Oh, woman.

Rapes, murders, assault, molestations are pretty much common in India. Wait, I can even take the liberty of saying they are pretty much the norm. Now, I don't want to make my proud and democratic country sound like a Taliban-like state, but most women who have stepped out of their houses (alone or with family members, in metro cities as well as small towns, in salwar-kameez or in short skirts) will agree with me: Eve-teasing and molestations are pretty much the norm. I was shocked to read in the newspaper today that a class XIth-student had been publicly molested and stripped by 20 men in Guwahati, the capital of Assam. She was humiliated and insulted, probably begging for mercy, beseeching the heartless men to stop while people around looked on. No one bothered to call the police or stop and protect the modesty of a girl. And why would they? It wasn't their mother or sister or daughter who was being stripped on the street: The girl was one of the thousands of faces that is routinely insulted everyday, in every city across India.

Another incident: The panchayat in Baghpat, UP, has issued a diktat that no woman under the age of 40 years will go to the market place in the village unescorted, that they need to cover their heads before leaving the house. Also, women have been banned from using cellphones. Why? Because more and more cases of eve-teasing and complaints against women were brought forth. So instead of punishing the offenders (which is nigh impossible), you do the next best thing: Ban women from venturing out in public. Seems like we are heading back in to the Dark Ages. What was worse was seeing comments by some "intelligent folks" on the article on a news website: They actually lauded the ban, their rationale being that since no other method had proved successful to stop molesters and lechers, it was only practical to ask women to protect themselves and stay indoors. Again, such progressive thought amazes me. The icing on the cake was when I read an article on The Guardian, which ranked India among the five worst places in the world for women (the others being Afghanistan, Pakistan, Democratic Republic of Congo and Somalia). Spot the difference between India and the other nations. We are proud of being a democracy, of holding a shining beacon to the rest of the world, we are the first to holler inequality, racism and discrimination when it happens anywhere else. But when the light is turned inward, our countrymen are some of the biggest hypocrites in the world.