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| Many students do not go to police fearing harassment there. In picture: Police Protection for the Chief Minister at a College in Calicut, Kerala. |
When a small town girl first goes to the big city to study, she comes across many changes. When I moved to Kolkata to do my undergraduate programme from an esteemed college, I imagined that my life would change forever. And it did. Just not the way I thought it would.
I used to imagine that in big cities people do not interfere in others’ lives. I soon learnt that the minds of the people work the same way, whether the place is big or small.
I was in my second year of college and there was a discussion in the class about sexuality and how people looked at it. The teacher was explaining how boys react when it comes to working things out with a girl and taking responsibility when needed. As the discussion continued, I recalled that some boys in my class I was very close friends with had gone on a trip and had not invited me or the other girls from our ‘friends circle’. I had failed to understand the reason behind the behaviour of the boys and thought that it was a good time to try and understand the psychology behind it. The teacher made a joke calling the trip to be a ‘gay gang bang’. [WASH does not understand what the teacher meant by that ‘joke’ and find it highly improper.]
The four boys who went on the trip got very offended and in return called me and my friend lesbians. I told the boy, “I don’t mind if I am a lesbian, why do you mind if someone called you gay, and it was a joke made by sir”. The next thing that followed shook me to the core.
Out of the four boys, two came to me and told that I would have to ‘pay’ for my mistake. I didn’t think that the ‘punishment’ they had in mind for me would be catastrophic and I shrugged off their threat.
On my way back home I got a notification of a Facebook post where I was tagged. On reading it, I went into a state of shock. It said, in a flowery language that I came from a lower middle class family with no values and dignity and therefore I was uneducated and had learnt how to use boys to get my jobs done. It further said that I was a paedophile and I slept around with boys for expensive gifts. I was to be avoided since I was a whore and a danger to the community. The boy who pasted this also tagged his friends from all over to watch this Facebook post, read the comments and have a good dose of ‘entertainment’ that evening.
After two days to weeping and being under shock I confided in my teacher. He immediately asked the boy to bring down the post. Although he didn’t want to in the beginning, he brought it down eventually. I also informed my HOD about this post and he reacted saying that if my teacher discussed women’s issues openly and used words like ‘bitches’ and ‘whores’ in class for whatever context (the teacher only used these words once to explain how these are used as slangs to slut shame someone) then the students were expected to react in that manner. Also since the boy had put up another post apologising, on Facebook, the matter was nothing grave to be dealt with.
It has been 3 years since the incident. In the course of my education, I did my projects with them; I worked with them again. The boy who posted this never looked me in the eye since. No, I never went to the police because I learnt that day that it was not a fight against him, but the whole of the ‘MAN’kind and patriarchy that is 5000 years old. And yes, I am fighting it, each day, every day.
-Nairita
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