How safe is my city?

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Born and brought up in Mumbai, today, I have no answer to the sympathetic looks from my Delhi friends. Touted as 'Mumbai's shame', the molestation of two girls on New Years eve outside a five star hotel in Juhu, has led me to question my pride in the city of my birth.

I always believed that Mumbai is safer for women than other Indian cities. When I took the decision to move to Delhi, friends, relatives, elders, all advised me to stay put. 'Delhi isn't like Mumbai, it's a lawless place', they said. But to them, and to the national media - of which I am now a part - I would like to pose a thought. Every time such an incident takes place, we begin to question if Bombay is no longer safe for women. But even I, a woman and resident of the city for 21 years, never thought it was 'safe' for women, I merely thought, it is perhaps safer than other places in our country. There is no town, city or village, in India, that women can truly call safe. Such a place simply does not exist, not just here, but indeed across the world. But the 'shame' here is not of the rest of the world. The question is of our own country, and more importantly, our own homes.

Let me, at this point, be the voice of dissent. The question posed was 'Are Indians sex-starved?' But is what happened in Mumbai simply the result of the offenders being deprived of sex? Even when discussing sex, should we not deal with repression, rather than reduce the debate, and ourselves, to merely animalistic desires? Molestation involves more than a desire for physical gratification. It is a question of mentalities, of conditioning, of what we as a society believe is the appropriate expression of our desires, and above all, it is a question of power.

You, reading this article, and I, as women in urban India, are part of a subtle power-play. The tussle begins everyday when we leave our homes to come to work, take our children to school, or even when we, as young girls, are going to school. The male gaze. Such is the power of the gaze, that we are taught to avoid it, ignore it, to refrain from 'provoking it'. Try and avoid it all you can, but what begins with the gaze, does not end there. As young women, we go from walking with our eyes down and ignoring the looks, to turning our faces away from the words, to shrinking from the touch. Glare back, shout back, strike back....at your own risk. How many of my countrywomen chose to take that risk. And how many continue to shrink. Both groups, are equally aware of the danger.

I believe that men can appreciate the problem. Many men might have had experiences where - like those boys trying desperately to wrest their girls from the clutches of the mob - they have felt utterly helpless in protecting those they love. We place an unrealistic expectation on men to provide protection, or some semblance of it, to women. And we give too little weightage to the reactions of those in authority. The real perpetrators, and perpetuators of such acts are those that excuse them. People like Mr. Jhadav, Police Commissioner extraordinaire, whose quick fix is that 'wives' (and by implication all women must be wives) should be 'left safely at home'.

There is a term Mr. Jadhav did not use, but it is implicit in his statements - Provocation. We as the media and we as society are shocked that the Mumbai girls have not come forward to register a complaint. We blame them for not being courageous enough. Yet, are we not the same media, and the same society that ridiculed and questioned a Rakhi Sawant when she cried foul for a similar incident? Many amongst us asked if she had provoked it, and doubted that the attention was not as unwelcome as she claimed. But in the mind of a Mr Jadhav, all a Rakhi, or any other girl need do to 'provoke' is to step foot outside her house. Question one girl, subject her private life to scrutiny, and her to character assassination, and you lay all victims open to abuse, humiliation, and a second, much more public violation.

These are just some of the issues that have troubled my mind since the Mumbai incident came to light. I cannot pretend to account for all the reasons that crimes against women continue with such alarming alacrity. They are too numerous, and perhaps too deep-seated to be dealt with in any one forum. But, having said all this, how safe is my city? I wish I knew. Maybe only as safe as the media glare, the furious debate, the constant negotiation between tradition and modernity can make it.