Love, Sex, aur Dhokha: Sexual harassment on a bus journey between Mapusa and Panjim

Given that the past week or so in Goa has been of torrid sexual drama, it seemed appropriate that this column too jump into the fray. Most sexual stories get told from the male point of view, and this story will be no exception. Where this narration will differ however, is how this particular male gets treated. In this story, the narrator is victim, rather than the victor or voyeur.

My story begins onboard a Kadamba shuttle service between Mapusa and Panjim. Not left with much seating choice, I moved to the back of the bus where the 5 seater held three men. There was a young man in his mid-twenties on one side, a possible 10 – 12 grader boy dressed in shorts on the other. In the centre was a rather personable young man in his late twenties to early thirties. No sooner had I settled down, than he flashed me a charming smile, asking “newspaper?” Given that I was fortuitously carrying one in my bag I handed him the newspaper. He flashed me another broad grin while asking me where I was from; “Goa?” I rolled my eyes, and responded, rather aggressively, that I was from Goa “Why? Don’t I look Goan?”

Having thus beaten him to silence, I retreated into my own personal world as we bumped our way toward Panjim. A couple of seconds later he gamely slid away from me and slapped the seat space between the two of us. Since I had managed, in the process of seating myself, to get squashed between this charmer and the twenty-something young man, I thought that the ‘charmer’ was making more space for me. A few seconds later however, I realized that the charmer had slid over merely to create space for the huge bag that the boy, on the other side of the seat, was carrying on his lap. Trying to make the best of the situation, I decided a couple of minutes later to use the bag as an arm-rest. Imagine my horror when I saw, as I turned around, the use my newspaper was being put to! Our charmer has ensured that while his hand away from me was holding the newspaper, it was also resting on the bare thigh of the young boy. The other hand was using the newspaper to screen this circumstance from the rest of the bus should they choose to look back.

‘Ok buster’, I thought to myself narrowing my eyes ‘I know what you’re up to!’ The boy though seemed oblivious to the location of the Charmer’s hand and was babbling away breathlessly. Taking this for some kind of consent from the boy, I looked away and decided (I now think wrongly) to mind my own business. A couple of minutes later, the charmer was back by my side, another winning smile, returning my newspaper and making small talk. After some perfunctory small talk about the location of where one should store cell phones on one’s person, I dove into the newspaper shutting him out of my space.

Now you have to remember that all this while we continue to bump our way towards Panjim. In the course of this ride, as I struggle to keep my eyes on the newsprint, I am convinced that the charmer’s hand is grazing my wrist rather deliberately and insistently. Since I don’t want to jump to conclusions, I decide that it’s just a result of the journey and my now hyperactive imagination. This state of mind lasts until with the next bump when the charmer’s hand is lightly, but quite surely around my wrist!

“How does one respond to this situation”, I asked myself as I pretended to focus on the paper. First the whole situation is rather and obviously embarrassing, and secondly, while I didn’t appreciate the sexual attention, I didn’t want to be the guy who initiates a session of old-fashioned gay- bashing. Fortunately for me I managed resolved the situation by quickly and deftly lifting his hand off my wrist, placing it on the bag and continuing to read the paper. The charmer mumbled ‘I’m sorry’ (not that I believed he was) and I feigned a distracted nod indicating that it was nothing as I pretended to be immersed in the newspaper. We reached Panjim without further incident and none of those winning smiles from the charmer.

While the power dimensions between two men are somewhat different as that between a woman and a man, I was nevertheless able to estimate something of the position women are placed in when they encounter such unsolicited sexual advances. For starters, one asks oneself whether one has given any indication that we are open to these attentions. I knew enough in this case to say that indeed I did not. The second issue one has to deal with is how, does one fend this person off. Invariably in the case of men propositioning women, the issue is not really a desire for sexual relation as much as it is the desire for conquest. In societies like ours, where the ideal male is seen as a hunter, it is through conquest that the male becomes in fact a Man. For the woman to indicate displeasure, and not be backed up by a crowd therefore, is to perhaps invite renewed and redoubled advances. Like I indicated earlier, between men the power equation is rather different (though this really does not hold for the charmer’s interaction with the boy), but one is still placed in the delicate, and for most men unique, situation of having to resolve the issue. When the expected social role for men is to be the hunter, rather than the hunted, such unwelcome sexual advances are invariably responded to with violence. For the gender and politically sensitive however, this is not really an option. Such a route merely re-inscribes the dominant expectation of what it is to be a man, and perpetuates homophobia. To resolve this situation through public shaming without violence, is to court becoming the butt of public ridicule. After all it isn’t particularly manly to be seen as attractive to other men, even if you have not been sending out any signals. Besides, in using shame and not violence, one is not really using one’s male prerogative of violence, and displaying in this manner, one’s lack of masculinity and therefore culpability.

As the Pacheco story develops perhaps we will realize that there are deeper and more devious political games being played. However in the interim it would be worthwhile to contemplate the manner in which the sexual practices of our society, that is the manner in which sexuality, masculinity, femininity and power interact, are as responsible for this mess, as the personal actions of those involved.

(First published in the Gomantak Times, 16 June 2010)