Is My India Really A Safe, Secure Country?

(On the occasion of the Anti-Street Harrassment Week (April 6 - 12, 2025), let me share one of my personal experiences of it that happened on the 4th of this month.)

Is My India Really A Safe, Secure Country?

The second incident happened the evening before last. I was on my way back to my ancestral home from my bro's place at Behala. I got into a 240 from Gariahat. Initially, the bus was quite empty but it started filling up till the man sitting near the window seat facing the driver's, got up to get down. The man who was sharing the seat, moved towards the window, leaving his place empty.

A decent-looing girl with straight, long hair in loose jeans, who had been standing infront of the ladies seat beside the door, turned around to sit on the seat. When passengers started getting into the bus and moving to the rear, she took her left leg in to get out of the way.

Soon, the bus was pretty crowded and I noticed a young, lean and thin, bearded chap standing beside the girl. It took me some time to realize that the other bearded guy standing infront of me, was his friend. Initially, the kept quiet but soon they were talking. From the way they were talking, one thing was clear to me. They were not from Bengal. Now, I may be wrong about it but they were using a different kind of Hindi.

That's what made me look closely at the lean boy almost leaning against the girl. I don't know what attracted me to his pants. And that's when I noticed the bulge in his pants. My immediate reaction was to look at the girl. Even if she had noticed it, she acted normal totally engrossed in the bag she had on her lap.

I felt something. What was my country coming to? Do I live in a country where girls were not free to move about? Ignore unpleasant people?

The boy, having noticed my gaze wavering back to the bulge and being fixed there, put his hand in his left pocket to rummage through something or that's the impression he tried to give me. The bulge subsided a bit and having found the girl still looking unruffled, I decided to look up to the boy standing in front of me. The two boys were laughing now, sharing a joke. The girl put her glasses back up on her head. She might have been distracted by the semblance of a bulge in the vital area of the boy's pants.

A furious angst was overpowering me. But I am not a mastan. My parents didn't teach me to be one. Besides, I prided in being someone from the Land of the Gandhi.

By then the bus had stopped at the turning near Lady Brabourne College and I found the girl getting up to grab the overhead rod for support. The lean boy wasn't prepared for this. So, he had to sit down on the seat left vacant by the girl. I don't know what the guy in front of me, might have told him for he got up almost immediately to get behind his friend, who had by then turned towards the door. A few other passengers were also trying to get off the bus.

I tried to control my anger. Even if the girl was fuzzled, her face betrayed her true feelings. She got off near the mosque, followed by the two boys. I am sure that that was not the destination where the boys wanted to get off the bus initially. They were getting off there because of the girl.

I found myself in a dilemma. What should I do? Should I get off too for the protection of the girl? But I was tired and it takes at least 15 minutes from that place to Deblane even for a fast walker like me. Finally, I decided to stay put. I was not mastan and it couldn't have been my duty to rescue each damsel in distress or was it?

I kept sitting. Soon the bus was moving towards the iceland.

But as I got off the bus at Deblane, I found myself thinking about the girl and the two bearded boys. As a responsible citizen of a supposedly great country, was it my duty to try to come to the girl's aid near the mosque at the turning of Park Circus Seven-Points. Much though I tried to get the nagging question out of my mind, I simply could not.

The question was - Do we really live in a safe, secure society?