British travel blogger, Lucy Hemmings has seen the best and worst of India. She loves the vibrant life in India enough to make a second visit this year. But she has also seen the worst – men flashing their penises at her – on both occasions. And she wrote about it in her blog, which went viral, resulting in over several Indian men apologizing to her for our countrymen’s actions.
“The first time this happened to me was in 2012. I was 23 and it was my first trip to a developing country. Along the way, I’d met an Australian girl, Gemma, and we ended up spending three months travelling India together. At the time, we were wandering through Maharishi Mahesh Yogi Ashram or the Beatles Ashram in Rishikesh when I spotted a man, hiding in the bushes watching us and wanking”.
She added “My horror quickly turned to hysterical laughter; Gemma and I screamed profanities, laughed, pointed and threw rocks at him. Laughing empowered me, I felt we sent a very clear message that we weren’t intimidated by him and that we thought he was pathetic”.
But the second time I visited, a similar incident happened and this time it felt different. “I was sitting at a bus stop in Mumbai when I noticed a man move closer to me. From the corner of my eye, to my horror, I realised that he had pulled out his penis and was masturbating, staring intently at me. I felt sick,” she wrote.
She told The Independent: “I found it really frustrating because I’m someone who really loves interacting with people and I really struggled because suddenly I was afraid to look at people.
Hemmings decided to write about the experience and discuss it with others, which she said was “cathartic”. Her catharsis resulted her blog page getting inundated with apologies from Indian men who expressed regret for the act of some of our fellow countrymen.
It’s wonderful that there are so many men who rose to the occasion to do the decent thing here. It’s a reassuring feeling that if there are such creeps in India, there are also so many others who are decent. Hemmings herself was overwhelmed by the response. But the point to really think about here, according to The Daily Dot, is: Why does a non-native white blogger need to write a blog post about sexual assault for Indians to be made aware of the issue?
And it’s true, because what Hemmings faced is what all Indian women have faced at some point in their lives. So why are the words of a Lucy Hemmings taken more seriously.
Image Courtesy: Lucy Smiles Away
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