Our middle-class sensibilities, our backward-class shackles

Ten years ago, a teenaged girl was raped in a Mumbai local train. There were five other men in the compartment but they did not stop the attack. One of them was a journalist, and I still cringe saying that. It is a profession I practise, too, and it is widely understood, but not often said, that journalists are those whom people turn to when all avenues fail. The power of the printed word (and now the spoken or shouted word on television, too) endows us with a sort of authority which we sometimes (often?) misuse. But what it also gives us is a responsibility. The responsibility to use the word well, and to do good towards our fellow human beings with it. But in the case of the train journalist, Ambarish Misha, that responsibility apparently did not cross class barriers. He watched as the man raped the girl, scarring her for life (there is no question of "probably" here, rape scars the victim for ever), but he did nothing and remained silent, as he brazenly confessed the next day, because he was "burdened with his middle-class sensibilities". That means: the girl was obviously from a lower class, poor, already wretched, and "these things happen to them all the time". He may not have said that last phrase but I bet he thought it.

That was a train. Ten years later it is a different city, a different vehicle. This time there were more rapists. The victim was accompanied by one man. The outcome was a murderous assault on both, and a traumatised young woman who battles for life. 

I wonder if anyone has asked Mr Mishra what he thinks now.

Because his silence ten years ago is part of the reason this has happened, again and again. Because of the conspiracy of looking the other way even when an atrocity is happening right in front of us. Because of the pretence that certain classes of people, certain sections of society, and - yes - certain genders of the human race are "other" - and so, something bad happening to them is something bad not happening to us. Because we think that this pretence justifies our silence and our inhumanity. Mr Mishra's silence ten years ago joins the raging screams of silence all around us that drown out the unheard pleas of traumatised women and children. The longer we cower behind our so-called sensibilities, the greater our burden of guilt. But silence is not an option. It never was, and now it has become unavoidably clear that it cannot be.

We tend to think that the people who commit rape, and the people who condone it, must be different from us. They must be uncivilised, uneducated, criminalised in some way, brought up to believe the wrong things about humanity. Then along comes someone like Mr Mishra, typical of a middle- or upper-middle-class professional, aware as well as educated, nay, practising a profession of enlightenment. If he could stand by and claim helplessness while a young woman was raped in the very same space that he occupied, what can we expect from those who are considered less than him by these parameters? In the final reckoning we are all human beings, but in our assumed wisdom we have created barriers and labels which are supposed to distinguish different classes and levels of human beings from one another. But as it turns out, in the final reckoning there is not much difference between us, after all. There is only one line, drawn ages ago - the line between the oppressed and the oppressors, and in that train the woman was the oppressed. By not coming to her aid, Mr Mishra joined, however unwittingly, the ranks of the oppressors because, as I am sure he remembers and may even have quoted somewhere, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."

But of course, far from doing nothing, people in India do a lot when it comes to sexual assault. They ask questions, they point fingers. They ask why the victim was in that place, at that time, wearing those clothes. They point at - I don't know, her hair, her work life, the look on her face. Anything will do, as long as it deflects attention from the fact that a fellow human being, one of us, behaved like a monster. If we make it look like it was not his fault, maybe we won't feel complicit in his act.

As one commentator says, the change that needs to come about is a deep-seated one, a change in attitude. "It is idiotic to expect that policemen, or lawyers, or judges can prevent rape if we cannot prevent people from thinking that any kind of sexual violence is justified or forgivable," she says. 

It's not rocket science we are talking about, it is merely ensuring that the city is not a danger zone to be navigated with fear. Things that need to be done start with making public transport accessible and safe, public spaces accessible and safe, lawmakers and law-enforcers accountable, and most of all streamlining the judicial system so that the victim does not become further victimised by publicity and long-drawn-out legal proceedings. The government has to demonstrate will, and the determination that every woman under its governance will be safe. It can be done.

One more change besides all these needs to be brought about, and for this we need not look further than our own minds. It seems almost ridiculous that human beings need to be reminded to be human, but apparently it is required. We need to start saying No. No to violence, No to oppression.

Oh, if saying No were so easy, we would all do it. But saying No can pull us into the camp of the oppressed, it makes us vulnerable, and most of us have a lot to risk in terms of family, if not one's own life. The answer is that we must be empowered so that we need never fear saying No again. This empowerment can best happen, of course, when everyone is enlightened but that hope took its last breath for me ten years ago. The answer, I am convinced, is for every woman to be able to fight back against an attacker, either though unarmed self-defence or with a weapon. Women have begun carrying objects of personal defence, but there is always the danger that these can be grabbed and used against them by an attacker. What we can do is to teach every girl to defend herself (compulsory NCC training, perhaps). And what we can also do is come to the aid of a woman in distress. It's not that difficult.

Just as "a victory for terrorism anywhere is a victory for terrorism everywhere", the rape of one woman anywhere is the rape of all women everywhere. To proceed from the one to the other, all you have to do is... nothing.

Thane Return

It has been almost a month since I started working in Bombay, and two and a half months since I arrived from Singapore. Faster than the speed of light, or so it seems to me, I got a job (MUCHAS thanks to friends and ex-colleagues for the helping hands!), organised the train pass and the lunch dabba at the office, figured out the optimum train timings and the best route to the platform so as to avoid the riot-like rush on the overhead bridge, and learnt to navigate the by-now-familiar monsoon puddles too. It feels as if I've been here for ever.

Before moving back I wondered how I would take to it. Till now, I've only visited. True, I've plunged into the city with a steadfast sort of fervour every time, but always I knew I would be going back to Singapore. This time, knowing I would not go back, I wasn't sure how I would react.

The result has surprised me. Very obviously, being with family and in a loving and comfortable environment has eased the transition immensely. But I was anticipating at least some degree of adjustment. Perhaps it's because I kept an open mind, was even prepared to be disappointed - but I seem to have slipped right into the groove, heaving train rush and all. Waking up in time and getting out to catch the 9.03 or, if lucky, the 8.56. Crossing the road at just the right moment between opposing streams of traffic. Making sure I reach the office (sometimes I disappoint my sister-in-law by rushing out sans breakfast) and sign the muster before it is taken away and gets red marks in blank spaces against the names of those who didn't make it by the cut-off time. Practising (not yet perfected) the art of managing a handbag when both handbag and hands are pressed tight as tight can be in a crush of bodies and ponytails. Negotiating the old, ultra-steep stairs at the office which, I thought (seeing as the office is on the third floor), would help me lose some of my - generous word! - embonpoint. Unfortunately my colleagues bring in cake with calorific regularity and I have not been able to muster the strength to refuse them. I should just go for a walk every time it happens.

The friendliness of my colleagues and the workplace atmosphere has had a lot to do with my having "fitted in", I'm sure. Working in the Indian milieu is a pleasure I still consciously enjoy - being able to speak Hindi at will, use Indian idioms, and wear comfortable salwar-kameez without being asked why I'm dressed up (in "costume", as some would put it in Singapore). In Singapore, culture is very Westernised. In Bombay, I haven't yet worn my standard-issue grey office-girl skirt - one item which helped make me feel less different in my erstwhile home. Trousers and jeans cross the border freely, though.

A great deal of my fondness for Bombay seems to have to do with trains. In Singapore, the trains run swift and smooth. All you hear is a hum. Very occasionally, only at one or two points, one hears the "rat-tat, tat-tat" of wheels going over joints. It's a sound I love - a sound I miss so much I used to weep when I visited Bombay and travelled by train just to hear it. I still love hearing it, every day of the working week. Another of my train highs is when a fast goes past - either an outstation train going through the station, or two trains passing one another on adjoining tracks. You hear the horn first, approaching, getting louder; and almost before you know it the great creature is passing yours in a wave of rushing metal and blurred bodies in doorways. If there is no joint on the tracks, the sound is a swift zoom-whoosh; when the wheels go over the joints there is my beloved old rat-tat, tat-tat; rat-tat, tat-tat; and then it fades.

Another thing is that on visits, I used to head out by car, with the convenience of a driver so I had no parking worries and could flit around in airconditioned comfort. I can't use the car every day now because my brother needs it, and even if I could, or even if I got my own car, the work commute is just too long. Between Thane and VT, train is best. That's another difference between visiting and living - the fact that the grime and grit is a daily experience and not a temporary touristy reverse-snobbish indulgence. The daily commute has its downs - nonstop pouring rain during the thick of the monsoon, delayed trains, bus breakdowns, occasionally even verbal abuse from male commuters when they can get away with it. I may well change my mind eventually but all this has not yet begun to bother me. Somehow, the goal seems more important than the means.

It's all still new enough that I savour the taste - and the convenience - of breakfast from the corner sandwich-walla near the office, and all but restrain myself from falling with mewls of joy onto the tea that arrives regularly at my desk, a far cry from insipid tea-bag brew in the office pantry. Working in Bombay is very different in several other ways from working in Singapore too, but that, I'm sure, goes for every place. I think with fondness of the dizzying variety of food and drink that Singapore offered, but I don't hanker after it. When I go back (as a visitor, this time) I'm sure I'll fall on all that too, with joy and delight and unseemly wantonness.

Singapore is a land of conveniences, all right, but why don't I miss them? Perhaps it is because I've attuned myself to being "Indian". Singapore - I spent nigh on ten years there - seems like a film I watched and enjoyed. Now I'm out of the cinema hall, dodging the puddles and autorickshaws, and steering clear of the BEST buses. I have not forgotten that you never, ever argue with a BEST bus.

The last time I did all this was when I worked at Lower Parel and stayed as a paying guest or PG ("lodger" to my British friends) at Bandra, and then at Mahim. But that was in the second half of the '90s - 12 years ago. Not only was the commute short, I also worked the odd hours of the newspaper world - starting in the afternoon or evening and ending in the wee hours - so I didn't brave the rush hour. Now, my knees feel far older than the rest of me does, and the rest of me just doesn't feel like doing the night shift any more. Still, I seem to have borne up pretty well so far, fingers crossed.

I had hoped to find a personal source of support by this time, but it hasn't happened yet. I'm hopeful of meeting someone when the time is right, however, and in any event confident enough that even if I don't, it won't be the end of the world.

Often it seems - still - that I've stepped out into space and am navigating new territory with every step. At times I feel - still - that it is dark out there, that the flashlight illuminates only enough for me to take the next few steps. I put my foot forward firmly, however, and as for support - why, my fabulous family is there!