TW: Sexual harassment
I still remember when I was travelling to Dehradun, Uttarakhand, with my elder sister Supriya and cousin Kristi in the passenger bus that travels from Agra, Uttar Pradesh, to Dehradun. We were planning to appear for the journalism and mass media exam for Doon University. In the bus, I encountered a dangerous and startling incident of my life that embarrassed me to the core as I didn’t expect anything of that sort to take place inside a travelling bus.
But I guess this was destined and to make us realise that we must be careful at every stage of life from harmful energies and forces that surround us. While everyone sat inside the bus and the lights were switched off, as it was nighttime and we still had a far way to go, everyone inside the bus went to sleep except me. I was talking on the phone with my mother, Meera ji. After talking to her, I realised that except me, there was someone else also who was awake and had been observing me when I told my mother on the phone: “Except me, everyone else inside the bus has gone off to sleep.”
The stranger man took advantage of the situation and started showing me porn and erotica from his seat in front of me. This really scared me, but I tried to be calm and patient. I ignored the man, but this only made him more confident as he was a shameless man with no morals. After some time, he started to exceed his limits by trying to inappropriately touch my thighs as the seats were closely connected with one another, and his and my seat were joined to each other.
So, this notorious person was trying to show porn and erotic video to me from his seat, and when I immediately ignored him and looked at the other side, he acted even more maliciously and started touching my thighs from his right hand. This really pissed me off and I tried to move backwards. By that time, my sister, Supriya Didi, woke up and asked me the reason of my despair.
I narrated to her how the man sitting in front of us was touching my thighs and made me watch porn and erotica movies on his mobile device. At first, my sister asked me to ignore him, but this made the hooligan and frivolous man cross all the limits, as he again did the same again.
He again touched my thighs with his right hand as he could easily reach me with that hand. I told my sister that he was harassing me again, to which my sister immediately reacted: “Bhaiya, zara haath sambhal kar rakhiyega, yahaan wahaan zara kam phudkayiye, warna sabko bata dungi ki mobile mein kya dekh rahe ho (Please be mindful of where your hands are reaching or else I will tell everyone what you were watching on your phone).” After saying this, she threw his foppish hands away from me.