•Trishita Kalsa
Today I have been through a loathsome and a dreadful experience. I went to the ATM of my university campus to withdraw money. There was a problem occurring in the machine. As it was the weather of unpleasant degree of moisture, I felt like a boiled potato. I was standing and enjoying the AC effect and was trying hard to re-insert the card to come up with a solution. Meanwhile a physically handicapped middle aged man entered partially and was asking if I were the student of this campus or not. Faking a smile and I did say yes. I’d also witnessed this person before in the campus n number of times behaving weirdly with the students asking for phone. He was asking if he could come in and rest for a min as he was having an intense pain in his legs. Anyone would pity and empathize him by the way he portrayed himself. So did I. Unaware of his intentions I allowed him to come in .He started blabbering and started stating that he is from IIT kharagpur and he is a professor of this college and etc. I was just quietly listening to him without answering him back. It was all of a sudden, he started touching me in an inappropriate manner. I cringed in terror back then and now I’m sitting here and regretting for not being able to protest. I lack enough vocabs to explain my heart out the way I was going through back at the very particular time. I went numb and blank. He was touching me repeatedly and mentioning Don’t be scared..I will not be doing anything. He started describing that he is not lunatic and he isn’t a criminal. I had no clue what was he talking about and what was it that he was trying to convey. I had this fear of getting exposed to chloroform that he might douse his handkerchief in and drop me unconscious. Protesting him could do that risk. My motive was to escape from the enclosed ATM room by any means.
Hence I collected my money and as I was about to exit,he came before me and started again’Why are you scared? You are not supposed to be scared. Do I look like a harmful person and he was back to touching me again. I managed to escape and ran hard like never before. I would be better referred as PT Usha then.Shivering severely, I was in a state of shock and fear.I came running to my friend in the common room and narrated him the entire story. I had no clue what happened next but to my knowledge I did not know very much in detail.He went out and noticed that the person was leaving in a hurry taking a lift on an other person’s bike. He would have left if my friend was late by 3 more secs.My friend yelled,stopped the bike,brought the person back to the campus and started confronting him. Before my friend could say anything he started saying ‘ I will not be repeating this ever. Look! He just confessed and that he did something that was not appropriate. He knew what he did and was out of justifications. He also started mentioning that ‘ I’m having a severe pain in my legs.Pls do let me go. The same old line. Was that a common dialogue that he delivers to gain sympathy in return?My friend was fuming in anger and rage.Several people and the security gathered round him. He was yelling at the top of his lungs and I was watching all standing at a distance.I can barely explain the intense feeling of fear that i was going through.I was stammering and had a minor panic attack too.My friend grabbed his elbows and dragged him to the campus office and signed a letter in stating that he will not be allowed to ente the campus ever after. If he is seen he would be given in police. My friend warned him stating ‘I’m just leaving you because you are handicapped.You got saved only because of your PWD quota. If you weren’t handicapped we all would have made you handicapped by thrashing you black and blue.
A human Demon’
This was my first experience to get through an initial and a partial form of harrasment. Now I could relate( though incompletely) what happens to a women when she gets to go through incidents like these or any other sexual harassments. I am extremely regretting for not shouting back and giving him number of tight hand slaps but it’s very true ‘Your presence of mind doesn’t work. You could only visualize darkness and not a ray of Light.You become numb and blank. You fall to a prey of these things in no time and Alas, you become a victim .