A midnight knock on a circuit house had scared Hemashri. She was about to raise an alarm to punish the drunkard. But other incidents crowded her mind. She tells us in the weekly column how a young lady officer had to deal with lecherous and uncouth men. A Different Truths exclusive.
A midnight knock perhaps jolted me from a deep sleep to a half-awakened state. I increasingly became aware of the sound. I was afraid of the knocking sound in the dead of the night.
I assumed it to be from the visitor’s room, next to mine, where the caretakers of the Circuit House slept. I ignored it and tried to doze off. But the sound persisted. I heard a slurry male voice repeatedly say, “Open the door.” It made me aware that the sound was very near. I jumped up on my bed, in fright, to ascertain the source of the inebriated voice.
In the reflected light of the corridor, I noticed that someone was pushing open one side of the window of my room. The tattered curtains of the windows were pinned up with safety pins, and I could see his hands shoved in through the open window, lifting and tugging the billowing curtains. I could not make out what was happening. Paralysed by fear, I initially froze. But I gathered courage and jumped out of my bed. Seeing me, the man again asked me to open the door. It was a weird scene.
He was a bearded, thin man. The door in my room had glass panels, and I saw the man knocking again. He was clad just in a towel. I asked the half-naked man, “Who are you? I will alert the people.” I rushed to press the call bell, but suddenly, recent events flashed through my mind, and I refrained from raising an alarm.
I was assigned the duty of a protocol officer to a central observer during an election, a senior IAS from Karnataka. This gentleman was keen to visit the interior areas and was enthusiastic about learning about Assam and its culture. One day, as we were passing through an interior village, the vehicle suddenly stopped. The vehicle’s engine could not be started. The driver said that the fuel was exhausted. That was about twenty years back, when we only had the PCOs. I walked about five kilometres in the scorching sun with the driver to make a call from a PCO and inform my senior, who was responsible for the vehicle. I requested that he send another car, as the nearest petrol pump was quite far away. I was the only lady protocol officer, and the other officers assigned to the duty were below my rank. On our return, the central observer told me, “Connect me to your deputy commissioner; I will blast him.” I was reluctant to set up the call between the two senior officials. Instead, I slipped out to call the deputy commissioner and narrated the incident to him. I requested that he relieve me of that assignment.
After about 10 minutes, someone told me that the deputy commissioner had sent the vehicle and asked me to report to him. The moment I entered the room of the Deputy Commissioner, he yelled at the peak of his voice, “You bloody idiot, you cannot say no to me. You bloody idiot, how dare you say no…” I was hardly prepared to take this insult in the presence of a roomful of people. Angry, annoyed, and frustrated, I banged on the door loudly and left his chamber without allowing him to complete his sermon. That night, I cried my heart out and slept without dinner.
The next day, I received an order relieving me from the duty of protocol officer. I was made a Zonal Magistrate in place of a senior lady officer, who was pregnant. I was asked to report to another senior officer, as I was a novice, a probationer for the assignment. The highly sensitive assignment to complete the election process smoothly followed a boycott of the election by the then-active terrorist group.
On polling day, we proceeded to our respective constituencies at 4 am with a police escort. A senior officer asked me to board his vehicle, and I obeyed him. After a few initial instructions, he asked me, “I heard that the central observer was drunk and he tried to misbehave with you. What did he try to do exactly?” I felt infuriated at such a gross distortion of the unfortunate incident. I tried to be polite, though I felt a strong impulse to stop the vehicle right there and get off. I spoke very little after that, and most of my replies were in monologues.
Again, upon my return after the election process, the senior officer instructed me to board his vehicle in view of the deteriorating law-and-order situation. The two escort vehicles were arranged to follow and precede our vehicle. Reluctantly, I obeyed again. With a devilish smile, he told me, “You know my colleagues were saying that I should stay back and halt the night here. They said when I have a young lady magistrate as a companion, I should actually stay back here.” He laughed at his joke. This time, I felt like giving him a tight slap, but I did not. I swallowed my insult and anger. I just kept mum, letting the senior officer realise I was not at all amused by his stupid jokes. I only felt sad because, until that day, I had treated him as a brotherly senior. That day, I realised he was actually a monkey inside him. I was also thinking about how people distorted incidents to create their own baseless and insinuating stories.
All these things kept rolling back like a movie in my mind as I was about to press the calling bell. The drunkard had disappeared after my scolding. I recovered from the frightful trance. When I checked the watch, it was 2.30 am. I had no idea how long I was awake, in the middle of the night, lost in my world. That day, what perhaps inhibited me from raising an alarm was a strong intuition. I felt that if I alerted people at such odd hours about the disturbing drunkard, in the morning, these people would spread nasty stories that I was about to be – or had been – raped or molested or whatever. It will be me at the receiving end, explaining to people what actually happened. I decided to wait until the morning.
That day, the sunrise took an eternity, as I could not go back to sleep. I also felt sad for my mother. Very often, she would call me in the evening to check the doors and windows before going to sleep. I had rebuked her, saying I am a grown-up. A mother’s worries turned out to be real. Hopelessly, that day I realised the helplessness of a young woman. That was the most awkward moment of my life, as I could not shoo away the idiot, which was the most natural thing to do!
In the morning, I went to my next-door neighbour, narrated the incident, and asked her what I should do. She said that a similar incident took place with one of her batchmates, a lady officer. She had reported it to the DC. The DC took stern action – he issued an instruction that the abuser, an officer, would not be allowed to play in a cricket match for the DC office team on 15th August and 26th January. I realised that it would be the cruellest of jokes. So I decided I would handle it like a tribal chieftain. I narrated the incident to the caretakers and asked them to find out who this guest was: a lean, bearded man. Furthermore, I kindly called my batchmate to come to the Circuit House. We found the man, but he was reluctant to come over to the visitors’ hall, where we had the telephone and the seating arrangement. He finally had to come. I asked him in the presence of all, “Last night you came to my room at odd hours and knocked at my door, requesting to open it. Please let me know what urgency you had. I assume you must have something very
urgent on your mind.” He refused to admit it was him. I asked him. “Do you have a twin brother lost in a mela during childhood?” With a few choice gales, I closed the chapter there. After office hours that day, I bought a long bamboo stick and a powerful torch for self-defence—poor me!
Nothing untoward ever happened after that incident. However, the tribal sardarni developed a mild sleep disorder. Even a somewhat delicate sound would awaken me, and I would get up to inspect the source. One day, I heard a strange sound. I got up with the torch and the stick and followed the sound. Finally, I located it. In the blowing wind, the leaves of a coconut tree were grating against the window’s glass panel, creating a strange hissing sound. It was eerie.
Today, women are in every service. What do these so-called empowered women actually experience? Are they given secure accommodation to live with dignity? Have we sensitised our men to how they should behave with their female colleagues? Who knows how many skeletons are buried underneath the carpet?
Democracy does not guarantee civility or safety. We shall have to work on it – perhaps for a long time!
©Hemashri Hazarika
Photos from the Internet
#Democracy #MidnightKnock #CircuitHouse #Rape #Molestation #DeputyCommissioner #GovernanceGallimaufry #DifferentTruths
Hemashri Hazarika is an Officer of the Assam Civil Service since 1997. Her research on Assam Civil Service brought reforms in 2015. A first-class Postgraduate in Economics from Gauhati University, she was awarded JRF/NET by UGC in 1997. Her experience as a bureaucrat has sensitised her to human sufferings. A solutionist by passion, she takes an active interest in issues related to Governance, Development, Women, Children, etc. Reading, Writing, Speaking and Painting are her hobbies.
By
By
By
Monkey’s tantrums were met with stern scolding in front of colleagues, which was satisfying, yet it highlights the courage required to be an officer, especially a female officer. Both the observer and the senior police officer represent different sides of the same coin. Their grooming was questionable. Education or a higher rank alone does not define a person’s character; character remains the most valuable trait. The attitude of some characterless male officers is highly condemnable and calls for strict punishment to set an example. Bravo, becoming a tribal chieftain was the correct solution rather than being a timid complainer.