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The Lecherous Stares

This has been happening since 5 years.

The only difference is that now, I'm irritated and fed up to the core.

I walk towards my home, at half past three in the afternoon. The entire walk is surrounded by no one except men. Men scratching their tummies as I walk by. Men staring at every nook and cranny of my body. Your lurking eyes silently make me doubt my school uniform. Is my clothing at fault? Tongues out, eyes ravenous.Your eyes are better scanning us than even an X-ray machine. When I bend down to tie my shoe laces, you leap with excitement. You are finally successful in making me conscious of myself and my attire. Maybe it's my over-sized shirt. Maybe it is my skirt, which even though reaches till the end of my knees, somehow arouse you. Or is it my belt?  People tell me to behave like a 16-year-old, to talk about "happy and merry" things.

How can I, when I'm a prey to so many men everyday?

More than me, it is my young sister that matters. She notices them, and looks at me innocently, asking, "Why are these men staring at us? Is something wrong with us?"

People say that men don't stare until something provokes them. But both of us are ordinary-looking girls, and my sister certainly does not even know what seducing is. All I want to do that time is to disappear into an envisaged hole which may erase the horror from my mind.

We witness men without shirts on the road. They are, of course, free to do that. They are free from the lecherous stares they give us. You are obviously free from the appalling experience.

It happened two weeks before as well. Again those men stared at us, as if to say, "You have entered our territory. Bear the consequences!"

Now extremely infuriated, I stared at them the way they did. Staring at their naked chest, their scrutinizing and nefarious gaze. And then, they stopped!

For a week.


It has started again. And I feel helpless.

"This girl is exaggerating. She should behave like a teen, and not like a 25-year-old woman. Oh, here comes another feminist. All that male-bashing and stuff!"


These comments are a daily routine for my ears now. But I seriously cannot help it.

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