funny how this blog is now me writing about the negative stuff in my life lmaaaaao
from unfettered thoughts
everytime i settle down in my skin and start to feel safe, kolkata reminds me that women are never safe. ever. anywhere.
I have been staying in my place for four years now. it’s like 10 minutes of walk from Ranikuthi. a place i have felt relatively safer to navigate. i see other trans women and queer couples here in public, late night walks are serene and uneventful, often i finish my work and walk back home at around 1 am at night and never have i ever had to face any untoward behaviour except a few persistent offer for lifts from various men.
that changed this diwali. i didn’t get assaulted per se. but i didn’t feel safe. i didn’t feel carefree. i had to be alert and almost ran back to my apartment.
i got done with my work on 3rd at around 2 at night. i wasn’t worried about the time because these kinda times are normal for me. accounting for diwali i was expecting a little bit of life on the roads, and i wasn’t disappointed.
as i started walking back to my place, i started going through the learnings of the day and the task list for tomorrow. i was quite deep in thoughts so it took me a little while to realise two men on a sports bike had been circling me. they have been going in front of me, waiting for me to cross, and then slowly overtaking me and waiting patiently for me to come up and pass by again. i got more concerned once i started paying attention to what they were saying. it seemed the one driving was more excited and the pillion one was not. he had been busy texting. i could hear stuff like, “ki tight figure banra”, “mai gulo ki thatiye achhe, amaar haate fit hoye jaabe bol”, “oi pod ta ki dulchhe shala”, along with a little whistling, and making the bike growl and what not. last time they passed me before stopping their bike before a signal which was green, i heard one of them asked the other to ask me for a ride and i can sit in the middle of them two.
i missed having a cigarette in my hand. i’m not new to these comments. in most scenarios i pay no heed to them. but this is different, i’m alone, and i wouldn’t be able to do anything if they approached me. not like having a cigarette would solve the issue, but in my experience men prefers to not approach women who smoke openly for soliciting, they want us to smoke in the bedroom, not in public. i have previously made a habit of walking while smoking for precisely this reason.
before i could finish thinking what i would reply if they do become persistent about giving me a lift, one more bike with three more men came and joined them and an argument ensued. the bikers from the new bikes started hurling abuses to the driver of the first bike. “jekhani jabi sudhu magibaji”, “sobsomoye nongrami koraar dhanda”, “chup chaap onnoder disturb kora bondho kor, amader saathe chol.” the dude tried to say stuff like, “tora erokom keno korchhis? amar ta ami bujhe nebo”
at this point i crossed them, crossed the road, and was out of earshot. i couldn’t hear what they were talking about anymore. i know it was about me because i was the only woman in the road, there were a few more drunk uncles scattered around the road, minding their own business, drunk out of their mind. after i crossed the crossing, i have automatically started strutting, i couldn’t breathe, i couldn’t see anything around me anymore. i didn’t even realise when i started running, until the next day when a local neighbour asked me why i was running back home last night.
i wasn’t touched. i wasn’t slapped on my butt. i wasn’t dragged by my hand. i wasn’t felt up by groups of men. i wasn’t elbowed. which, in the four years i have been living in kolkata has happened multiple times except the year i shaved my head and became a shut in.
but i haven’t felt terror like this in years, since i got sexually assaulted in a taxi in last year february. i just couldn’t make it stop and get out. i felt helpless then as i felt utterly hopeless now. may be it is because of how things are right now. i think it’s kinda funny how if i die tomorrow on the road while sucking a dick or just because i chose to walk home at night, the people who would be in the forefront of the protests would be some of the people who had touched me up, or made me unwelcome in their space, or even actively tried to hamper my livelihood. i think it makes me lose hope in the world a bit. i think it makes me question all the work i am doing. and the absolute terror that i talk so much about this community, yet if something to happen to me at late night, almost no one would be available for help.
when i was doing the mental health workshop in chiang mai, i had a small breakdown in front of the facilitator as i was telling her how i am not built for the cities. when i got back to my home, all i could think about was how i can’t wait to run away from here. never to come back, never to talk to anyone i have known here, as i cried and cried and cried till it was almost morning.
you know, i tell myself it wasn’t as bad as some of the things i had to go through, they didn’t even touch me. it was just a possibility that thankfully didn’t come to pass. but for me and many like me, things like this will keep happening, and more often than not, more than we care to agree, or to accept ourselves, these possibilities will get realised and many of them will get escalated.
i’m tired. i’m honestly exhausted. i am at my wits end. i am lonely. i don’t got energy to write fun stuff. you all who are happy please go on write romantic stuff. i’m only gonna say what pops up in my head.
“অমর কাব্য তোমরা লিখিও বন্ধু যাহারা আছো সুখে”