Perils of being a woman

I reached home 5 minutes ago. It’s 1245 as I write.

On the Noida metro there was only one woman with me in the ladies compartment. She had her kid with her. She was lifting him in her arms as he was asleep and asked me to get out her phone for her from her bag. She got off at Yamuna bank.

Some men got on. One man saw me sitting alone and hovered around inside the ladies compartment. I glared at him, looked him right in the eye and glared at him and then I kept my head down. I had my headphones on. I could tell he was saying something but I didn't want to hear it. I kept my eyes on my book but I could tell he was still hovering. I could hear the voices of some other men sort of shouting something, I think they were asking him to get out of the ladies compartment, but I'm probably being too hopeful. He stood in a corner near a door and I think he was fiddling with himself, still saying something that I drowned out. I tried to read Madam Bovary but all I could think of was how I wanted to put a bullet through his skull and splatter his fucking brains all over the train. All I wanted was to watch his head explode like a watermelon. My stop came, I got up and stood in front of the door, looking down the entire time. As I got out I could hear him say 'aye larki. Degi? Degi?' and I rushed past as I saw the train carry him the fuck away from me. I felt fucking impotent and helpless and like a fucking idiot. Why didn't I yell? Why didn't I tell the driver? Why didn't I have a fucking gun. 

Thing is, this was not the first pervert of the night. This was not the first time some fucker looked me in the eye and had his hands in his pocket, touching himself. Yeah, it was an eventful night. While I was waiting for the train (well waiting for the fucking Vaishali train to come and go so I could start waiting for my train which hung around in Rajiv Chowk for half an hour), I was pacing up and down as usual when I saw a guy walking towards where I was pacing. I kept pacing, not noticing anything. And then I saw him, looked him in the eye and I saw him fucking around with his hands in his pocket. I walked towards the other side and just stared at the floor till he got on the train where I could still see him staring at me. There you go, more fucking impotent rage. More wanting a gun, wanting to set this person on fire. Wanting to smash his face into splinters with a baseball bat. And that too on ladies night. Score.

Why am I telling you this? Because saying it helps me to let go of the anger. Saying it just helps me spit out the temporary feeling of being an object. I'm saying it to you also because if I say it to anyone else they'll worry. And I can't fucking have people worrying. It pisses me off. I can't do anything about it, I have to live my life and worrying gets in the way. After any such encounter, I feel like I have no limbs, I feel like I'm in one of those dreams where you're being held back or attacked by something you can't see or escape, your legs are sunken in quicksand. I feel like a helpless fucking little girl. I reprimand myself constantly. For being late. For not saying anything, for not doing anything, for not being the kind of person who would yell or lash out or do something, anything other than pretending like you're somewhere else. 'It's your fault' exists in your head too, after all. We internalize this poisonous fucking shit. And guilt and blame ourselves for allowing ourselves to be treated this way. 

Now I can't think about this anymore. I've spit out my anger and now I'm back to being numb. I'm going to England for a month, will have something better to write to you about then hopefully.
In other news, someone on 95 fm played Digable Planets at around 1035 pm. I would like to kiss this person. Thank you for making me happy when I was stuck in a car in Hauz Khas while there was commotion about a car on fire whose CNG cylinder might or might not explode at any moment (it didn't thank god).