A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night

The night I think, to most people, is the scariest part of the day. Not just because it’s dark and you can’t really see much of anything, but because whatever you saw in the daytime now looks very unfamiliar.

Unfamiliarity scares us pre-programmed creatures who thrive on consistency. Take a road, for example. Any road. The road to your house? There’s a big chance that someone who visits it for the first time during the day will say that it looks different in the night, right?

Well, I’m on a bus now. And everything looks unfamiliar. Everyone seems to be staring at me oddly. No, I haven’t dressed funny. It’s not that people haven’t seen me on the bus. Nor am I new to public transport.

It’s just that I’m the only woman in the entire bus, and it is 10.27 on a Saturday night. I saw a couple a little while ago, seated with the man securing the woman under his arm, having wedged her between the window and himself, so onlookers know who is whose.

But they got down a few halts ago, and now I remain: the only woman in the entire bus – no actually, in the ‘everywhere’. I don’t see a woman on the road, in other buses, nor at bus halts – nowhere in the near vicinity to be precise.

You should see me now. I look like my cat caught defecating in the kitchen. I’m cautious. I’m looking around, over my shoulder, sideways at the guy sitting next to me, behind me, to the people on the seats opposite mine.
I’m watching and observing everyone. Is someone looking at me for more than two minutes? Where are his hands? Are they in a visible place? Or in his pants doing the sneaky?

I re-adjust my bolero so that I can deflect any unwanted glares that would have otherwise been washed over me. The man next to me is pretending to look out the window, but from the corner of my eye, I can see him looking at my bosom.

When I look at him, he either quickly looks away or looks straight at me, and I want to ask him:

“Do you want this seat so you can look out the window to your heart’s content without your gaze scanning my body? Why are you looking at me like that? Have you not seen women before? Or is it that seeing me at this time of the night, irks you?”

It is agonisingly uncomfortable. And annoying. And I want to land a hefty wallop on his face.
Then suddenly, I’m scared. Will this guy follow me home?

What if he gets down at the same halt as I do?
I don’t have a husband (boyfriend/ brother /man friend) to protect me now like that other woman did.
Did I bring my pepper spray?
Will it work?
Can I tackle him?
What’s this bus number?

I must text it to a friend/ mother/guardian informing them that I am on this particular bus so that, if something happens to me, they have evidence to track me down?
Wait, what?!
Evidence?
Nothing is going to happen to me…

Some movie scenes flash across my mind, scenes from human trafficking movies and clips of gang rape and now suddenly I’m scared… What if? What if something happens to me, tonight??

But then this guy gets down at his halt, and that’s it. My heart slowly goes back to its average pace, and the inner voice in my head heaves a silent
“Phew. That was close. You could have been headlines.”
Thus ends the thought process of a woman on a bus, at 1030 pm.
I remember something that a friend once told me.
He was telling me a random story of how he was walking at one in the morning in some godforsaken jungle/village area because he couldn’t stand the funeral he had been at.

Then he said: “I’m a man. I’m not afraid to walk on the road in the night. 

So anyway listen…..” and continued with his story, to which I did not pay any attention afterwards because, of course, he doesn’t have anything to worry about.

The worst that could happen to him that night was:

a) Getting run over by that mean looking goat with horns who had eyed him on the road and

b) Getting mugged and having his wallet and mobile stolen for drug money; whereas, had it been me on the way (and I had just had a mental image of me walking in one of those village lanes with the paddy field laid out on one side and a few far-apart houses on the other hand), I’d be intensely scared about being raped!

I’m not even kidding. Women, take my word for it, because:

a) I’m a woman and

b) I’ve grown up in Sri Lanka—
Thus we are hard-wired to think that we will get raped or harassed or attacked or abused or bullied or shouted filth at, or poked and prodded or kidnapped every time we step outside our house.

I doubt that any man will ever know what it feels like to be a woman, let alone a woman walking on the road at night, grilled internally with the insecurities that flood our minds. The fear of being hurt and the consequences of being hurt, the shame, and most of all, the feeling that the entire world is waiting to hurt us 

And here I am wondering to myself, was that all really necessary?
That trauma and agony and mental churning of fearful thoughts of getting raped, and all those flashbacks of nasty movies and headlines of women in buses getting raped in India?

Our parents say yes, that is necessary.

“We have brought up our girls well. They don’t go out in the night. They don’t wear short skirts. They don’t go anywhere alone. They are married by the time they are 25, and they have a husband who can look after them. And so they are okay. No harm will come to them…”

slow clap

Well done, parents and adults and aunties and uncles of our society! Lovely work. Good job. You must be so so proud! Quick question. What have you taught your boys, though?

Have you taught your boys not to whistle at girls when they walk by?

Have you taught them not to pinch and poke women in the bus?
And not to throw insults at us about how hard they want to have sexual intercourse with us tonight, or how many friends of theirs want to have sex, or how our clothes make them feel like they want to do certain things to us?

Have you taught your boys how to treat a woman and behave around a woman?

How to talk to a woman, compliment a woman’s beauty the right way, and to get her consent for sex – or for anything else for that matter?
Have you taught your boys that a girl in a short skirt is not asking to get raped, and that a girl walking at 10 in the night is not issuing them an invitation for anything?

Have you taught your boys the difference between a yes and no?

Have you taught your nephews that they do not ever own a woman? Have you ever explained to your boys that a woman’s choice of doing whatever she wants with her body is her choice and that it is not an invitation to dominate her them?

No, seriously.

Have you ever sat down with your son, grandson, or nephew and told them, the same way you do to your girls before they step out of the house, how to behave to others? To your girls, you say:

“Duwa (daughter), don’t dress like that and make sure to return home  before 6.”
Do you say:
“Putha (son), if you see a girl on the bus, don’t make remarks about her breasts.
How would you like if someone made degrading remarks about your private body parts?”
Have you taught them about respect and trust?
And not that ‘boys will be boys’ crap.

Let’s reflect on that a little more, and we might see an area that we as a nation of catcallers, misogynists, rapists and paedophiles can improve ourselves as human beings, collectively as the Sinhala body (Sinhala Buddhist) folk that many of us claim to be…

‘To be scared and shy’ is a frequent saying among Sri Lankan households with daughters.
This should actually be said to boys as:
“You should be ashamed to catcall girls on the road.”
“You should be scared to abuse women on the road because you’d end up in jail.”