Touched!
Scientifically speaking, a girl reaches puberty when she gets her first period and since that day her body goes through a cycle of changes to make a into a full woman. Scientifically, a man is a social animal and in my opinion this is the most significant research. “Man” is both “too social” and too much of an “animal”. Normally a girl or her mother, most probably her sister or relatives would know her ‘coming of age’ but in this miraculous world it is this animal (man) who can easily sniff out the approaching to-be-woman. He knows which girl is in her ripe, can sniff out the vulnerable one, knows when to attack and how to and is clever enough to know how much he can have-should he just graze through or can have a piece too.
A girl turns thirteen and visits her friendly store-wale-bhaiya and suddenly she sees something different in his eyes. Oh my god! The girl too realizes that she is blessed with the sixth sense of a tigress or may I say deer that can now smell danger. Earlier there was not much need but suddenly every known friendly face seems hungry. Well, my dear sisters welcome to the jungle as from now on hardly would a hand be there to just shake your hand. It’s time to fear both, the crowd as well as the quiet. Crowd means lurking hands and unrecognizable faces and the quiet is far more sinister. The seats on the left of the bus driver are reserved for women, really sweet you would think but notice the casual turn of the head every few seconds and the Honey Singh Songs in full volume professing the love this social animal has for you! Suddenly, you hate buses and trains and your friends (the guys or lucky sisters) complain about your lavish ways do not realize that these travelling wheels are as innocent as Hitler was to the Jews. Then appears the need for Only Women Metro Compartments, a real boon for many women because men don’t think they can stand within ten centimeters of a woman without becoming social. Yet, again we see the staring neon eyes through the dark misty compartment junction scanning us inside out. The best the prey can do is ignore the animal or run to its abode without being noticed or followed because if the hunter knows your den he’ll be lurking around with unknown traps. While walking on roads or crowded streets, women tend to have their hands around themselves, psychologically this means that the person is closed, protective and hesitant and most women walk like this with their hands almost wrapped around or carrying a book or something else in hand or even closed fists because that is what they have learnt to do to protect themselves from being caught unaware. India ranks among the top for being so wild. I read an article where an American woman penned her harrowing experiences of being groped, stalked and stared throughout her stay in India.
She narrated how the hotel boys tried to break into her room and she got calls from men who masturbated while speaking to her on the phone. Her days here had such an impact on her that she had to get psychiatric treatment for years before she could start a normal life. Some NRI women fear returning to India because they do not want their girls to experience the lingering shadows of men. You are in a delusion if you think that celebrities are safe from these harassment neither should you ever even consider the hocus pocus of chowmein and conservative dressing because Gul Panag (the celebrity), a pregnant woman, an old lady, a burkah clad woman or a child of 13, have all experienced the creeping faceless society that roars in the dark. In biology, we studied the animal chain but now that the “day” is over followed by a series of such days I feel that we should have been taught that being on top of the animal chain is a privilege enjoyed not by humans but rather by men where women are the most sort after desserts.
