a night walk

My time in India was approaching the end. For weeks I had been surrounded by women with terror stories to share about their male counterparts in society. Dowry, domestic abuse, female infanticide, rape, child sexual abuse, lack of education, assault in politics and beatings by joint family members were the common themes weaving together the lives of women throughout India. From the moment I stepped off the plane in Mumbai I was told a list of precautions to take and rules to follow, the most important being never walk alone at night.

While I had yet to have any particularly negative encounters with men in India I was growing to dislike many of them. I have always considered myself a generally open minded person, a person who didn’t judge a person based on his/her appearance, yet I found myself staring and questioning the character of the men I walked by solely because they were male and Indian. This is far from one of the proudest things I could ever admit, but my academic research (the effect of the 73rd amendment on the treatment of women in rural communities and thus the overall development of these communities), my internship (working at a women’s documentation and research center interviewing men and women about the rights of women in Pune as well as researching various abuses to women throughout Maharastra), and the stories my thirty female roommates shared with me about their lives and treatment by men left me very overwhelmed and frustrated with the male population in India. How could all of these abuses persist? How could they be so integrated to the religious, political, and societal trends throughout Indian history and contemporary life?

I knew that I didn’t want to judge every Indian man on the basis of our anatomical differences, and I was fully aware that I was becoming more judgmental than I ever want to be, so I worked on destroying any judgments or negative thoughts that may pass through my mind. I knew that I had met many kind Indian men and it was wrong to categorize all people of a particular group as having the same negative characteristics. I, after all, didn’t want to be deemed and obnoxious, ignorant, loud American before someone spoke to me, so it would be wrong of me to do the same to another group of people.

As I said before it was one of my last weeks in Pune. It was dark and I was walking home alone. As I approached Sinhgad road I could hear loud speakers and men shouting in what seemed to my ears no discernable rhythmic pattern. As soon as I turned on the road I could see traffic was at a standstill and stages were set up on both sides of the road with music blaring so loud the entire street and three-story high slum structures were shaking. Groups of men were huddled around the stages and seemed to be celebrating something as entire street reeked of cheap alcohol. Mobs, as it appeared to me, of men were jumping and shouting to the music while punching the night sky and waving tattered flags, which added some sort of organized flow to this image of chaos.

From this point it was about a thirteen-minute walk to my hostel on a normal (non-celebration) day. I knew looking at the scene before me that this would be a much longer walk, and I knew at that moment that it would probably be a slightly more interesting, for lack of a better word, walk than normal especially because there were no other women in sight. The thought of hailing a rickshaw passed through my mind, but traffic was at a halt as people were dancing on their parked vehicles and trucks were stopped with their doors wide open allowing the contribution of the drivers’ taste of music to the thunder of noise already consuming the street. It also appeared that most rickshaws were abandoned on the side of the street while their drivers made up a portion of the moshing men ahead of me.

There wasn’t much I could do at this point. I needed to get home, and I was trying to view the Indian man in a more positive light, so I was praying this walk would prove to me there was no need to worry or judge population of India who possess a penis. No need to give into the recently forming stereotypes I had of Indian men.

Within a couple yards of my walk I was approaching a small stage with about thirty jumping, shouting, dancing men, surrounding it. I was trying to think, “wow it’s really nice that they can come together and celebrate tonight,” rather than, “wow, I wonder where their wives are. Blast, I really hate the behavior of drunken men.” Within no time at all a man grabbed me and flung me into the center of the crowd.

Everything happened rather quickly. I mean in retrospect it did, but at the time it felt I would be stuck in that circle for the rest of my life, which I really wasn’t too overjoyed thinking about. I was trying to figure out what to do. I had been in semi-similar situations in other countries at various times, but this situation was different than those experiences. For one, in all the other situations I could speak the same language as the people complicating my life, so on a couple occasions a witty comment in another language would startle a person or two, as I don’t look like I should know how to speak Lingala or Isizulu. In this situation I didn’t speak Marathi and even if I could no one would be able to hear me. Another thing, this was the first time such a large group was interfering with my day. I had done enough work and research to know that if I tried to fight free, or punch one of the men, the other ones would literally kill me without hesitation. I’m just one girl, and they are thirty or so men. I knew that the only way I would be able to get out of this situation would be through the intervention of a person other than myself, which I was beginning to doubt would happen considering I was in the middle of this group and not a single one of them seemed slightly concerned about my well-being.

While I prayed and waited for someone to help me, my body was being thrashed around. Men were on all sides of me, pulling me in every direction, squeezing everything they could grab a hold of. I wasn’t entirely sure what was happening because all I could see were hands reaching for me and mouths aimed for my face. My hair was being pulled, my limbs being stretched, and some men were trying to rip my cloths off while others were trying to kiss me. Anytime I would try to turn my head away or wiggle out of the awkward positions and places I was, someone would hit my head or slap me in an attempt to get me to stay in place.

While all this was happening I was beginning to get pretty hopeless and quite disgusted by Indian men. I didn’t understand why not one of the men there was opposing this behavior and why no one was coming to help. At this point my body hurt and I had no idea what would happen next. Suddenly a man was walking by and somehow saw me unable to defend myself consumed by this crowd of men. He walked in and grabbed one of my arms trying to pull me out. His attempt was failed as there were so many men on the opposite arm resisting his efforts, so he resorted to punching a couple of them, then picked me up and put me on the street. He shouted towards me to run and made sure none of the men came after me. Here was a miracle. An Indian man who came to my rescue and risked his well being to help out my stupid self after I had made the mistake of ignoring the numerous warnings not to walk home alone, especially at dark.

I made it a couple more meters down the street when I was suddenly flung to the ground. A man had grabbed my purse from behind me and pulled it back so forcefully that my entire body gave into his yank, and I found myself struggling to get up from the dirty road. He started to choke me then grabbed my arm and pulled me toward him, squeezing my face so hard it felt he may puncture a hole through my cheek. He was trying to force his tongue down my throat and for a couple seconds I was able to resist, but when he finally succeeded he tasted the same as the other men. They all tasted like alcohol, the same cheap liquor that also contributed to the anger that led to abuse for so many Indian women. One of his hands began to go up my shirt while the other kept a grip on my face and I began to feel a connection to so many of the women I had listened to. Not that this experience was even a fraction of what those women live with for years on end, but this was a woman’s husband. This man would go home and do the same thing to his wife, possibly a girl even younger than me. If I was scared right now, I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to live with this on a daily basis. I couldn’t imagine being trapped in a cycle of abuse and oppression by such a man.

Again too weak to get out of this situation, all I could do was pray and wait for someone to help me. By this point I was farther down the road than I had begun, obviously, which meant there weren’t many people around because most of the people on the street were near the stages. Luckily, before things got too out of control, another man came and punched this guy so that he let go of me. I began to wander down the street completely dazed and confused, but grateful for the man who had just appeared, when the man that had flung me to the ground came sprinting after me and grabbed me again,. This resulted in yet another series of sloppy undesired kisses. Thankfully the man who had punched him saw this and ran after him, holding him away from me long enough for me to get a safe distance away. Again an Indian man had come to my aid when I was in this negative situation because of my own choice to walk home alone at dark. A completely innocent man risked his safety to help me break free from a terrible predicament.

As I was walking another man came to me and held onto my arm. His grasp was much different than the other ones I’d encountered earlier on my walk. It was a gentle one, one offering protection, yet I pulled my arm free and moved away from this man. Despite the fact two men had already helped me that night, I was still deterred from being too close to any Indian man because of my encounters with the more violent men that night. This man was trying to ask me where I was going, and I knew enough Marathi to respond, so I did, but I kept my distance. I was skeptical, even though there was something about him I felt was safe. My mind wasn’t strong enough to get over my hesitation of Indian men at this moment. He noticed I remained a safe distance from him and he didn’t try to break that distance. He walked several feet to the left of me the whole way back home, watching out for me to ensure I’d be okay. He did all this, and yet I was still timid around him because he was male and Indian. What a terrible thing I did to him. I categorized him as one of them. One of the men who had hurt me. One of the men that hurt their wives and daughters. How wrong of me.

I didn’t tell anyone about this because I didn’t want it to be a big deal. I knew I shouldn’t have been walking alone and I knew me telling someone would just cause a lot of ruckus when there was nothing that could be done. I suppose had I known who the men were I would be able to press charges and have them arrested, but beyond the fact I would never be able to recognize all the faces of the men who had attacked me, I wouldn’t want to do this. So many women face the same treatment and worse daily, yet because they are Indian women, and not white women like myself, police officers never reprimand their abusers. Also, I had learned enough about the prison system to know that had I been able to identify one of the men and decided to have him arrested he would have been severely beat up by the police who arrested him and he would have been prohibited from working in whatever sector he was currently working. This would mean his family would have no source of income considering it is significantly more difficult for women to get jobs and many men don’t allow their wives to work. If I were to arrest him, his entire family would suffer. His children who couldn’t choose to be born, and his wife who most likely didn’t choose to marry him. I couldn’t do that to her, to the woman I never would meet.

The next morning I walked, again alone but in daylight, to meet a friend for breakfast. The restaurant was on the same street where the previous nights’ encounters happened. As I walked by the places where I had met those men I felt sick. At one point I was afraid I was going to collapse, and my whole body still ached. With a scarf around my neck and long sleeves and pants to cover any marks I made it to the restaurant. I sat down and listened to the conversation two of my friends were having. My mind couldn’t focus on their words. I was sitting with my face directed towards the street. I was watching a man emaciated by a system of caste and class oppression as he smashed rocks. Sweat was dripping into his eyes, and my eyes were cemented on him. He pulled a dirty cloth from his pants to wipe his eyes and his glance met my stare. He was one of them. One of the men from the night before.

This man was a poor slave to the system, desperate for liberation. He was helpless and my heart broke. Everything in me began to ache, not from the bruises and scratches, but from a deep feeling of sadness. This man was not a bad man, he was a man who didn’t know how to live because his days didn’t make a life of growth and development, rather they made a series of redundant battles that kept him trapped into this hell of poverty, disease, corruption, hard labor, forced marriage, absence of education, and a cycle of oppression his children will also face as they have the same last name as him, and are born into the same backward caste. The only time his voice is heard is when he uses it to lash out against his wife. He has no power, no authority, over any other being than her. Standing atop a pile of rocks that needed to be broken apart stood a robust man in a suit, puffing on a cigar, glaring down at him. The man in the suit directed some harsh sounding statement to the man with the sweat filled eyes, and as his head lowered so he could again begin to pick under the blazing sun he spoke to me with his eyes, and at that moment I realized maybe it wasn’t sweat in his eyes, maybe they were tears. He was working for his children, working for food, working for something he didn’t understand and he was desperate for something he may never taste…freedom and hope.

He remedied my heart and my issues of stereotyping and hating Indian men. I remembered all people are good; it’s just a matter of revealing this in the world around us.

peace and love