A fifteen minute walk from the sovabazaar metro and across the infamous red light area, I was in a dark alley among the streets of sonagachi. A few drunk middle aged men playing 29 and betting on the road beside a pile of garbage that reeked of sanitary waste were the only humans that were around. As my eyes shifted to the far end of the road, I could make out a few people from the faint silhouette caste from the dim lit street light. As I moved closer, I could hear burbling of the most disgusting slangs and filthy language that one could ever possibly think of. And amidst all the quarrel, I could easily make out it was all directed towards one lanky guy. Poor fellow I thought! Then suddenly one of them was pinned to the ground. Another street fight! But no it wasn’t, I just realized the person pinned was a in fact a very young girl. From the fact that she wore jeans and a t-shirt, I can only assume she was in her mid twenties. Two more guys pounded her near her shoulder while one of them bend down over her waist. This is no mere fight, this is rape!!…

A few seconds more and the shrieking of the young girl filled the air. Women opened their windows, looked down from the neighboring houses and grimaced at each other. None of them did make any slightest attempt to defend the honor of a fellow girl. The guys were probably either pimps or powerful people with rather strong connections whom these women didn’t want to displease if they had to earn a livelihood. My mind was in the most painful torture ever. Neither could I bear the continuous shrieking from her pain reaching my ear nor did I have the strength to stop such a thing from happening. Fleeing was the first thing that came across my mind. But if someone noticed that I did not have the heart to bottle up what I just saw, they might kill me in order to save their skin. So instead, i mustered all my courage and convinced my faculties to become emotionally detached from whatever was happening. The lack of empathy that I brought out in me was soon followed by immense curiosity. I wanted to know what made those rapists do whatever they are doing. If all I can do about the current situation is watch or run, I better make it a learning experience.

I lit up a smoke and leaned on to a damp wall and inspected closely at their actions. The guy who was humping on to the poor girl was not at all enjoying the sex. In fact, several occasions he had to excite himself, harden up before resuming to ravaging her. He was rather enjoying the pain that the poor girl was suffering. Rape was about violence, it was not about non consensual sex, contrary to the legal definition. He simply beat her up and it gave him more energy. The louder the girl cried, the faster he went. All of a sudden, he opened up a twisted pocket knife and slashed it across her waist and while the poor girl withered in pain, the guy released in pleasure. It was far from over as the other guys took turns to raping her while the rest pinned her down and tortured her so that his friend could feel the pleasure.

#Cracking their psychology

After observing this for 5 whole minutes, it was too much, I could not bear any more. I quietly and calmly walked down the alley back to the main road to prevent any suspicions. The thing that I learnt is that a girl cannot defend herself from rape by learning karate or carrying pepper spray, those demons will always come in groups and even if a girl had a gun she still would not be able to defend herself against so many. To beat them, she has to beat their psychology and manipulate them with her mental strength so that the rapists themselves choose to leaver her. Her best course of action then will be to simply lie down like a lifeless dead body and let the rapists do whatever they wanted. When they won’t be able to get a reaction from her, they will never be excited and can never be hard enough to have sex, let alone rape. It is a blow to the sadistic psychology of a rapist as he will employ innumerous means to get a reaction from her and end in utter failure. It will demoralize him and bring his spirit down and naturally, he will not be in a mood for rape any more.

But the problem is, it is very difficult for any woman to remain calm and composed at a situation like that especially after the amount of fear of rape that the media has installed in everybody. So, a woman needs to psychologically train her mind and condition it so that she can handle herself automatically if such a situation ever arises. Behavorial conditioning and mind hacking is not very difficult but it requires some amount of sincerity and utmost dedication over a prolonged period of time. This training is similar to how a vaccine develops immunity for a particular disease. It needs slow and slight exposure for quite some time to uncomfortable situations and finding means to get out of the situation. Slight enough that does not cause harm to her but she is building up tolerance to physically uncomfortable situations. Every woman needs to get out of her protective shell provided by her family and navigate the world in her own way. Broadly, it can be said there are four character values that a girl needs to inculcate in her to protect herself from the world. In order of importance, they are given below.

1. Independece: A woman needs to cut off herself from the protection of a father, boyfriend, husband or any other manly figure. She can always interact with protective people but she can never be dependent on them. She needs to learn and believe in taking her own decisions and then follow a due course of action.
2. Street Smartness: The ability to keep oneself cool and manage to steer away smartly from danger is street smartness and to inculcate it a girl needs to step out of her home and travel the world. Facing adverse situations will help one become more mature in navigating the world. She needs to take responsibility of some household or college activities and try her best to uphold those responsibilities. This will build her street smartness.
3. Stoicism: Indifference to pain and pleasure is called stoicism and is very important if a girl needs to beat the rapist psychology. She needs to understand the fact that life has its ups and downs and both pain and pleasure are equally helpful in growing up and living the world. Once this stoicism has deep rooted itself in her psychology, she will not be haunted by any henious incident that may befall on her.
4. Intelligence: Intelligence is definitely useful to use quick thinking and employ several oppurtunities that might help her get out of tricky situations. More than intelligence on a intellectual level, she needs to be emotionally intelligent and mature enough so that she can steer herself clear of danger before it can happen.

Building up these character values requires one to face situations which demand such values and a woman needs to get into a few adverse situations in order to combat rape smartly. So, the next time she notices an uncomfortable situation like a perverted guy trying to touch her on public transport or a creepy guy stalking her from college, she needs to face the person concerned, instead of avoiding by excaping, and intelligently handle the situation in such a way that neither the guy nor her nor anyone else gets hurt. So, rather than slapping the guy or making a scene out of the situation or avoiding the guy, her best course of action should be to silently go to the person concerned and tell him that what he is doing is very displeasing to her and he would never be able to get her attention in that way. The girl must understand that the lust of the guy is controlling his actions and he is not in his proper senses. Once, brought down and faced with his actions, every guy will be ashamed of what he had done and try to reform.

This building up of tolerance and inner strength will not only help someone to fight rape but will teach them to keep cool at the most adverse situations. When everyone else will be in a state of panic, she will calmly use her brain and steer a way out of that situation.