I saw a 7-year-old boy physically harassing a girl.
I was confused.
How did the boy know which parts of the woman’s body
to touch?
How? He’s only seven!

I wish I could be like the woman in the alley.
The one who takes off her slippers and threatens to beat 14 guys in the metro,
Until they run away.

I don’t know where it’s going to happen next time.
I can’t predict who’s going to harass me next time.
Everyone’s a potential harasser.
They’re the reason I can’t tell anyone.

My friend was taking a walk at a sports club.
A guy she’d known for a long time came over and said,
“Come over here.
I want to tell you something.”

“Why did you go there?”
Whenever someone asks me that,
I feel as if they only see me as a piece of meat that should be covered.
I get the urge to just cut parts off my body whenever I walk down the street.

I was around 7 or 8 years at the most.
All I knew then was that there are parts in our body that "strangers" should not see or touch.
What I came to know later is that most sexual assaulters are people who are very close to you.

I was walking down a busy street one day,
When I felt someone press against my back.
There was someone embracing me from behind.
I thought it was someone I knew.
gender violence, harassment, the street

My friend was walking down the street,
And she was very scared.
Three young men surrounded her,
And tried to molest her.
gender violence; harassment; the street

I don’t know why I’m going to tell this story,
But I’ve bottled up so much inside me.

There was a period when my parents were separated,
And my grandfather interfered a lot in our lives.
He was a very cruel man,
And so was my mother.

I heard a girl scream as I ran towards the crowd.
I started pulling people out of the way, trying to reach her, but I was shoved out of the circle of men surrounding her every single time.