It is a rainy day at my corporate job. Storm*, my intern, walks into work, dabbing raindrops off her arms, animatedly describing the downpour outside while waving her rain jacket around and sprinkling my office with water. She is upbeat as always: dressed in an olive green kurta** with pink tights, a light, long scarf that goes with her ensemble, thick black kohl underneath her determined eyes, her oversized headphones in place. “How are you still wearing your headphones in this rain?” a colleague asks, and she says, “I never take them off. They’re my talisman against the street porukkis***.” My colleague giggles awkwardly. “Well ladies need that, good for you”, he adds. Storm, like several other women in Chennai, has one unchanging feature in her daily itinerary: to make it through the day without calling ‘unwanted attention’ to herself, and even if it happens, to have the patience to not let it affect her, and to not react. “These headphones remind me that I can have a day that does not include actually hearing half the things men shout to me on the street”, she says. But not everyone is as brazen as Storm, making derisory mentions of street harassment in front of their bosses. It is not common that women talk about street harassment as an actual deviation from the norm in Chennai. In fact, it is so expected, that women often fail to recognize it as harassment, or call it that. To find out how many women identify verbal and physical harassment in public spaces, we circulated a survey among women of all ages who live in Chennai. Participants were allowed to choose all the responses that applied. (Insert Graphic 1) (Insert Graphic 2) Public transport and streets seem to be the hubs of street harassment. “First, it will start with catcalls, if it is a deserted area it will move to degrading comments”. (Insert Graphic 3) (Insert Graphic 4) “I cycle to work, so most days I experience cat calls, honking at me to get my attention- so that they can make kissing gestures and other hand gestures that make me cringe, they sometimes even shout out words and make me feel uncomfortable. Aside from the men on the road who make such remarks I also face road safety issues thanks to many women and men who brush me off the road because I ride a cycle. Other men on cycles also make kissing gestures and other signals that make me feel uncomfortable. But all this I have only ignored. I have looked at them angrily, but somehow, showing them that you are angry makes them more excited and they accelerate towards you.” “Most of the time, harassment happens when you are least expecting it; while walking down a busy road, at the railway station and sometimes in a crowded street, which you're having a hard time navigating. It also largely occurs in public transport, where it can easily be brushed aside as lack of space. The point is, with me, it has mostly happened when I've been in a crowd, as against the empty or badly lit street back home. “ Verbal harassment isn’t the end of it. Physical harassment is more common than verbal, because in a city as crowded as Chennai, it is almost unnoticeable. “I am pinched/felt up/groped almost everyday on the public bus at rush hour”. Our survey reports incidents of physical harassment from strangers, while walking, driving, or taking any form of public transport, including cabs. “It ranges from making lewd comments, singing and whistling to groping, rubbing up against me. I believe that even bothering me when I don't want to talk -- forcing me to make conversation or give them attention -- and expressing an interest in me when I've made it abundantly clear that I'm not interested, is harassment. Fortunately, I've never been asked by strangers to smile.” For Chennai, that’s fortunate indeed. To be continued *- Storm is not her real name (quite sadly for me) ** -A kurta is an Indian tunic ***- ‘Porukki’ is a word transliterated from Tamil, the native language spoken in Chennai. It loosely translates to ‘goon’, usually used in the context of someone lewd/lecherous. And yes, I’m ashamed that we have a word for that.