I’m pasting below something that I had written in May 2008.
The details of this day are still vivid in my memory, and the issue as relevant today.
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To kick-start my ‘break from work’, I went on a short holiday to a hill-town (HT) in Karnataka with Girl. (Girl, a friend from the land of cheese and wine who had come down for a couple of weeks, is a born traveler and has spent four months living on her own in Delhi.)
Since we wanted to end our tiring day in HT with a good meal that we wouldn’t get at our budget hotel, we decided to go to a restaurant which was outside the city. So we set off in a rickshaw at about 9:15 pm but not before being warned that, “the night-time isn’t safe for ladies.”
Hardly had we spent 10 minutes in the rickshaw, than we had stopped twice – first for an LPG refill and the second time for the driver to buy beedies. HT is a pretty, but small and sleepy town that switches off its lights and turns in almost immediately after nightfall; and the streets outside the town centre display no sign of habitation and are not lit by municipal lighting. As the rickshaw noisily spluttered away from the main town area, driving in the pitch dark, on unknown roads, in a strange city, through jungle foliage it struck me how I had no local emergency numbers and how nobody would have heard a cry for help. It was then that an uneasy feeling crept in. An uneasiness that slowly gave in to fear. Not piercing, white panic. But a dull, rhythmic, swelling feeling that stays stubbornly at the pit of your stomach.
I said nothing at first. But my feeling was palpable so I told Girl that we should turn around and head back. She calmly reassured me that the restaurant was outside town, as we were told when we had called ahead, the distance was not as much as it seemed, and that the rickshaw driver knew what he was doing. Since she was the foreigner and I was the native, I was less inclined to believe her than to trust my instincts. I don’t know if hunger and fatigue had clouded my judgement, but something made me believe her, and press on. Ten minutes later we saw the restaurant lights. I set free the breath that I had been holding almost forever and my pounding heart slowly came back to beating normally. Of course the dinner was good and our healthy banter resumed but my appetite was gone. We took a cab back to the hotel but I went to bed restless and disturbed.
That experience really opened my eyes on so many levels. I had chosen to follow someone else’s gut feel over my own. Someone I was supposed to protect. And my instincts were wrong!! I had imagined all sorts of situations, all of them unpleasant, and it turned out that I was afraid for nothing. It wasn’t a big issue afterall. I was glad that Girl remained quiet and calm. She confessed to me later that my worrying made her afraid too, but chose not to let it overwhelm her. She was not naïve about what could have happened. Given the colour of her skin, she has had her brush with the lecherous and greedy rickshawalla types when she was in Delhi.
But I couldn’t help wondering when fear is justified and legitimate, and when it is irrational and paralyzing? If I had been alone, I would have turned back. Never mind the biscuits for dinner; or still, not ventured out at all in the first place. Were the seeds of fear sown when we were warned that it was ‘unsafe for ladies’, or much earlier in our lives? When each horrific story that you read in the media or through hearsay that reinforces the barriers in your mind. “Women must not go out unaccompanied after a certain hour”, “Women can dress provocatively but at their own risk”, “Foreign women are an easy target”. There is some truth to some of it. (That we choose to accept it or abide by it is another issue.) But when does being aware of crippling reality become empowering, because it can keep you out of danger, and when does it completely curb your freedom because you give up the chance to have a little fun, live life a little, in the fear of what might happen? Where do you draw the line? With experience, maybe but it takes only one error in judgement, one wrong decision. Does it have to do with the fact that we live in India and are brought up by Indians?
I don’t know. And am still looking for answers.
