A grizzly looking man talking incessantly in a language not known, tugging at my handbag strap and gesticulating towards his car just outside the Chennai Airport left me exasperated as both of us were quite literally lost in incomprehension, when he decided to take matters into his own hands due to some invisible sense of ownership and simply hurled my luggage into his cab — this was my ‘Aha… welcome to Chennai’ moment!
As I lug into my 10th month in this city where the hot climate and the affinity for rice fondly reminds me of my hometown Kolkata, I have had a number of such days of rude reminders that the basic right of ownership of my own body is something that I have to contend for by virtue of being a woman. From being amazed at the brazenness of an autowallah who is of the opinion, and I quote, “Women should not smoke because it makes them bad girls. Their responsibility is to bear children and so they have to keep themselves clean without indulging in such activities,” to men looking at me like raw meat (yes, it feels as crude as it sounds), I have been reduced to a helpless mess more than once.
But I am slowly beginning to realise that the helplessness is more because being a woman, I draw a blank when I think about what could be done to change such a mindset. It’s not an Indian problem or a Chennai problem – it’s universal. It’s ridiculous that even after 106 years of the strike by the Ladies Worker’s Garment’s Union in America, we still have the need to commemorate Women’s Day as a reminder that we need our rights. If you are a man reading this, please know that this is a comment on your brute mentality. Your ideas of machoism are misplaced and it’s time that you gave up the ‘alpha male’ mentality. Women are people who, before talking about equal wages, deserve equal basic rights of expression, speech and movement. So please stop degrading yourselves any further and man-up already!