Hey Sexy!

The wispered sentence jarred the senses once again..its funny how things came rushing back. "Hey Sexy!" for Gods sake, people don't say that anymore!! Do they? They do. Standing at the corner of a road in the afternoon, waiting for a friend, a stranger walked by with a 'hey sexy', I didn't even register the person till he had gone, saw a checked red shirt from the corner of my eye. My only reaction at that point was "What the..", "People don't say that anymore", suddenly I felt vulnerable, how dare someone wisper lecherously and walk away? Why didn't I say anything? Do anything? Replaying the (non?)incident in my mind again and again I wonder if I should have reacted sooner and caught him by the collar and asked him why he said that. WHY? Perhaps I would have beaten him to pulp for this, if I was in a movie, thats what they do all the time,..but instead I felt uncomfortable, was mad at my friend for being late so as to put me in a situation where I had to leave the comfort of my car and wait at the street corner. She was guilty. I was guilty for having not done anything? Guilty! Guilty! GUILTY! But then, for women, aren't there checked red shirts at each street corner...

Started and finished reading 'Sita's Curse' by Seema Sirohi this weekend...In the last decade, had dowry deaths really increased by 225 percent? But I thought these had actually reduced since my time as a teenager a couple of decades ago when the media used to report how women had been burnt by family here and there. I still remember a few incidents being reported on tv 'Three sisters hung themselves' because the prospective grooms demanded dowries which the parents were unable to gather. I remember reading in the newspapers that they were 'nice girls', they were proficient in cooking and taking care of the house, were 'BA passed', the neighbours never saw them hanging out in the terrace of their houses, because they were nice girls they stayed in the house....sigh. I thought this stopped happening ages ago, youngsters nowadays are so 'modern' as compared to our days, I see young girls walking confidently around the city. I see couples confortabley walking together. I see the country's economy booming everywhere. I see perfectly made up women driving large cars, I see the opposition being led by a woman, I see women in the high rungs of the govt., of UN, of corporates, and yet it takes a book to make me wonder if I actually see whats going on around. The case studies mentioned in Sihrohi's book contain examples from different strata of society, from the girl who had dropped out of school after Vth standard to the girl who had completed higher studies abroad and was thoroughly independent. Gosh, if it could happen to them, it can happen to anyone. We don't see this anymore, after all women are doing so well that we don't really see that not much has changed. We all still have to avoid the checked red shirts at the corners.......