Let me take you somewhere today, dear Britain. Somewhere far from your green hills, grassy moors and grey skies. To a balmy summer evening in 2014. We are in Gurugram – India’s ‘millennium city’. The husband and I have just walked out of the building that happens to house both our workplaces. A simple coincidence that allows our lives to be perfectly in sync on most days, giving us the time to do simple, everyday things together. Like sharing our day over dinner. Like just then, sharing a comfortable silence while walking together to the parking lot.
Workdays in India are long. It’s just past 9 pm and the long hours hang heavy like the work backpack that clings off my drooping shoulders. It’s just like any other day. We walk past the little ramshackle food stalls and cigarette shops. There are people milling about. Officegoers like us. Shopkeepers. People on foot. People on bicycles. People in autorickshaws. The night is murky. Tinged with a mixture of the characteristic Gurgaon smog, dust, wispy cigarette smoke and steam from hot cauldrons of over-boiled, sugary chai – India’s version of ‘builder’s tea’. In the distance, you can see lights from high-rises blurring the horizon. These are Indian subsidiaries of large multi-national corporations that had set up shop in the country lending the city its new name. Hard to imagine that a couple of decades ago, this same space was large swathes of dusty farmland and sleepy villages. Private real estate developers came in first, fast followed by industry. Luxury apartments and tech hubs mushroomed everywhere. Landowning farmers, previously dependent on a good harvest for their livelihoods, sold their lands and became super wealthy overnight. The rapid development had caused a curious commingling of people who usually lived in silos, away from each other. For the most part though, it worked. Peacefully.
We walk on, only a few metres away from the turn into the parking lot when in the distance, I spot a cloud of dust followed by the sound of an approaching vehicle. A few seconds later, the car is in sight. A white SUV. It is closing in on us quicker than I like for a road that narrow, but nothing is out of the ordinary. The husband and I move closer to the edge of the road. The car mirrors our movements. I can hear the engine now. It sounds angry. And just like that, everything feels out of sync. It’s as if the universe has kicked into the wrong gear. My mind is sputtering. It spews a series of eventualities. Will it crash into us? Is this a friend playing a joke? Can we run back? Meanwhile, the car continues hurtling straight at us. We were past all the eateries now. All we had on either side of the road was a concrete wall.
“They’re going to crash into us,” I think, as the vehicle skids to a halt. I look down at the car’s massive bumper, barely an inch away from my knee. I look up. My head moves slow. Impossibly slow as my gaze lands inside the car. It’s dark but I can see four men inside the vehicle. Two in the back, two in the front. The three men other than the driver appear as nothing but sinister dark silhouettes to me. The driver pokes his head out. His arm rests on the window frame. The yellow of the streetlights reveals a big, bearded face. It leers at me. His T-shirt is rolled up and my face is close to his bicep. The dirty fabric strains against a tumescent arm. Veins run in turgid, engorged rivers across the length of it. His skin is leathery and slick, as if coated in oil. I am transfixed. Trying to process what is happening. Is this meant to happen? Is this all a mistake? And then, I hear the man speak.
Daaru peeke chal rahi hai kya? (Are you walking drunk?)
His voice, that tone. It’s a whiplash. My head jerks back. There is no confusion. No doubt at all that it is happening. And it is directed at me. He addresses me as if he knows me. A dark familiarity underlying the absolute contempt in his voice. The language is casual, condescending. Usually reserved for when speaking to someone very young. In this instance, it is meant to be deeply disrespectful.
My husband pushes me behind him, but I see the men and I know there is nothing either of us can do. I take a quick look around the street and see some people looking our way. No one comes to our aid. I make a quick decision. I spin around, my backpack follows a second later, awkwardly slamming against my side and back. And I do what I do very well. I run. Fast. Back towards my office. My heavy office backpack sways from side to side as I run, its contents shuffling as frantically as my own gait. I cannot outrun the car. But I can get myself closer to the nearest safe space – my office.
The blood roars in my ears. I can hear my husband calling out to me.
Purna!
Purnaa!
But I don’t stop. My feet pound the road ungracefully, my jeans not allowing me to fully extend my stride. Each step cut short by the straining denim.
Watching me run, the four men laugh raucously. I can hear them. I can see them in my peripheral vision. But I do not turn my head.
One of them yells – Madarchod! (Motherfucker!) It’s like a slap across my face.
I try not to think about what will happen. But the questions race through my head.
Will they stop the car? Will they pull me in?
Will they…
They drive the car alongside me for a while. I am nearing the bend to the office building. I can see its lights. I see the watchman! A few more seconds, I think to myself.
Just then, I hear the driver shout –
Ghabraa mat, aaj tujhe jaane dete hain. (Don’t worry, we will let you go today.)
With that, the car accelerates and disappears from my view.
I reach the office building. My husband is not far behind. I sit for a while on the steps leading up to my office. I am shaking. But I quickly compose myself and we head upstairs to my office to alert the authorities. For a few weeks, I am allocated a parking spot inside the gated building to ensure the men could not get to me – just in case.
Soon however, it is forgotten. And within a few weeks of no incident, we go back to walking the same road to the parking every night.
But if we went back to walking the same road, we did not go back to being the same people. This wasn’t the first time something like this happened. But we were determined to do everything possible to make it our last. Something had shifted, quietly and permanently, in both of us. The kind of shift you don’t announce. You just find yourself, weeks later, having conversations you hadn’t planned to have. About variables. About the ones within your control. About what it might mean to change them.
Dear Britain, I think you already know where those conversations led.
With love, Purna