Garima Pithakote (B – 65)

Dr. Manibhadra Gautam

ENGl. 574.1: Life Writing Theory and practice

13 May, 2023

Sexual Harassment: Who Should be Smiling at the End?

I once had a horrible experience inside a public vehicle when I was a kid. The

incident took place about 13 or 14 years ago. I was traveling to my maternal uncle’s house at

Ilam with my parents during Dashain . It was very difficult to get vehicles during Dashain.

So we hardly got a jeep (taxi) and were compelled to travel in that crowded taxi. During my

childhood days, I liked to sit at front seats so that I could enjoy the view. And that day I

asked my mother for permission to allow me to sit at front seat. My mother allowed but

unfortunately one lady of about 40 or 45 years old had some trouble while traveling so she

chose to sit at window seat and I had to sit beside driver.

The journey was about three and half hour. I was enjoying the every moment because

I was clearly seeing the view but suddenly I felt driver’s elbow touching my chest. At the

beginning I thought it was accidental but again after few minutes I realized that it was

intentional. The driver was of my father’s age. I could not believe how could a man of my

father’s age harass a little girl. My mind did not work at that moment. I was frozen for

sometime. I tried shifting farther, but still he managed to touch me in same manner. His

hands were touching my sensitive parts again and again. He was hurting me. I could not do

anything except shifting farther because I did not know what to do. I was just 12 years old

kid then. I could do nothing except just sitting silently and tolerating his behavior. The abuse

I faced was so subtle by appearance that no one around me could notice. My mother was

sitting behind me even though I did not have courage to tell her that he was harassing me.
My eyes were filled up with tears and I was praying to reach destination sooner so that I

could get rid of him. Those few hours felt agonizingly slow, as if they were not hours, but

decades.

Finally I reached my destination and got off from taxi. But when I looked at the

driver, I saw a devil smile in his face. It was as if he had accomplished something big. His

eyes were dilated. It looked as if he was feeling victorious of not getting caught and

something was telling me that he was encouraged to do it again. The face was so disturbing

that it haunted me for a long time. Even today if I have to travel on public transport, the face

comes back to me.

I am still scared but what I have realized now is that I should speak against such

harassment. Last year while I was traveling to college from home, I was sitting on the ladies

seat and there was a lady of my age sitting beside the window seat. When we reached

Satdobato, the lady shouted suddenly saying “Who the hell is sitting behind me? How dare

you touch me? If you touch me again I will report you to the police and I will beat you up”. I

was startled and I asked her what happened and she explained to me that someone was

touching her from behind. When I looked back and tried to see who it was, the man in the

behind seat was covering his face and leaning against the front seat. His face was fully

covered and we couldn’t see who it was and what he looks like. The sister was still enraged

and she warned him. But nobody in the bus spoke against that abuser, I was the only who was

sympathizing with her and telling her that it was wrong of him to do so. I was scared to

speak against him or to confront him myself because I lack courage but I was impressed with

the lady because she had raised her voice against the misbehavior. Soon after the man took

off from the bus and he was nowhere to be seen. Rest of the journey, I kept thinking about the

incident.
 As soon as I reached college, I told my friends about the incident and asked what they

thought about it. They agreed with what the lady did was a right thing and we should always

raise voice against such thing. My friends also shared their experiences they had to go

through. While listening to them, I realized I was not the only one to face such harassment.

Almost every woman has faced sexual harassment once or more whether it is in public or

private. I also realized that we should always raise our voice against such harassment and we

should not stay silently. I still become alert whenever I travel public buses and I always try to

avoid the seat beside driver seat. But if it happens again, I will speak up. I will give

awareness to my younger sisters about such harassment and tell them to raise their voices. If

they face such harassment, I will make friendly environment in the house so that they can

easily share their incidents without any fear and shame.

Despite my realizations, I still wonder why people like me who underwent harassment

and abuse stay silent. Is it because our society blames the victims instead of the perpetrators?

Every time such story comes up, people eagerly point out the flaws in the victim – the kind of

clothes they were wearing, whether the time was proper for the person to go out, if the person

herself was “asking for it.” I think it is because of this victim-blaming culture, the abusers are

motivated to repeat their action again and again.

Sexual harassment is a type of harassment involving the use of explicit or implicit

sexual overtones, including the unwelcome and inappropriate promises. It covers a wide

range of behavior that demeans, humiliates and embarrasses a person and it is

characteristically identified by its unlikelihood in-terms of social and moral reasonableness.

These are behaviors that appear to be disturbing, upsetting or threatening to another

individual. Sexual harassment doesn’t happen only to females, it happens to males also but it

is very few in number as compared to female.

transportations. A few victims chooses to speak up but many victims, especially women

suffer in silence. World bank estimates, women use public transport more than males. A flash

survey by The Himalayan Times shows that out of 15 women 13 women were suffered from

sexual harassment on public transport, 6 said that they had suffered from severe forms of

harassment on public transport. Police claims that 421 people were arrested for harassing

women, 21 cases were filed under police offense act in the first six months of current fiscal

i.e. 2017 (The Himalayan Times 2017). According to the data with Nepal Police from 10

December 2020 to 13 January 2021, a total of 102 cases of harassment were registered with

Metropolitan office Ranipokhari. Although such cases have been registered, many remain

unknown and forgotten. Such incidents push women to find alternative ways to travel or

avoid traveling on public transport altogether. If a traveler is a woman and in a crowded

public vehicle she will get more pushes and touches than the fellow male travelers. On a

research conducted among the female health students of Manmohan Memorial Institute of

Health sciences, out of 396 female health science students using public transport ,79.6%

suffered from harassment. Out of total harassment cases, 67.1% were physically harassed,

61.2% suffered from verbal harassment and 34.6% suffered from non- verbal harassment.

After the incident, 44.6% scolded the harraser, 29.1% remained silent,17.3% dropped at the

nearest bus station and 9% reacted in different ways(Mishra and Lamichhane,2018).

Sexual harassment is one of the major social problems of Nepali women. Many

women still do not speak up against such harassment. They remain silent because the society

has loaded them with the burden of carrying family's prestige. This silence becomes an

encouragement to the perpetrators to make more girls and women their prey. Women must

not be shamed when they speak up. Rather than pointing fingers at the victims, the

government should make strict law and implement it. Government must increase the number
of public vehicles to avoid crowding and must make public vehicles gender friendly to save

the women from being harassed. On the individual level, we can listen to those people’s

stories without being judgmental and dismissive. Schools should teach about sexual

harassment and assaults to young children. Families should create a comfortable environment

so that when a member goes through something horrible, they can share it easily. Society

should stop treating it as a problem of women and start looking at it as a common social

problem and opt to solve it.

Himalayan Times, 2019.

Mishra, D and Lamichhane J. “Experience of sexual harassment in public transport among

female health science students: A cross sectional study of Kathmandu, Nepal”.

Journal of Manmohan Memorial Institute of Health sciences. DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3126/jmmihs.v4i1.21134.