of what that doctor in Kolkata had to suffer”

So she didn't take your advice and kept reading the news.

It takes you a few seconds to recognise the familiar glint of fear in her eyes. You know because it's the same fear that is now mixed in the calcium of your teeth, the iron of your blood. And you taste it every time you pass a group of men on the street,  their eyes drilling holes in that armour of composure you could have sworn you wore that morning. You befriended that fear when it sat beside you on a rickshaw as a group of older boys in a jeep with tinted black windows followed you from your college to the metro station every day, as they yelled at you to take a drive with them and how they’d “show you a good time”. 

You remember that fear from the time you found yourself with two ward boys and a security guard in an elevator after your latest laser session, at one of the finest private hospitals in the heart of Delhi’s diplomatic enclave. Riding three floors down, you remember standing at the back of the elevator mentally calculating if you would be able to stretch your arm to reach the red panic button. Cursing yourself for not being taller or stronger. You can still vividly picture those men staring at you, unabashedly, as you tried to calculate if the blue kurta you wore that day would rip easily. 

Rust and salt.

That's what fear tastes like. Because you’ve been chewing on the inside of your cheek or your lower lip. Because you’ve been holding your breath. Because you’ve been waiting, praying.

Let me make it out of here, please God. Please.

I will never be this stupid again. I will not walk into empty elevators again. In broad daylight. Or go to hospitals. Or step out of my house. Ever. Please let me make it home. 

And you do. And you double-check to see that you’re sharing your location with your sister and your five closest friends. You check their locations too and breathe out. You’ve made it home one more day.

It must’ve been my grandfather’s prayers, you think. 

Did she not have grandparents? Or did she not have grandparents who prayed for her? Surely someone prayed for her. Is it really as random as that? Is it really as cruel and petrifying as that? What if she had an army of loved ones praying for her? What then?

But it's 5 pm on a regular Sunday and you can see the Jangpura flyover bursting with traffic on both ends, stacked like legos, from the window of the cafe you are sitting at. 

So you open your mouth to tell your friend that this is not an isolated issue and that it could happen to anyone. That none of this has anything to do with her and everything to do with the society we were born into. You have the words in your head, being relayed by neurons to the tip of your tongue but you realise you do, in fact, understand. You understand why she’s grateful. Why she, her mother, and both her grandmothers pray every day before she leaves for work and safely makes it back home at night. She drives to Gurgaon. Alone. At night. You don't need to quote last year's NCRB data to convince yourself why you understand. Because you just do. As you know crime against women in India stands at 66% with 51 FIRs registered every hour in the country. Because you the first thing you learned while working with a Public Prosecutor is still etched in the crevices of your brain i.e. the data available in the public domain only depicts registered cases while most government data is not sex-disaggregated.

In other words, the cases that generate public discourse on topics such as women's safety are the ones that make it past manipulative, aggressive, pervy police constables who discourage or outright refuse to register FIRs. The cases that make the news reports are the ones that are ghastly enough to get picked up while hundreds go unreported every day. You remember Mathura/Tukaram Vishakha. Bilkis Bano. Hathras. Unnao. Kathua. Shakti Mills. Aruna Shaunbaug. It reminds you why demanding the death penalty for rapists is like taping a bandaid over a fracture. Bones do not heal with interim measures. And yet none of this knowledge deters you from wanting each of the perpetrators of Kolkata to be burned alive. 

You’re home after work on a Monday night and you find a link on the internet that calls Aruna Shaunbaug ‘A sleeping Warrior’ and realise the media has a penchant for turning these women into warriors. You have a statue of Athena, the Warrior Goddess, on your bookshelf. You watch her as she stands tall in her golden armour radiating fierceness but you cannot name ever having met a single woman who would trade places with Shaunbaug only to be called a Warrior. 

“It pays to be a coward. Beta, just come back home safely. For me. Please.” 

You think of your mother, who sat pleading by your bedside, when you told her, later that night, how you called out a group of boys who followed you on your way to the dingy parking lot outside your office. 

“I keep Abba’s golf club in my car, Mom.” You say trying to soothe some of the worry creasing her forehead.

“Do you think you will have the time to pull out a stick from the back of your car if a man double your size and weight overpowers you? Keep your head down and stay out of trouble. I want a daughter that is alive, not some hero.”

You’re in the canteen at work the next day drinking its deliciously unhygienic cold coffee when you find a mini-movement trending on Twitter under the banner of “#Not All Men”. Your comments section is filled with @realMVPkaran09 calling you a ‘man hater’ because “how can you blame men for everything bad that happens to a woman? What is the guy even supposed to do? Close his eyes?”

You think you might be hallucinating the absurdity of his message so you screenshot it and send it to your sister. She’s quick-witted and calmer, her reply reads - “Um yes, you expired bottle of Lysol, close your eyes. Look away. Don't spike her drink. Don't follow her to an empty alleyway. Don't assume she’s interested in you because she smiled at you at a grocery store or talked to you at a work event or simply looked in your direction. Don't assume she wants to have sex with you when she can't keep her eyes open. Don't say she was asking for it when couldn’t utter a single coherent sentence. Don't confuse the length of her dress with her consent. Don't rape her. Don't be a monster.” 

You never send the message because memories of that one time a random man threatened to rape you and then chop you to pieces after you wrote an article on cyber harassment still haunt you. 

Maybe not all men. 

But too many men perpetuate this culture of systemic gendered sexual violence. Not enough men speaking out against it.

It's 12:19 am on a Tuesday and you know a migraine from hell will be your driving partner tomorrow morning. “Will you hold my glass while I go to the washroom?” you ask your friend as the indie band Your Love sings in the background. You can never will yourself to forget that GHB, more commonly as the date rape drug, works within the first 20 minutes post-ingestion, leaves your bloodstream within 12 hours and cannot be traced through a toxicology screen post that crucial window. What this means is that not only many women black out and can never recall who their perpetrator was but also that many suffer severe lifelong memory issues. 

“Can't cope on my own anymore. My place. Bring tissues.”

You open the WhatsApp group you have with your girls. 

It’s nearly 10 pm on a Friday, you made it through the week. 

In one piece.

Mentally and physically. 

You see their faces. You notice just how adorable Shreya is because you haven't seen her smile so bright in a long time. You marvel at how Noni hiccups when she laughs too hard but somehow she’s thoroughly embarrassed by it. You watch as Shireen recites a text message her boss sent her wondering how on earth she fails to realise that she is far too intelligent to be rotting away at an office that diminishes her light. You watch. And then you picture Zubeida, who is sipping her fourth glass of wine, with her legs broken, yanked from the waist, ninety degrees apart. Her pelvic and throat shattered. It's like someone poured Harpic on the inside of your brain. You shake off the image and try to tune back into what's being said. Zoya, Zehra and Diya are laying out the pizzas they ordered. Zoya hands you a slice of Margherita, “It's your fav, isn't it?” saying as she plops down on the carpet next to you. An image of broken glass sticking out of her naked body plants itself on the foyer above your eyelids.

And it dawns on you - you live in an echo chamber. The rage-filled posts on your social media are written by women, being shared by women, and meant to be read by women. 

“I would rather die than go through that.”

You all gawk at Zubeida. She’s drunk with a vacuous look in her eyes. You are all appalled at what she said. But you also know, with steely conviction, that each one of you sitting in this dim light, pretending to savour carbs under a cloak of incomprehensible fear agrees with every syllable she uttered. 

You know this sense of revulsion which seems overpowering at this moment will soon pass until the next atrocity. It isn’t enough to simply say that if only we had stronger laws or better politicians, it might ameliorate the existing state of affairs. You realise shame simply is not enough. Neither is shock or outrage. You want to yell at the people on NDTV’s panel discussion and say “For once don’t stop talking about this, don’t let this pass us by. Don’t let your anger simmer down. Remember this. Remember this girl. You don't have to have a sister or daughter or wife to realise there is something fundamentally wrong with us but women alone cannot fix it. Only your privilege as a man allows you to do that honour.”

When we look back at the incidents that shaped this year and we will, all that anyone will notice is our loud, loud silence. Our hollow, half-hearted support, our stupid forbearance for monsters and our abhorrent lack of empathy.

With a deep breath in, you realise that is what desensitisation looks like. This is a blanket of numbness that lulls you to trepidation. This new loss of sensation is actually an old friend of your nervous system. He goes by the name “Flight or Fight Response” and he is here to stay. 

Exhaling, you stare helplessly at the ceiling, hoping for courage through osmosis.

You were safe today. 

She wasn’t. 

And you live in fear of when it could be you or the girl who has her head in your lap and is singing the lyrics to Taylor Swift’s new album. 

You feel an ache but you can't quite place your finger on it. 

Because you carry a pain that does not belong in your body but it hurts like hell. 

Views expressed are the author's own.

Aaliya Waziri is the author of 'In the Body of a Woman: Essays on Law, Gender and Society' published by Simon & Schuster India.