Repetitive Concerns- Radhika Tanwar Murder

So am I thanking God that we didn't have free time yesterday to rush to Satya to catch a bite at Brickhouse/Maggi Point/Subway? If that would've happened, we could've been walking on the over bridge, trying to get onto the other side of the road to hit the busiest "hang out" in South Campus. Satya Niketan is-

1. Two-minute auto ride from both, home and college.

2. Five minute walk from both, home and college.

The over bridge connects Sardar Patel Marg and Satya Niketan and is a savior for commuting students since both ends are marked by Auto Stands and Bus Stops. It's as busy as busy can get at almost all times of the day, especially during morning and late afternoon hours. Typically, there're a couple of beggars who have set shop on the bridge, selling a variety of trinkets and also, occasionally you'll catch a prospective pseudo hippie attempting to get their cartilage pierced from them.

On 8th of March, women in an All-Women College, (where I constantly crib about being a misfit) were satiating their feminist appetite by celebrating Women's Day (or making apparent their inevitable need to find a way out of a previously denied inferiority or subservience. But that's besides the point).

On 8th March 2011, Radhika Tanwar, a second year student from Ram Lal Anand College, which stands adjacent to Moti Lal Nehru College and shares space with Sri Venkateswara College on Benito Juarez Marg (Delhi), was shot dead by a certain "Who" killed Radhika Tanwar(?).

Honestly, it was abundantly unnerving to hear about this because as a student of Jesus and Mary College, I had crossed the crime scene the previous evening, the day before and almost every alternate day preceding that. For most of us around this area of South Campus (which spreads beyond to Lady Shri Ram College, Kamla Nehru College and Gargi College, to name a few), Satya Niketan is a daily visit. A lot of students reside there too.

After having established all this, I will vehemently disagree with anyone who attempts to even hint at the bridge or the areas around it "less crowded" or "isolated". It is more than alarming that there were some 300 students who gathered in protest outside my college, all from South Campus, and who knows, one of them is treasuring the all important "Witness Story." Going by a common tracking that many news reports have made, the only person who chased the murderer, after Radhika was shot, was her friend Aditya, who was walking back to college with her. The beggar on the extreme end of the foot bridge was latent, everyone at the bus stop was latent, people around the crime scene were latent (and I can bet that at least two out of the ten people must've been students). I really hope that someones conscience is being dangerously pricked right now and the "procedural" justice at least sees one genuine witness account. But again, that's just hoping for the ideal when the ideal really is inaccessible.

I'm not surprised that there were no PCR Vans around the area even after the incident of the girl having been picked up in a vehicle outside Dhaula Kuan sometime back. I mean her bleeding body wasn't even carried in one till the hospital. This incidentally puts into questions the sensitivity and dutifulness of all the Autowalas who refused or didn't stop when signaled by the Constable trying to get her body to the hospital. And considering there're autos lined up every minute of the day at either ends of the bridge waiting for a "sawaari" (that, mind you, must suit their schedule), it's terrible to even know that no one offered and time had to be further wasted in finding the appropriate ride or sensibility.

Anyone can go on and on about the infinite ways in which the follow up to the crime could've been bettered because fact is, that the crime itself was unavoidable. The CM is not going to resign because some obsessive stalker decided to dust away the last remaining speck of intolerance in him. The psychology of it, for one, requires crime psychology in our country to be focussed on with a finer lens.

My biggest problem has to be with the turning of the protest march into an "event". So I'm walking up the stairs to attend a class and this giggling bunch of ignorant and uninteresting "women" ask me whether I'm coming for the march. They were forgetting that it wasn't their trivial visit to a coffee shop, where they could sit under the winter sun with their CK shades on and discuss about the safety of women, when each of them drive a Skoda/Honda to college. It really was outrageous. And then they decide to head out and stand outside the gate and comment about how shady the men were and mindlessly stereotype every ordinary looking man, who didn't have the money to drive them around in a fancy car, as a "Jaat". I'd like to blatantly state here that women's safety concerns me, gravely. But I'm absolutely not willing to be in the same clan as the afore-described lot, who wear the absolutely nonchalant garb of stupidity and declare further their "feminist" stand.

Today's "March" made me mildly question the purpose these symbolically important protests serve. It was obvious that a protest was going to take place. It would've been odd if it didn't happened. But what planning is expected out of the government, if a citizen-oriented gathering like the one today is shallow, when it comes to even arriving at a consensus about the "purpose" the march should essentially serve. For one, they want CCTVs to be fixed on the roads. How reasonably pragmatic.

There are so many loopholes, that at times, one must thinking twice before opining because, it is left undone. There seems no way out of this. There is too much to be solved, too much to be untied, too much unwinding to be done and just as many webs to be disentangled. Honestly, its exhausting because one thing leads to another, and the other to yet another. And the possibility of the lack of a comprehensive and practical mode to justice seems unlikely. That's the worst kind of quick sand to be caught in.

I'm not just saying this, but since yesterday, I haven't adhered to my routinely walk over that bridge and I'm constantly living in the fear of being stalked or followed. Concerns for Safety in this city are not overrated. They never will be. Today, I am experiencing the fear that people talk about when they get out of their houses and begin an ordinary walk on the street. You might joke about every Bye being the last Bye, but it takes one incident like this to make you think the last statement you made may have your last few words in it.

The fact that I'm a woman is secondary,

the fact that I'm a student is secondary.

But the fact that I'm scared is primary,

the fact that I'm prancing in fear is primary.

Hoping for justice, like always. But really not hoping for another unfathomable and unreasoned death of an innocent.