Women... Woe-men!!!

A girl journalist was shot dead in the city of Delhi very recently in the wee hours of the morning when she was returning from work. The case is still unsolved and people are speculating all sorts of things from personal enmity to random murder.

One of the senior leaders of the state commented that the girl was probably ‘too adventurous’ in returning home at that time of the morning and that too in an unsafe city like Delhi.

I mean, on one hand you have a city that’s potentially unsafe at any given time of the day for girls especially and on the other hand you have a poor girl shot dead. So basically, if the girl had not come home at that time, the accident could probably have been averted. Maybe, Maybe not!!

Scores of incidents, hundreds of violations of girls like this happen every day. And girls are blamed most of the time, saying she must’ve done something to antagonize the perpetrator, like maybe answer something rudely back to his disgusting comment, or probably put in a complaint against him, or maybe just told him off… of course the variations can range from, dressing provocatively to positively saying something to invite/irritate him as the case may be. In such cases the provocative dress can be a pair of jeans and a sleeveless top as well…

As much as people say that it is a developing country, everyone is becoming broad minded, and are open to a lot of things that are very common in western cultures, the fact remains that the core of the country is still old-fashioned. It is still considered taboo to speak to guys in the open. Girls will still be ogled at lecherously if they wear sleeveless tops. It is still considered bad for a girl to go out for an evening with a guy-friend. And for a girl to do as she pleases in the matter of career or education is still too forward for almost 70% of the country.

Ask any girl who travels using local transport, or has to walk in a crowded area, or even to go home after a reasonable time of 8 PM walking through the road that leads to her place. She can tell you stories of being stared at so obsessively that she feels like sinking through the ground, tales of being groped at in crowded alleyways, incidents of people brushing against in an unknowingly-knowing way, in the buses, in the trains, on the roads and even in respectable places like malls and shopping complexes where the rich, upper middle class call their second home!

Fine… Maybe this is considered as part of growing up, so that we girls can understand and develop our instincts as to who means what. And after sometime, evading people, or moving around them in a manner that means ‘don’t-you-dare-come-close-to-me’ becomes quite natural. But it sometimes traverses to such a level that the girl in question has a very fragile mindset at the end of it.

As for the senior leader’s comment about the poor journalist, I guess or rather I hope what she meant was that the city was unsafe for anyone be it a girl or a boy at that time of the night, and that probably it comes across as a warning to the others about the dangers that perpetually haunt people. It’s still a mystery as to whether the poor girl trusted someone deep enough to get killed at the cost of trusting that person or whether it was just a random murder like hundreds of others that happen!

Somehow all said and done, I can’t get beyond the young woman! Someone like my peers, who enjoys a challenge, who had so much yet to accomplish and achieve, who loves hanging out with friends and family after a hard day’s work…

A life that had so much to offer her, snuffed out just like that!

It is extremely distressing to have such things happen!

May her soul rest in peace!