The shameful act !

It evaded off my memory the very next day. Though the incident was one off I had ever seen in my life, I chose to ignore it just like several other people who had hogged the place then. Worst thing, the victim chose to ignore it too. However, the recent incident in Delhi which happened in posh crowded South Delhi, brought me back the memories. Here it is how it happened.
November 15th ,2012 : My flight 6E- 356 landed at Biju Patnaik Airport 15 minutes ahead of schedule. Having not checked-in any luggage, I made my way to the airport shortly. Somehow the language and people of Orissa do not impress me much. But the fact is I am critical of any damn thing in universe. The co-passengers with whom I shared my seat in the flight made the already bad impression worse. The idiots was insane enough to spit on the closed window, keep their cellphones on during the course of flight and used it to take pics of air-hostesses and people around. I couldn’t say anything other than giving a smirk and murmuring abuses at them. I thanked my stars when the flight landed ahead of its schedule. Though I had a waiting time of 4 hours before my train would arrive to continue my further journey, I frisked my way out of the airport, grabbed a quick dinner and found my way into the Platform No. 1 of Buvaneshwar railway station. I knew from my past experiences that the Platform 1 bore the brunt of maximum crowd footfall. Though crowded, It took a matter of few minutes before I found a place to sit and relax for the next 3 hours.
A girl in early 20s made her way towards me as soon as I plugged in my iPod’s earphones. I had already noticed her talking on phone for quite sometime while she looked for a place to sit. She politely asked me to make some room for her which I abided to. I kept looking around trying to pass my time. The music in my ipod, an outlook magazine and a few calls to friends and relative did little to engage me. With passing time, the platform got busier as more and more crowd poured in. The girl sitting besides me was soon joined by a bunch of guys. And it was then I found that she was pre-final or final year engineering college student, going to her native place for the festival of Chaath. I had similar reasons for my travel.
The prolonged wait tested my patience and I got up to hog around the station rather than sitting as a stationary object. I requested the bunch of guys accompanying the girl to look at my luggage and told them that I would be around. As I stood up, 3 guys, in early or mid 20s hovered around the platform 1. They used filthy language as they communicated to each other. Though it was a public place, using abusive language while addressing your friends or buddies is totally acceptable in India. The bunch of guys were highly intoxicated and one of them limped as he walked. The weird movement of his legs were certainly not a physical disability but an aftermath of intake of huge quantity of alcohol. The bunch of boys stopped by where I was sitting previously. The guy who limped pointed his finger at the girl and started hurling abuses. He also uttered “I wanna **** her” in blunt hindi. I knew what those words meant and so did a number of people sitting/squatting or standing closeby. But they all chose silence with a common consensus and carried on their state of affairs. I was shocked hearing the words and stood still for a few seconds. I somehow felt offended and disturbed. No I wasn’t related to the girl, neither I have had ever see her and nor I was by any sorts attracted towards her. My issue was with the people who chose to complete ignore the incident. A few khaki clad policemen with Machine guns were sitting closeby. I wasn’t sure if they heard what the lunatics just spoke, but they would have certainly seen them goofing around in the affect if alcohol. It was all so explicit and yet we all chose to keep quite. Worse thing, 4 boys who sat with the girl too downplayed the incident. It happened all very sudden. As the guys came back for another round of verbal abuses, I pulled up my sleeves and went close to them. I had made up my mind of hurling a blow or two if they come any closer to the girl, touch her or say any other abuses.
As they came closer, and went away just staring at the girl, my eyes followed them. Though, nothing untoward happened further and certainly I didn’t do my bit to avoid what happened. The guys, hurled abuses, strolled easily all around the platform and left the station unharmed. They would have certainly claimed victory with their hangover saying “See, nothing happened”. And in all probability they would repeat it again. Noone, neither I did anything to make them realize of their untoward behavior and the sheer disrespect they showed to a woman. Perhaps noboby can teach them that, but had the girl slapped them across their faces or I or any person raised his/her voice showing their dissent , a lesson would have been learnt. But as a nation we are very submissive, selfish and self-centric. We aren’t moved until someone we know falls victim to anything and cry around saying no one helped. And the worse part is we don’t know how to defend ourself, save our integrity or in that matter stick to our stand. We have been routed by so many Mulim rules and Britishers in the past , and its some fanatics, lunatics who are trampling us now. The sheer anger, dissent is very volatile, dies as soon as it emerges up.
I couldn’t sleep the night of this incident, neither could I when my sister asked me what did I do when I saw this. I did not have any answer to her. The gang rape in Delhi and the brutality of the incident, again asked me the same question. Apart from getting goose-bumps, getting emotional about it, I really do not have any answers to it. And neither the people of this country have any answers to it. And the question persists, What are we doing and when will we start talking and raising our voice ?