Howrah Bridge, 6 PM in the evening. She stood there, watching the sundown. Dimness of the dying sun was falling on the Ganges; therefore creating a beautiful foreplay of colors. She stared at the magic with eyes full of hymn, but her mind was somewhere else.
“I hope I didn’t hurt maa too much. She is too afraid at times”- she murmured to herself. That afternoon she ran out of home after indulging herself into a huge quarrel with her mother. All the harsh words she threw at her mom, now pinched her from inside. Suddenly she was angry again. “What’s the hue and cry all about? Have women stopped stepping out of homes? Does no girl go to school? Does no lady go to office? Do we let rapists take over our city and cage ourselves?”-she spoke aloud, which caught the attention of a few people standing around. The beautiful evening wasn’t pleasing her anymore; she started walking.
“Isn’t it funny how she reacts to this same way every time?”- she laughed inside. “You will understand why we are so worried for you, when you become a mother too”- this was her mom’s favorite dialogue. Well, this made her feel better. Much, much better. She was laughing inside over the thought of how cool a mom she would make.
6.30 PM. Strand road. It was dark. Someone in a shop had turned on the evening news; the sound broke her thoughts. “West Bengal, for the second time, stands on the top of the chart according to the number of cases regarding violence against women with 30,942 cases”- a man was reading in a mechanical voice. She halted. She stood. She froze.
The city was changing. A shadow of fear prevailed over the city of joy. Parents didn’t want their daughters to stay outside after it was dark. Women didn’t want to take up evening shifts at the office anymore. No one trusted cab drivers at night. Sexual violence against women hit the headlines every single day, with Calcutta as India’s most unsafe city for women, which till a few years ago used to top the chart as the safest city for women. The streets were same, so were the street lights. But there were wolves in disguise. Women walked on the streets; but kept looking back. Was someone following? Was someone watching? The rhythm of life was lost amidst fear. The city was changing.
30,942. The digit wasn’t leaving her alone. Like, all these 30,942 women had families, right? Mom and dad who cared for them? Little siblings? Friends, teachers? May be boyfriends or husbands too? She couldn’t stop wondering. She was going back to the days when ‘rape” wasn’t a very common word; everyone was not so used to it and it scared people much more than what it does today. Of course, people get used to bad stuff too, she thought.
What was that woman’s name? Suzette Jordon, she remembered. The woman who was gang raped at Park Street, and later was blamed for being in the bar with a male friend. “No decent woman would be with a man at that time of night in a bar”-someone said. “It was no rape. She was a prostitute, she was quarrelling with a customer over money”-a political leader had commented. Yet, she was the only one who dared to come out in public, disclose her own identity. “Don’t refer to me as the park street rape victim. I have a name. I am Suzette”- those fearful words had charged up many scared souls.
She remembered, just the previous evening, from the window in her bedroom, she had seen a candle march. It was in the memory of Rajib Das. Rajib was a brother who gave away his life while trying to protect his sister Rinku Das from a group of rapists. The poor girl, as soon as she sensed trouble, shook the gates of the District Magistrate’s Bungalow for 5 minutes, asking for help. None of the security guards came up to help.
She started walking again. It was past 7, she needed to be home. She wasn’t angry at her mom anymore. She rather felt strange. “I wonder how broken Rinku’s mother must have been”, she was thinking. “Did she shout at her daughter too when she returned late, like maa does? Man, she should’ve listened to her mom,” she halted again.
“Damn it…Why the hell am I thinking about them? Am I scared? No, certainly not. I’ll be home soon. Cool, but what’s wrong with these pervert freaks? They didn’t even spare a 72 year old nun from a church? A woman who chose the path of serving others, has to die among so much of sin? Are we wrong to trust our male friends? Okay, enough nonsense. No, but seriously, do I cage myself tomorrow?”
She had no clue of what was going inside her. She wasn’t walking anymore, she started running. She didn’t want evening coffee-outs. Didn’t want to attend late night birthday parties. She was swearing hundred times not to lie to mom ever again to meet her secret crush at Park Street in the evening. She desperately wanted her mom to shout out once more. Yes, she would rather be caged and live than flying free and dying. She ran back home. She didn’t want to make it 30,943.
The city is changing.
Note: This post is a part of our #MyCityMyStory series. To check out more posts from this series, please click here.
