The longest thirty minutes

Some nights stretch on forever. One such night where I got caught in the midnight hues.

The stairs at the Jangpura metro station, usually familiar and friendly under the sun, seemed unknown and eerie that night. It's 11 pm, and I'm on my way back to my stay. I exited the metro through the wrong gate, and now I am lost in a new town and the day had demanded so much of me that the night was left with little of me.

I need to get an Uber to go back to my PG. It usually takes me 15 minutes to get there. But the trickiest part is getting an auto at this time of night in this part of the city. It's secluded, isolated, lifeless, and sleepy (read it as creepy).

As I keep checking Uber and Rapido one by one, I conclude that this is going to take me longer than I thought. A waiting time of 45 minutes for an auto to find me—and that's only if I'm lucky enough to be found.

Delhi is known to be unsafe. I've been hearing this since the moment I booked my tickets for my month-long stay. But that can't be the reason to stop me from doing my internship, right? I came here for a judicial internship at the Supreme Court.

Rejections can be life lessons, they say. But not when your Uber guy ditches you at 11 pm, and you've already received three missed calls from your hostel warden, who is supposed to protect you from the wrath of the night with the sharpest edge of curfew. My clamoring brain keeps feeding me worst-case scenarios as I stand stranded in an unfamiliar place. The crappy network and bad signal made things worse for me.

I realize how much fear is internalized as a woman—to be in an unknown city at 11 pm. And when I say there's some fear, stop romanticizing it as a breezy alone time near the gate of a metro station in a sleepy town with a Lofi background score. Consider it more like hearing your heartbeat when the lyrics of the song playing in your earbuds are no longer audible, and you're stuck in a moment in life. There's no panic. Not yet. But a sense of shadow revolves around you. The kind of fear you’ve got when you’ve only one life left before the game is over.

As I fought with these fears, the men sitting in cars and on bikes at a distance added to the growing tension. The moment I stepped onto the road, the staring game began. Was my step too loud for you to give me your attention? I thought. I should've stepped out discreetly, damn it! 

Suspicion tinted my glasses by default, and as I watched every guy who walked towards me, my brain registered each as a possible threat. Don't get me wrong. Not the "this dude is scary, and I need to go back home" kind of fear. But what are the odds that I am doing something that is inviting unwanted attention? In my head, it's me. I must be doing something wrong. I must have, right?

To sympathizing men out there, sorry. Not enough people have made us feel safe for us to not feel this way. No matter how much we say we have protective people in life, I wonder when this fear will go away. The eerie silence I lived with in my ears before my auto reached me at 11:45—how can I explain that loud silence? That overwhelming sense of loneliness? Why was it so strong that the music in my ears faded behind the louder voices of my head? "Women are not safe at night," "You should've reached home earlier," and "Be careful at night"—these were louder than whatever playlist was playing. I wonder what song it was. Or was it even playing?

What does it feel like to be at peace? Why did I feel every stranger was out there to get me that night? Was it conditioning? Was it fear? Or was it caution? And, most importantly, was it necessary to keep me safe?

I do feel safe and peaceful, okay? Not every day feels this way. I have calmer days too. Days when men don't look scary when metro stations aren't creepy. But some days, as the day sets and the night pulls up its sheets, I wonder why the world wears a haunted robe of fear and scoops me in. Even though night is my favorite time of the day, why do I feel suffocated, like a hug that is unwanted or a stare that is not mine to receive? I do acknowledge the fact that the guy who walked past me in a hurry could be a dad rushing back home, a guy tired and pissed off after work, or somebody just like me, lost at a metro station in a new city, waiting for an Uber driver to say yes. 

But what has the world done to us women, that I can’t even trust your presence five feet away? What has scarred us so much that we look twice before we see, listen well before we answer, and live on high alert all the time?

Do we have an answer, ladies? When you stroll through a sleeping city, do you feel like you're wearing an invisible cape of alertness? Do you keep Google Maps open, even on routes you know by heart? Not just to ensure you're going the right way, but to prevent the auto driver from taking a detour? Is someone always monitoring your location because we can’t even trust where we are? Why must we be so vigilant? Why?

This is not my first time out late at night. Nor have I always had company to travel around. But sometimes, on some days, you deeply, wish that you didn't have to be so cautious to stay alive. So alert, to not get hurt.

The group of men and their stares across the street, I could hear their laughter and banter. I don't know what they were doing, but the stares were unwelcome. The attention wasn't sought. I don't even know why they got off their bikes and slowly paced toward my side of the road.

To men who sympathize or to those pleading "not all men": it's not about you. It's not about whether every man who walks toward us is a predator. It's not about you. It's not about whether you've made a woman feel unsafe. It's that most of us have felt the fear, most of us have had bad experiences at the hands of men we once trusted and never doubted. We weren't always this cautious. We weren't always this doubtful. Life has tamed us to be. Ours’ or others’  experiences have made us this way. 

And as I sit here on the floor of my room still shaken, and contemplate on a supposedly normal day, where ‘nothing wrong happened’ I wonder how many women today have felt this way. How many finally sighed with relief once they reached home? I know I did. When I got in the auto at 11:45, I sighed, and tears came uninvited because I knew I was safe. I don't know why I cried. Was it because I knew I was safe? Or because I felt like I escaped? Escaped from what exactly? Or was it the realization that this haunting fear is never-ending because  I opened my maps yet again? What if the auto driver misses the next turn?

Nightmares won't stop us from sleeping, right? The city woke up the next morning like nothing had happened. Everything felt like a bad dream. I'll keep seeing the city that sleeps. I might get scared again, but nothing—not even the longest 30 minutes of my life—will stop me from living.