GROPING: It’s not just a little touch
My first experience with groping
I was 11 years old, off to school in my freshly-starched-and-pressed grey school uniform.
It happened on a dusty Mumbai bus on my way to school. And it was horrible.
An ‘uncle’, all older men in India not related to you are ‘uncles’, smiled at me, then brazenly put his hand under my school uniform pinafore. His hand first went on my knee, then up to my thigh. I froze. I had no idea what was going on, I was a very naïve 11-year old. All I knew was it felt wrong, horrible, and made my stomach curl.
As kids do, particularly female Indian kids, I felt guilty that somehow I had brought it upon myself.
Hypervigilance
Once I was a little older, I learned to protect myself. I’d carry a large handbag across the front of my body so that men who tried to touch my breasts would feel the bag and not my flesh.
I developed what is called hyper-vigilance, I could literally feel when a man crept up behind me & I was always on guard. I expanded my Hindi vocabulary to shout the rudest swear-words I could find. Because at least in shouting them out loud I could expel some of the anger I felt at being groped. Because shouting was all I could do.
In that moment when I was groped on a bus, I went from being a child to being a young woman growing up in Mumbai. Because the cities of India are overrun with men who think groping girls and women on the streets is as natural as drinking a cup of tea.
Groping & how women deal with it
I’m now a lot older & live in a city that allows me a lot of freedom. Touching and being touched is now as much part of me as breathing. A gentle touch, caressing fingers, stroking hands — they can all be incredibly arousing and express all sorts of things from connection, to desire to reassurance. Today, touching is the most fundamental way for me to communicate love and desire. Luckily for me, my first experience of touching on that Mumbai bus did not form the basis of my experiences with men for the rest of my life.
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