#mymetoo

The first time I saw a picture of vagina was when I was in grade three. The vaginas would always show up in our bathroom walls. Drawn with coal, often the pubic hair sprouting in every direction. I went to an all-girls boarding school and the only males we had in our school were cooks and bera dais. There was also this son of a housekeeper in charge and an unknown lunatic who would flash his nuts from the back of our dormitory which was situated right below the pine trees, occasionally. Of course, we never saw his face or the fact that he was never caught didn’t surprise me even back then. These were the kind of things I believe weren’t considered dangerous.

I was too young to think about the perpetrator. I had never thought about those vaginas scrawling for almost three decades and suddenly I now realize that those drawings were in many ways the first kind of sexual assault for me or for my friends. I and my friends would stare at the scrawling quickly and never talk about it later because we had no idea what we were supposed to make of it. It was disgusting indeed! But now, when I think of it, the only thing I am certain, is, whoever scrawled those pictures probably had never seen a real vagina.

Why would men or boys want to scrawl pictures of vaginas in a girl’s bathroom? Is it a proclamation from the cowards stating their power to inform us – little girls that they know our intimate body parts in detail and they can publicly ridicule it at their pleasure? 

The sexual assault statistics state that one in every three girls will be assaulted sexually in their life time; and one in four women will be assaulted by her eighteenth birthday. When I think of it, the statistics is shocking but while we read daily about cases of sexual violations, rape, raping of minors and some as little as eight months old, the statistics doesn’t seem shocking anymore. We are also reading personal stories about women from all walks of life coming forward in social media and it isn’t alarming that every other girl has a horrendous story to share.

I too have a story. Almost 11 years ago, this one time during a field trip in my first job, a male colleague (older than me) had commented that I could sit on his lap if I wanted to while in a rickshaw and that I could come see his room too in separate accounts. I didn’t know how to react. I had frozen. Unfortunate that I didn’t confront him at the spot or even later. 

Twelve years working and travelling to different parts of the country, I feel like I now know how to deal with such remarks but then I haven’t faced one after that incident either. The fear of unknown remains. Travelling alone, getting in a heated discussion, telling a joke, wearing a dress to work – these are things we do automatically, but somewhere in the unconscious, a thought runs through my spine - have I said too much, did I put myself in an awkward situation, should I had not done that or said that? These are the thoughts that shadow me every single day, which I or any other girl shouldn’t have to worry about.  Until now it had just been me and protecting myself. I still remember the first time I held my daughter in my arms three days after the delivery. I had felt a surge of emotion I couldn’t comprehend then. I had thought, this little human will have to go through all physical and biological changes that I have gone through and it had made me deeply sad, not because she is a girl but because of what girls must endure. The fear of someone harming my daughter or every other child haunts me paradoxically.

I hadn’t shared my #metoo moment with my husband, I guess he will read it here. But the reason I didn’t share wasn’t to hide what had happened. I had felt ashamed thinking how could I have let myself into that situation. It took me twelve years to realize it wasn’t my fault. I had simply knocked on his door to go for dinner and we had to board the rickshaw to get to the dinner venue. The situation was as normal as it could have been. It wasn’t my fault!