A blackhole in a sky full of stars

I don't care, go on and tear me apart
I don't care if you do, ooh
'Cause in a sky, 'cause in a sky full of stars

I think I saw you 

~ Coldplay

With the upsurge of the #metoo movement, we see women coming out and speaking up of all sorts of harassment that they have had to face at the hands of well-known household names. After going through the daily news and reading about all the women who have so courageously come out and have spoken against their harassers you take a deep breath and slowly take in the magnanimity of the crisis we have at hand. You then go on social media accounts, where you are not confronted with the news but the same stories show up on your timelines by people you know, people you adore, people you love. You are shocked because you never would have thought the problem is so much closer to home than you thought. 

I want to share an incident of my own. I am in no way disregarding what others have gone through. I am not even sure if this will count as an event significant enough to be talked about after two years or if I am being too sensitive to it. But I wanted to talk about it and here it is. 

School farewell is a day I had been looking forward to for almost a year. Like all other important events of my life, I spent a considerable amount of time thinking and worrying about what saree I will wear or what blouse will I pair it up and how I will accessorize the whole outfit.  At the end of it, I wore a beautiful yellow colour saree belonging to my mom. My school had decreed that all girls should wear decent blouses that do not affect the image of the school as a whole. I assumed it to only referred to no show of cleavage or too much exposing the back either. My mom and I went from shop to shop in the GK-1 market look for THE blouse and we finally found it. It was a golden sleeveless blouse with a small diamond shape cut in the back. 

When the farewell day finally arrived, I was nervous. I was so conscious about how I looked, how I walked etc. The experience of wearing a saree and walking in heels was highly intimidating and overwhelming and to some extent uncomfortable. I felt like a mannequin on display with my movement being restricted. It certainly did not help that it was raining and my saree got mud stains on its hem as soon as I stepped out of the car to enter my school. But this was just the beginning of what my farewell was going to look like. 

Having reached a little before time, the students present were asked to wait in the reception before we could proceed to the main auditorium. One of my subject teachers looked at my blouse and told me that my blouse was still indecent according to their definition of decent. I started to feel scared. Will I be punished? While I was contemplating what might happen, the then Vice Principal and another of my subject teachers was called in who only had one thing to say to me and that was - “We did not expect this from you”. What exactly had I done? My feeling of intimidation turned into heart-wrenching fear. 

She called two three other teachers while figuring out the best way to cover my blouse up. I was suddenly surrounded by teachers who were all working on my saree. The same Vice Principal then undid my saree that was pinned to my blouse and tried different ways in which the pallu of the saree could be pinned in order to cover the back of my blouse as well as to cover my bosom. I felt humiliated. I was hurt. I was not even taken to some other room or the washroom before the teachers started working upon me. The reception was the only way through which one could enter the auditorium and my batch mates saw me in that state. Some of them even laughed at me. There was no question of consent because me being a student was supposed to accept it is my fault and that what the teacher did was right in the name of disciplinary action. In fact, my mother had even given me a shawl because it was a chilling winter evening in late January and I offered the teacher that I can wrap that around me instead of her having to do what she did, but she simply refused. 

Since being a teacher is seen as a symbol of authority, they assume it is in their power to go as far as completely humiliating the student to teach them a lesson or two in ethics and discipline. I broke down at that moment. I felt violated by a person who in our culture and tradition is supposed to be given the highest authority, sometimes even greater than that of God. To think it stopped there, it did not. I called up my mom at that moment and was almost about to tell her to come and pick me but I told myself that the show must go on. I tried to compose myself a little and went to the auditorium. The juniors had wonderfully decorated the place and put up a plethora of beautiful performances but my mind was just not there. 

Once I sat down, I started crying again and that is when the same teacher came to me and said something on the lines of, “Listen. You should accept it was your fault, so there is no point in crying. Enjoy the evening and don’t spoil the mood for others.” In a while, the Principal too made an appearance and came to me accompanied by the Vice-Principal. After another round of reminding me how the way I dressed was my fault and how I could not uphold the dignity of a student about to become a college student, I was given a tissue and asked to just calm down. I was just glad that my best friend arrived at that moment and sat down next to me. In fact, she was the one who brought some life back into me and pulled me towards the dance floor towards the end. But when I was dancing, the Vice Principal again pulled me aside and told me to dance ‘carefully’ in order to not reveal too much of my waist because as it was, boys shared the same dance floor as everyone else. That was the last straw, and every minute after that felt like an hour till I reached home, wrapped myself in a blanket and cried myself to sleep. 

Now I wanted to share my story because it has been eating me up for the past two years. Even when this happened, I know I cannot simply categorize it as a punitive disciplinary action. It was a violation of my personal space and the extreme bodily discomfort that I faced if nothing else. After coming to college and having a renaissance of my own while expanding definitions of terms like harassment, consent, intent vs impact, etc, I realized a more serious word can be employed. This incident should have been termed as harassment. There is still some amount of ambiguity in my mind if even more serious terms can be used for this or not. 

There are some very clear factors. Firstly the whole act was done without my consent and not even a little consideration was given to what type of mental trauma I underwent at that very moment. Secondly, in the intent versus impact dialogue, the intent of the person who is responsible for making the other person feel violated, does not matter but the impact it has on the person going through it does. The impact on me was profound, which I have mentioned above and also the fact that I have a feeling of immense discomfort while even thinking of wearing a saree again. Thirdly, just because it was a teacher in a senior position, that does not mean she is allowed to get away with any action under the neat banner of ‘disciplinary action’. This, in turn, says a lot about the power structure and power dynamics, of how "power" per se has no gender.