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If educated students could harass a fellow postgraduate student when she already said no, what can we expect from the guys loitering the streets?
Trigger Warning: This deals with street sexual harassment and may be triggering for survivors.
“Isn’t it lonely being single?” he smiles again.
“Obviously not. I am okay with being single,” I return the smile, though a bit irked because I have known him for like 5 minutes. I take a step forward.
“But you are a romance writer.” He casually steers the scooty to block my path. To another person it might seem like a conversation. To me it feels like coercion. “Don’t you ever think about experimenting with romance with someone instead of just writing?”
“No.” I try to walk away. He gets down from the scooty in front of me — clearly trying to intimidate.
“Well I’m always available to experiment if you want to.”
“No thanks. I would better go,” I reply quickly stepping up on the pavement. My heart is racing.
“Look you got afraid. I was just joking. You can ask anyone to know that I am a decent guy.” I don’t wait to hear the end of it as I turn around and start walking away. He powers up his scooty and starts following me. I wonder whether to scream because the security guard was two feet away but I didn’t want to ruin the career of a postgraduate doctor at AIIMS.
*
I’ve always thought that in a campus guarded by a fleet of security guards with only students being around, that too doctors, nurses, and paramedics, in an elite campus like AIIMS, I would be completely okay if I stayed inside the campus. But what happened really changed my perspective — education has nothing to do with being a creep.
I was taking a walk through campus at 9 pm and this guy I never saw before, a resident doctor at AIIMS tried to stop me and make casual conversation. It was okay until he started diving into my personal life and in 5 minutes straight he was making lewd innuendos outright in spite of me trying to avoid it several times.
If educated postgraduate students can harass a fellow postgraduate student when she already said no, what do I expect from the guys loitering the streets? He didn’t need to touch me to violate me. His words were enough. I felt so sick as I went over the conversation again and again, trying to find faults with myself. Where in the conversation had I led him on? The answer was – nowhere.
It was just the kind of person he was, an educated pervert. It’s so sad to see girls not being safe even on college campus these days because of such men from ‘good’ families, who have never learnt to take a ‘No’.
To all the guys out there, being single is not an invitation. Smiling or being friendly is not an invitation, neither is wearing a knee length dress, which I presume made him stop me that day among all girls.
Grow up guys, and learn to take a ‘no’ gracefully.
Image source: a still from the film Dil Chahta Hai
Writer by night and nurse by day I'm quiet by nature, shy they say I wear my scrubs as if they were a cape But once I start speaking, there's no escape. #nurse # read more...
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