I walked around aimlessly on the roads yesterday, for the first time since March. If you have been at home since the pandemic, then you know how weird stepping out all of a sudden feels like. It felt alien. It felt unnatural. It felt like something I should not be doing. But I had time to kill and I had a lot of thinking to do so I thought I would walk around Kondapur (if you don’t know Hyderabad - here is a hint- bad idea). And I observed something.
The weather was great and so were my footwear, a very rare occasion for me. The first thing I did as soon as I stepped out of the building was to put on earphones and play some music. Now the thing is I have been doing this forever! The last time I travelled without music playing was when my phone had 30% battery and I had to get from Kerala to Tamil Nadu without confirmed tickets (that is a story for another day). I guess you do it too? Play music when you are in transit?
Yesterday, I got to thinking why. Because you see, I was barely enjoying the music. My full concentration was on the road of course – trying not to get hit by a bike or trip and fall. But I kept reducing the volume, to hear footsteps of people trying to get too close, to hear what the two people walking behind me were talking about. Genuinely, when I say people, I mean men. I would like to think that I could be cautious of all people, but in honesty, it is the men that I am afraid of.
So, why did I do it? Why did I put on the earphones when I clearly wasn’t enjoying the music? I think it started off as a defense mechanism. As a way of not having to hear the “eve-teasing” and “comments” that boys passed at me when I walked on my road (I genuinely don’t know why we don’t call sexual harassment, sexual harassment but come up with names like eve-teasing, but here we are!). I was hoping that being an ostrich would help – if I did not hear it, it did not exist for me. To a certain extent, it worked because I never encountered anything “serious.” I only ever encountered the every day, normal, street sexual harassment. You know? However, I think, over time, I also started keeping them on for emergency situations - the SOS phone call that might need to be made, without actually looking like you are making a phone call, just in case.
My dad always had one instruction when I went out – “Don’t put those earphones Bandagi, even if you put them, at least keep the volume low.” I am past the stage of being angry at my parents for not being ‘feminist enough’ so I understand what he was saying. Watch out, keep your senses alert, don’t let your guard down. He wanted me to be safe from physical harm. I never really told him I was trying to do just that but also protect myself from mental harm – of having to hear verbal harassment.
Leslie Kern talks about her ‘anti-social ear buds’ and how they give her anonymity and autonomy but I can’t help but wonder. Are we as a society and as a city even at a time and space where women can ask for private space in a public space (no, not the pink train coach and the reserved seats!)? I remember a friend of mine once talking about a girl she saw walking down a road. That girl was wearing a yellow dress, she was listening to music, smiling and walking almost like she was dancing. Why is this girl such a rarity in our cities? After all, the streets are as much mine as they are anybody’s.
So, pardon me as I put on my antisocial ear buds because I have in front of me, this mammoth task of reclaiming my own city – one scary road at a time. And if having Sunidhi Chauhan tell me “Crazy kiya re” helps, I will take it.
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