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‘The fear after December 16 is an epidemic. It has gripped everyone’
Women are still struggling to feel secure in the city — they are afraid to take buses, don’t stand up for themselves when someone outrages them, and prefer to travel in groups than alone, reports Aakriti Vasudeva.
Eight years ago, Josna Joseph, now 25, had moved to Delhi from Shimla because she wanted to be independent. Ironically, the city which was to fulfill her dreams has now curtailed her freedom. Today, reaching work from home and vice versa has become a daily fight for survival.
Joseph resides in Munirka’s DDA flats and leaves for her workplace at Gurgaon’s Iffco Chowk around 9.15am. Though it’s expensive, she takes an auto to the Hauz Khas Metro station every day.
Earlier she used to take a bus, but call it paranoia or plain caution, she has sworn to stay off buses after the December 16 gang-rape.
There’s a well-reasoned explanation behind her behaviour: Her home is near the bus stop from where the gangrape victim and her friend were picked up by the chartered bus in which the brutal crime took place.
She has another safety rule: Never travel alone to work. Which is why she and her colleague meet up at the station to reach Gurgaon where they work as travel content writers.
As a HUDA City Centre-bound Metro comes to a halt, Joesph and her colleague get into the women’s coach. Finding no empty seats, they move to a corner next to the separation between the general and the women’s coach.
Many men from the neighbouring coach stare at them openly, a few steal quiet glances now and then. The girls ignore them.
“Normally, I don’t take such things lying down. But after the rape incident, I feel as if people are taking advantage of the panic and doing such things for cheap thrills as they know they can get away with it. Recently, a man misbehaved with us in the Metro and I let it go. I knew the cops won’t support me. And if I had reacted, there was always the possibility of that man catching me alone and ‘teaching me a lesson’ as I take the same route every day,” she says.
“I wasn’t always this cautious,” Joesph says. She comes from the friendly and protected environs of a hill station and Delhi initially came as a shock to her. “You only get scared of the monkeys in Shimla,” she says.
Joesph, then 18, was subjected to vulgar comments, unabashed leering and inappropriate touching. Now these things have become a part of her daily life. She’s been chased by a group of men in a car when she was in college, and has been smacked on her lower back near the JNU campus last year by a biker.
