In the eve-teasers’ den

Announcing my annual return to India early this May, the usual grievances got voice—disproportionate worries featuring water borne disease, being mauled by elephants, or perhaps even being sold into prostitution (thanks, Danny Boyle). When I pinpointed destination Delhi, however, the situation changed in two ways. My English family was rapturous, deceived by the obviously modern and safe practices of the capital city—what could possibly go wrong? My Indian friends on the other hand, displayed concern. In fact, their cautionary advice was overwhelming: ‘Wear a burkha at all times, never look any man, woman or beast in the eye, use a pseudonym in every situation’. Well, not exactly, but you get the idea. That’s the way it goes in Delhi, they said.

As a decent young girl of canny sensibility, their advice seemed mildly insulting. I am actually a staunch follower of cultural etiquette and pride myself on advocating the safety of ‘Britishers’/ foreign women in general, the most important points being, of course: don’t flaunt your womanly assets (this is not the Costa Del Sol, ladies, this is Hindustan), don’t hand out personal details like dolly mixtures (in fact, why not fake every aspect of your identity?) and don’t, for pity’s sake, drink with strangers—wherever, whenever or whoever. Experienced traveler as I am, I tend to place myself in an elevated category for the wise, defined by such trivialities as my broken Hindi and Bengali and the fact that I can drive a jolly hard bargain on most curios.

There was remorse all round then, when on my first night in Delhi (note the neck breaking speed of events), my arrogance was unhinged. Lured by the propaganda of one popular travel book, I had headed for the old city, where I looked forward to enjoying a most authentic experience—pungent aromas, wildlife, teeming bazaars, and as luck would have it, a bevy of peeping Toms, peering from every Moghul style crevice. The same over enthusiastic publication which so extolled the virtues of this area, had earlier given a few tips on safety for the single woman in India. ‘If you receive any unwanted attention (termed ‘eve-teasing’), why not whip off your left shoe and brandish it in someone’s face’, it merrily said, as if harassment was some hilarious game. It didn’t state what to do when attacked by six people on a motorbike. You get the picture.

At the time I was wearing a full Punjabi dress and walking in a fairly safe area. The incident was entirely unprovoked. I was one hundred yards from a police station and a mere fifty from my hotel. I only just got away, and I didn’t go out for a good few days afterwards—which was an unfortunate frittering of time in a city which has so many more assets than failures. Now would I be writing this blog had events stopped here? Possibly not. Maybe I would have filed the incident in my index of trauma, bought the story that this ‘[had] never happened in the area in at least thirteen years’ and forgotten all about it. But scarcely two weeks after the first assault, whilst standing outside a government building on Janpath (in, may I mention, the cold light of day), I was nearly pulled from my rickshaw by a bunch of similarly vile cretins, each with some twisted sexual agenda. Two serious assaults in as many weeks? Not exactly glowing statistics for an international hotspot.

At this point I should clarify that I do not exude some unique sexual quality. In fact, when in India, I purposely become Plain Jane defined. And let me reinstate the unprovoked aspect—I don’t recall ever offering such people a sultry wink or inviting them with some sort of animated bicker that would justify this frankly animalistic behaviour. A catalogue of blemish free travel experience serves to reflect my pious qualities. Having now spent significant time in two areas of India—West Bengal (mostly Kolkata) and Delhi, the differences in my experiences are astounding despite consistent moral conduct. Kolkata, as I have mentioned before, has a very lacking reputation among Westerners, while Delhi boasts a bizarrely glowing profile. But I have to express the glaring contradiction. Scrolling back through my memory I fail to remember any time when I felt threatened in Bengal—in fact, I recall the opposite. My beaming 78 year old Kolkatan ‘Auntie’ was almost horizontally laidback concerning my whereabouts, barely batting a wrinkly eyelid at any mishap. She was always proud of the safety of our neighbourhood and would gamely let me out at anytime, trusting my wellbeing amongst her fellow Bengalis. Rarely did I carry a phone, rarely did I wash up early. I don’t think I even knew the number of the police or any other helplines—and so it was that I found myself blending into the city, attaining a state of head-waggingly glorious relaxation and love for the place.

And that’s what makes me utterly hopping mad about all of this—the extent to which perception of safety affects one’s confidence and thus experiences. Nowadays, life in the wonder maze of Delhi has changed for me. I never, for example, hop into a rickshaw without grandly displaying my mobile (i.e. security) to whichever Rajesh, Vinod or Muhammed is privileging me with a dilly dally overpriced tour of the city. I don’t often give my actual details to anyone (this can become difficult as regards memory—as I recall, I have a veritable host of beefy ‘husbands’ despite being unmarried) and I never get back home later than ten. My suspicions are truly in panic fever overdrive—every handshake could conceal a needle, every cup of chai cyanide—I remember convincing myself I’d been drugged in CCD, after a Kashmiri with a huge beard, who kept asking me about marriage in the West, bought me an Assam. Clearly I hadn’t, but paranoia saw me nearly pass out in the toilets—and these are the ways in which even the most stable, India junkie can be affected. Imagine then, if this had been my first time in the country, my first experience of Indian people? What would I have to write home about?

Now, as always, when one whips one’s poison pen out (which I seem to have just done to quite vehement proportions), one has to exercise some amount of caution. So please allow me to do so now: I’ve met a colorful range of people during my time here and these include plenty of women who have somehow trotted from East to West and back again with very little harassment indeed, while I myself know that crime varies regionally, and have been blissfully happy in many parts of the country. But I’ve also met plenty of dispirited females, such as my friend who washed singly up into Paharganj last week from London, only to be heckled into leaving her hotel. Then there are the many Indian women I know who have faced equally traumatic experiences, proving that this is not simply a question of racial discrimination. At this point I have to voice my belief that it is more dangerous for a foreigner. Although I suspect a rather adequate, blue coloured reason for this which was frightfully obvious to me when I went to see ‘Hangover’ last night—an absolute car crash of Western porn and sex, albeit an entertaining film.

The fact is, though, that whatever the motive, wherever the place and whoever the victim, sexual harassment has to be eradicated. I’m sick of opening the paper to read about assaults, as I’m sure is every other woman, and I’m equally sick of the dismal details. The situations where no one helps, just like no one rushed to my aid on that very first night in Delhi. I would urge anyone who witnesses such cases, whether petty or serious, to intervene immediately—at the very least to salvage some independence for women everywhere, and at the very most to save this fabulous country from a reputation which is seeing security go, frankly, to the dogs.