The Scare of “Being Scared”

I am scared. Very very scared.

Mostly I am scared to be a woman in my country’s capital. Then I am scared for the fear that I am slowly but surely losing my independence which I am fighting for everyday since I was a child. I am scared to get on a public transport – at any time of the day. I am shit scared of travelling alone at night even though I feel angry @ feeling so. I am scared of trusting the autowallah I wave to stop on the road. I am scared of even driving my own car!

I am scared of wanting to enjoy a normal life – the life which most men take for granted. I am scared of the fear and anxiousness I see on my family’s faces every day when I kiss them good-bye for office. I am scared when I hear the same anxiousness growing manifold when I tell them I’ll be working later than the day-light hours. I am scared of the uncertainty that my every step brings – to myself and those who care for me. I am scared of opening the newspaper everyday – for fear of the number of new rape stories that I shall read – each of which depicts the woman as the one “shamed”. I am scared of trying to argue with the world why I should not have to put a full-stop to my life ‘cuz of the animals roaming around.

Why? Why should I have to think a zillion times before planning a late-night movie? Why should I be questioned for wanting to save my hard-earned money and not splurging on a cab-ride everyday – which again isn’t safe? Why should every time a rape case happens, the whole world questions the “circumstances”  - the girl might be travelling alone, she might be with a male friend, she might even be “alone” at her “own home”, she might be coming late from office working hard to meet deadlines, she might have been coming back from a drinking spree with her friends. Why should the girl be questioned at all?

And what right does anyone have to question a girl’s “morality” – her wearing jeans, her being educated, her befriending people of the opposite sex, her even drinking and smoking, and something which all of us read but chose to ignore – her being put on the same pedestal as a woman who indulges in sex for money – and even she doesn’t deserve to be raped! Is it “moral” for people to refuse to see women as people of the same race and giving her the well-deserved “Right to Live”? Is it “moral” for the people to even THINK that a rapist might EVER be justified for any God-damn reason?

How low have we gotten? As a nation? As a society? As the human race altogether? And inspite of such repeated acts, I read about the police officers and politicians and courts asking the people to pat them on their backs for “quick action”. Excuse me? But isn’t that something that MUST happen – not just this one time – but rather ALWAYS? And what use will that be when the “guilty” might never be punished – a case in point being the Aruna Shaunbaug case among many others where the guilty went scot-free after years of trial?

We are not safe on the roads. We are not safe in the malls. We are not safe in the moving vehicles. And we are not safe even @ our homes. What exactly are we supposed to do? And why should me or the million other women in this city be scared – EVER - of wanting to live their lives as a “normal free woman”  living in a so-called democratic and free country? I am still not FREE and I shall not be till I know that a rapist might not be lurking at each and every turn I take. And he might just take “offense” and try and hurt me even more if I refuse to accept his sexual advances?!

I so hate, despise and am disgusted of this feeling of being forced to be “scared” when I take pride in being anything but?