Bombay is a wonderful city. It is wonderful because of its crumbling glorious buildings , its sea and breeze, its elegance amongst chaos. I like to wake up from a nap and walk two blocks to the Gateway of India and buy chai from the chaiwallah and watch the saris at sunset. I like Bombay. I like India.
But I am sick of Indian men. They stare. They leer. Then they stare some more. It is exhausting. Probably this sentiment has been brought on by the latest episode of unprovable sexual harrassment that I experienced yesterday. It may seem nothing: a clothing stall vendor from whom I was about to buy a shirt, said, “let me fit you,” held the shirt against my back and then lo and behold, managed to reach over my shoulder to touch with his fingers a part of my body that is not my back. It was blatant and we both knew what he had done, and I could not prove a thing. I didn't buy the sodding shirt.
It got me thinking. Once I wanted to write a story about how often women get yelled at, whistled at or generally sexually hassled in the street and what they could do about it under the UK legal system. The answer is nothing. There is no legal protection for women against white man van yelling out of his window a word that describes some part of her anatomy. There is only just protection for serious sustained scary stalking, so of course the boring everyday endemic sexual harrassment that every woman must know is hardly going to be taken seriously. And anyway, what could be done? I have decided that I may get some small cards printed, and have two phrases written on them in Hindi, depending on the level of the offence; either “Please stop staring; it's rude” or “Stop staring, pervert.” I will hand them out to starers. I will have to get a lot of cards printed.
Also, once I wanted to make a film which would be a series of women simply listing the instances where they have been raped or attacked or groped or leered at or abused or whatever. Because I think that if I sat down every female friend of mine, and they were asked to add up the episodes, they'd each come up with a sizable list. For the record, here is mine. Major memorable episodes only of course; the endemic stuff is endemic.
1. In a hotel room in Jordan in 2000. I was sick and alone and confined to bed. The hotel waiter brought some food to my room, then said he could give me a head massage. Then he groped me under my pyjama top. I still feel dirty and furious and I can still feel him doing it and I understand why my friend Julie never ever orders room service.
2. In Syria in 2001. It was the time of the Pope's first visit to Syria and there was a horde of media in some posh hotel. I had gone to use the media centre, then out the back gates for a walk. There was a small stall filled with bamboo poles near the back gates. I went in to have a look. There were two staff; a bearded man and a younger man sitting in a room making some mat or something. The back of the bamboo stall was round the corner from the gate and couldn't be seen from the road or from the hut. The bearded man suddenly grabbed my arm and held it. I don't know exactly what happened next except from the strength of his grip, I knew he wanted to attack me or rape me, and that I must have said something loudly enough for the boy to come out of his hut and tell the man to let me go. I thought afterwards about reporting him to the police but decided that he would probably be tortured or killed for having soiled the Syrian public image during the Pope's visit, and I let it go. I wish I hadn't.
I think that's enough for now else my mother will freak out even more than she will when she reads this. For the record, I am careful, because I often travel alone. I think I've been lucky. Which is ridiculous. I am not of the school of thought that all men are rapists, though nearly all rapists are men. Plenty of Indian men do not stare and are civil and courteous. I am tired though of the fact that women are supposed to accept this crap because they are women and that's what men do.
The other shamelessness is mine, because I am jammy. I have been trying to organise a holiday somewhere and getting nowhere, but when I interviewed an architect yesterday and mentioned this, he gave me the phone numbers of two beach shack resorts and they both have something available. Then, I wanted to visit the biggest public toilet complex in the world at Shirdi, near Pune, but first I had another appointment in Pune, so Sulabh offered me a lift to Pune from Mumbai - that's a three hour lift in an AC car - and I accepted. In the car, my escort mentioned that he used to work for the railways, and when I say I'm probably going to Goa, says, “Oh, I can get you a reservation. Please let me arrange that.” As train reservations to Goa around Christmas time are as rare as a non-staring Indian man, I accepted the offer. Shamelessly. Holiday sorted.