I was reminded of what seemed like an accident three years ago. I had a tough time explaining to people what happened, and trust me, 90% of them didn't believe me. But something that happened a few days back confirmed, what I knew was the truth all along. It was the same man - someone in his late forties. A girl was walking towards her scooter and this man gestured to his friends to follow her. These men got on their bikes and started following her going zig zag around her. Fortunately some other vehicle came and they lost her. It was just pure luck for the girl. But then, how many got lucky before her? How many before me?
So this is what happened in 2012 - I was on my way to office in my scooter and took my usual route, which is usually not that crowded at that time of the day. Then I saw this man who was coming in the opposite direction in a bike. Some thing seemed strange about him. I noticed that he was coming straight at me. I moved to the extreme left trying to get away from him. But then there was no place to move any further and I was too close to the gutter in the left. He came to the extreme left and hit my scooter right from the front. I heard the clicking noise of the handle and my fingers were jammed between the bike and the scooter. The man was too fast and lost his balance.I think his plan was to simply scare me by coming too close then moving away. But he was too drunk and ended up hitting the scooter head on. Since I had stopped I didn't fall, but he skidded and fell. He ran back to me and snatched my scooter keys. Soon a crowd gathered around us and the man wouldn't return my keys. He then started demanding money. When people came forward to help me, he shooed them away. All the while I kept moving around the scooter to ensure that the scooter was between me and the man, just to be safe. Fortunately I had my mobile with me. While trying to keep a safe distance from the man, I managed to call my husband and he called the police. Only then did I notice that my hand was bleeding. This frightened the man and he kept the keys on the scooter and got away.
Most people said I was mistaken. Some said I was a rash driver and banged into a poor guy. You need to be really really reckless to hit another two wheeler head on with the handles getting entangled. I was asked questions like, "what was his motive?"I was supposed to find a motive if people were to believe me! Other statements from women themselves were like, "...you seem to get into trouble very often..." "...nothing like that has ever happened to us..." Did they mean that I surely must have done something to deserve this? I guess only the surgeon believed me. He said he had attended a similar case a couple of days back, which was much worse than mine. I was fortunate enough. I still have all my fingers!
I was so shaken after the incident that I used to ask my husband to follow me till I crossed that point. It wasn't the pain from the injury, it was the fear that someone had the power to harm me and I just couldn't do anything about it. He is a local rowdy and has cousins and friends, who look even more menacing. He said he didn't care if we complained to police. The last thing I wanted was to have anything to do with them. I keep wondering what I could've done better. Register a case? Use pepper spray? Probably if I or someone else had taken the trouble to do something, he might not have had the confidence to continue harassing women. Unless we are badly hurt, we don't want to take the trouble to do something about it. Sometimes even if we are badly hurt, we just don't want to do anything but run away from it. Each one of us who refused to react when harassed are probably guilty of making these bad elements more and more confident. Eve teasers like him thrive on our fear!
