i wasn't expecting to come across such a foul, maleficent news piece when i logged on after sehri today.

the Guwahati molestation incident happened weeks ago, but i chanced upon the utterly disgusting, outrageous and inhumane video just now. a teenage girl molested, spat on, burned with cigarettes, sexually assaulted and her clothes apart ripped by a mob of dozens of men and pathetically grinning gawker-bys.

what instigated this incident has no justification to even be mentioned. the mere happenstance of such vile, atrocious, women-hating behavior speaks volumes of how females continued to be viewed by South Asian men.

the patriarchial mentality is mixed. either we are the weaker sex meant to be protected, or we are an overzealous hunk of meat, that deserves to be oggled or molested on roads and bus stands. both are derived from the same school of thought: most South Asian men don't believe women have any respectable place outside the home. We're fair play outside our char-diwaari. We're vulnerable, unprotected, and always out of sync when we're walking in public.

This same twisted thinking, makes it completely normal for women to be eveteased, oggled, and followed, heaven forbid they ever trod too far from home, unaccompanied by a male.

Welcome to the land where young women can not go out alone.

We are bereft of the right of freedom, ease and safety. We are plagued by the constant fear of being eve-teased or assaulted. And this goes for every urban, working woman like myself, who happens to step out the comfort of an exclusive restaurant or posh housing society.

We women find our ways to cope, our methods to deflect attention, and the art of staring straight ahead. Yet the constant hounding takes a toll.

Easier still, is it to shake off a woman who dares to be different. All you have to do is start whispering about her supposed indecencies, and bam, you've got her. God forbid she not wear a dupatta or hijab, which makes her fair game for any kind of malicious fodder.

And if you're fool enough to think this doesn't happen amongst the elite and the educated, you must ofcourse, be a man. Never have I witnessed such a disgraceful breakdown of the character of women than during my time so far, as part of the civil services.

Incidents such as Guwahati remind me again of the utter frustration it is of being a South Asia women. Of how this is not an isolated incident or a new one. And of how no amount of technological, political, social steps forward will improve our standing as women who want to go "outside" their homes. It reminds me just how hard it is to be a woman.