A journey through hell

It was 8 o’clock at night. It had been an hour I was waiting for the bus. Thought of going home early, but as all the buses were overloaded with people, I could not get in easily. Finally I got in the bus and managed to get a seat. I saw a girl entering in the bus somehow but could not manage a seat. I just looked around and asked her to go and get a seat on back but she hardly could pass that small route to the seat and no man left a way to that seat. Everyone was busy to block her way and she got stuck in that place. So, this is the current situation of bus transport in our country, Bangladesh.

As we don’t have an available train facilities inside the city, most of us have to depend on the bus, especially the middle and lower class people who can’t afford a car of their own. We do have auto and rickshaw as other means of transport, but auto’s are highly expensive and rickshaws are not allowed in the entire route. So, bus is the ultimate solution for transport in the city.

As the population is very high and most of them belong to the lower and middle class, we have to depend on bus. There are hardly few seats in the bus for woman separately, where half of the country’s population is women. The government bus has only 6 to 9 seats which are not enough for woman. So, the woman has to get in the bus and have to stand with every other guy. Standing along with the guys would have never been a problem if there would have been mutual respect for each other’s gender. But what a woman gets while riding in a bus is indirect physical harassment.

You may question me that, “we have heard about physical harassment. But what is that indirect harassment?” To make it more specific, I have named this kind of harassment as ‘indirect harassment.’ Harassment need not to be physical only, with the gesture also a woman can be harassed.

For an example, when a woman gets into a crowded bus, the thing she has to face is getting a seat which guys hardly will sacrifice for a woman. Even the 6 /9 seats reserved for women, they hardly leave that for a woman. Moreover, if the woman does not get the seat, the male around her try to harass her by touching the untouchable parts of her body. From the back and forth they try to harass her in such a way that she would never complain. If a woman somehow complains, there are hardly found anyone who will stand by her.

Moreover, there are other kinds of harassment which is also harassment but by not touching the body part, but by gesture. We can also get a clear picture of man harassing a woman by his eyes and expressions. Some guys try to look at girls in such a way that that embarrass the girl. Similarly, some guy’s smiles at the girl and with different gesture harass the girl in such a way it makes the girl uncomfortable. Even, sometimes guys follow the girl till home and keep bothering continuously. These are nothing but a little example of the incident happens with the girls on everyday bus ride.

Not only indirect harassment, even we have set examples of direct physical harassment in the bus journey. So, a journey by bus is nothing but a journey through hell for a woman which is happening each and every day. There is no protest and no say about it. Now we the women have learnt how to survive in this as we choose to be silent mostly. But do those culprits deserve our silence? Should we let it happen? We are modern women of the century, if we don’t take a step forward, the country will never change and these kinds of harassment will always continue to happen. So, why not take a step forward make a change to the country.

By Debesree