Faith stronger than Power

Psy's music was wafting through the speakers in my car.  My newly installed sub woofer was thundering and I was enjoying my quiet drive in the city till i laid my eyes on the auto rickshaw in front of me.

A typical sharing auto 

It was a big auto rickshaw with the main seat designed for four comfortably. for five it may be a tight squeeze but this one had only three passengers, two male and one female.  the male ones were young and heavy built while the woman was good looking but frail.  The woman was seated on the right with one gent in the middle and one to the left of the seat.  The one on the left spread his arm around the guy in the middle in such a way that he can touch the woman on the right in an accidental/incidental manner by extending his hand.   Noticing this, the woman tried to shrink into the corner  to avoid his touch.  However, the guy on the left would just not relent and he kept on searching with his hand to grope the woman!!  As it was a particularly long and narrow road, the auto rickshaw remained in front of me and i was witness to this whole spectacle for a considerable time.

My first feeling was that I should ask the auto to pull over and give the guy a hard verbal thrashing.  On second thoughts i felt - 'what if they thrash me coz they were two heavy built young guys while i was an average middle aged man'. So i let the auto pass. but that made me feel miserable. i said to myself  - if educated people like me turn a blind eye to such atrocities, what is the future for women's security in india? I was sure that i would not be able to sleep peacefully if i let the incident pass.

So, I overtook the auto and boldly stopped the auto. Seeing me step out from a car to stop the auto, the driver was surprised but stopped.  I chided that guy for trying to molest the young woman. At first he didn't understand what I was saying coz he would have never expected to be checked in this manner.  When I repeated myself he understood and quickly mumbled an incoherent apology and removed his hand.  Either shocked by my outlandish approach or genuinely shamed by his own behaviour,  the  guy listened to me quietly and asked the driver to move on.  Surprisingly, his other well built friend did not utter a single word!! I followed the car from a discrete distance and I was happy to see that his hand was no longer in touching distance of the young woman.  My faith in doing the right thing i.e stopping a molester got the better of their perceived combined physical power. This re-affirmed my belief that our belief and faith in the right thing is many times more powerful than physical power!!!   

 

As responsible Men, we need to try to stop the atrocities at least within our local sphere of influence.  There is no need for every Man to work on a grand National or Global scale.  If every Man tries to stop these at his local level i.e extended family, community, street - then he would have done his job, for If Man on every street does that, then all the streets in this country would be covered!!!

So, lets start with small steps, let everyone pledge that they will work towards eradicating this menace in their immediate vicinity.  Stop these guys molesting/eve teasing/abusing women in your local busstops/buses/autos/office etc. If we can do that, we can kick this menace in no time!!!!That will surely pave the way for a Golden India.

What Big B said on this issue:-

 “Despite great awareness ideals that have taken space and demonstration among the society, the atrocities continue with abandon,” 
 “Great introspection needs to be done to fathom the reason and the continuous disregard for all that should be looked upon as an evil.”
“I will not agree with the reasoning that such incidents happen all over the world or whether the statistics favour another region or not. I am interested in why it is happening at all,” 

Wish there were more heroes like him in Bollywood