Just this morning, while getting ready for work, I overheard on 93.5 Red FM via the RJ (a woman) that the victim of the Delhi outrage was now in Singapore and responding well to treatment and since this was such a good news, she was going to play us an upbeat song and then the chirpiness segued into, “Sheela ki jawani.. I am too sexy for you..main tere haath na aani!”
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The irony in the moment screamed out that insensitivity is not a gender specific disease. I also remembered another incident in Goa, a few days ago. A jeep full of  Indian tourists.. all men..stopped next to a white girl in a short dress and one man craned his neck out and smiled at her meaningfully while “Fevicol se” blared out from the vehicle.
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At a night flea market near the Baga beach, a concert on a makeshift stage sparked off spontaneous dancing in a group of two white women and three of their male friends. And then out of nowhere two Indian men joined the group and began to make an attempt to dance with the women.  When the women moved away, they took out their cameras and started video-taping them. The fact that the women were ‘uninhibited’ according to Indian standards was perhaps invitation enough.
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Today, on a Facebook thread back in Bangalore, a man made a jovial comment about rape, “If you can’t prevent..then lie back and enjoy it,” and when taken up on it reverted with a, “Since neither have u (sic) been raped so even you got no experience to talk about this… tell me what would you do if you were put in harms way by six men at a time….. wait for batman to come and rescue u??? I am sorry to say that I even got into this argument with narrow minded people.”
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He also referred to “women like you,” meaning me who have never faced gender violence but have an opinion about it, not caring to know that violence visits women in India in many forms, verbal and physical and I have spoken about my share of it, in many of my stories right here on this site and over the last 17 years of my journalistic career. Later the comment was modified and I do not know the man enough to comment on his inner world and what infests it but yes, this is the root of every single crime against women in this country. You don’t have to commit a crime. You can just laugh about it or  call protesting women as “dented and painted” or ‘parkatis‘ (women with short hair) or  say that a victim should have been more careful or should have submitted to save her intestines because you see no Batman was going to come and save her now, right? Any idea that takes the brutalisation of women for granted contributes to gender insensitivity and that leads to gender crimes that in turn lead to this tacit, if not approval, then acceptance that there is no solution, just repetition and maybe women need to prevent rape and if they can’t, maybe they could just enjoy it?
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Since this one crime, many more have happened, maybe to perpetrate the idea that brute power can subjugate women regardless of protests, debates, celebrity tweets, Facebook petitions and more because the ground realities have not changed. The law makers are not suddenly more sensitive to victims, politicians are still shooting their mouths off and ruthless policing was used to tame the Delhi protests with the hope that intimidation would work  and send the young back to their virtual worlds, their classrooms and their reviled discotheques.
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The anger of these kids on the streets has not yet dented (yes, that word again) the political landscape and not one politician has made a satisfyingly empathetic statement or shown solidarity with this rage without equivocation though Sheila Dikshit did shed tears and looked as if she meant her shame and her pain. But like my 14-year-old observed..”most of the concern for the victim stems from fear..because the government wants to be seen doing something.”
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Yes, something in retrospect.  And the debate over a death sentence for rapists and chemical castration? Why are we so concerned about what comes after a violation? Why not focus on prevention and making rape not just difficult but impossible on our streets, buses, cars, trains? And yes, homes? That would be asking for too much now, wouldn’t it? And  in a country where an ice lolly vendor on a beach and a food shack owner has to grease palms of policemen and government officials in order to conduct honest business, how much would it cost to keep a rapist out of jail? The rot is too deep but something tells me, we just may have had enough. The crackdown during the anti-corruption movement and now during  the anti-gender crime protests, speaks of a fearful State, afraid to be questioned and made accountable. This could be the beginning  of a root deep shift in our attitude towards women and what is done to them routinely and with impunity. Hope, no matter how dented, is still hope.In the meantime, we  gather in big numbers to protest. We make ourselves heard. And we never ever turn our face away.
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Pic courtesy: http://www.preparetolive.org/html/resources/quigley_2006.html
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Reema Moudgil has been writing on art, theatre, cinema, music, gender issues, architecture and more in leading newspapers and magazines since 1994.  Her first novel Perfect Eight ((http://www.flipkart.com/perfect-eight-9380032870/p/itmdf87fpkhszfkb?pid=9789380032870&_l=A0vO9n9FWsBsMJKAKw47rw–&_r=dyRavyz2qKxOF7Yuc )won her an award from the Public Relations Council of India in association with Bangalore University. She also edited Chicken Soup for Indian Woman’s Soul and runs  unboxedwriters.com.  She  writes art catalogues and has scripted a commissioned documentary or two. She has exhibited her paintings in Bangalore and New York,  taught media studies to post graduates and hosts a daily ghazal show Andaz-e-Bayan on Radio Falak.