This used to happen to me constantly when I lived in India -- eve teasing, I believe is the obnoxious euphemism that's used to describe this non-stop assault on women. It's one of the very few things I absolutely do not miss about home.

Me at the Krakow bus station, about 6 years ago. A woman is standing at the perimiter of a group waiting to get on a bus. A much older guy walks up behind her, and for maybe 1.5 seconds gives her ass a very loving and thorough rub with his hands. He starts walking away, the woman looks and says something like "Hey, watch it!"

I am initially outraged, and as the guy is just walking and can easily be caught up, my thought is to go and forcefully explain he's an asshole, with use of hands.

But this is a bus station, full of witnesses, and a manlier man than me is quickly on the case. He just walks up and starts pumelling him. The guy falls to the ground, and the hero gives him another five or six blows to the head once he's down, for good measure.

So then this guy gets up and continues walking away, holding his head. At this point it becomes clearer that this person is mentally disabled and fairly confused about what the hell is going on. It doesn't justify his actions, but the hero (at least in my mind) starts looking more like a bully with a good excuse.

So the moral is, hadjiboy, that the violence / revenge fantasies usually work out much more heroically in your imagination, and most of the time probably best to keep them there, walk the path of ahimsa and keep your own karma in order. :)

Me outside the bar in Bishkek, two years ago. It's fairly late and there isn't much traffic, so I'm waiting at the corner for a cab. Around the corner, down the side street, a man and his date are having a very heated argument. I turn to watch, they are maybe 20m away.

Oh christ, this is bad. He is huge and enraged, he's towering over this small little woman. He's raising his hand to make her flinch, shouting her down calling her a whore and a bitch. Then, for good measure, he grabs her by the hair and gives her a couple of good yanks.

Oh shit oh shit oh shit. He is much bigger than me, drunk and full of testosterone. I have a bad back and have never won a fight as an adult in my life. It's a dark street. And this is Kyrgyzstan - for all I know the guy is a cop, if this thing goes anywhere the police won't give a shit, will be more interested in shaking the rich foreigner down for a bribe.

So, like you hadjiboy, I spend the rest of my life feeling guilty and fantasizing that I am the hero.

The moral of this story is, if you don't act you will always be able to justify it, and you will always regret it.

You know what gets to me is: you just have that split second to decide whether you should do it or not (whether the situation warranted it; whether you saw what you did; whether there was anyway it was an accident), and then you have this indefinite period of time afterwards to think about it. I really wish I had gunned the engine when I had the chance, and at least hit the guy so he could've fallen over and gone through some of the pain that girl must've had to go through.

Lassie, I didn't know you were a fellow Indian.

(Correct me if I'm wrong here: but I was always under the impression that "eve-teasing" was more of a verbal assault than a physical one. What this guy did would clearly fall under the scope of the latter, wouldn't it?)

I really wish I had gunned the engine when I had the chance, and at least hit the guy so he could've fallen over and gone through some of the pain that girl must've had to go through

No, hadjiboy... that's a great way to accidentally kill someone, or perchance get killed or seriously injured yourself. Use your strengths to fight this sort of thing instead. You are a writer and a thinker, so write an utterly fantastic article about this sort of thing and submit it to local papers or publish it on your own via internet if they won't run it. Get involved in a movement to bring awareness to the issue, or start your own. You might volunteer at a women's crisis center, or help to establish such a thing... Use your head and heart and communciations skills, because these are the best things you have, and will make the most difference.

Yeah, I'm a fellow Indian, hadjiboy. In fact, I spent many winter vacations in Hyderabad, in the Koti area where my uncle used to live, as well as with my grandmother across the Tank Bund in Secunderabad. My parents were from that area, and they both graduated from Osmania.

And, as far as I understood it, eve teasing runs the gamut from the verbal to the physical. Which is kind of why I hate the term so much -- the implication that there's anything even vaguely 'teasing' about that kind of behavior, particularly when it devolves into a full-on physical assault.

One of my most satisfying moments was when I was in exactly the same position as the woman you mentioned in your original story, and a guy swung at me as he went by on a bike. When he came around for a second go, I was better prepared and I knocked him clear off his bicycle. I was eleven.

:)

Man, I'm glad I haven't had to put up with this kind of crap. About the worst thing that's happened to me as far as assault goes is a restaurant coworker that felt me up every time I passed him. I finally dropped my tray and yelled JUST F--KING STOP IT! in front of customers. The manager took both of us in back and fired the guy on the spot.

Thank you so much for that link taz; that's just what I wanted to read right now (I'm becoming a lifetime member!!!).

Well, what do you know Lassie--looks like we're both pretty much neighbours in that case. (My house is a ten minute drive from Tank Bund). How long has it been since you've been back??? (My dad graduated from Osmania too you know; in fact, I was right there today with my mom and sis for her entrance exam this morning.:))

When I was young, I used to read Encyclopedia Brittanica , you know just for fun. I recall reading a long article about socially deviant behavior and couldn't help noticing that most of them are done by men. And some - frotteurism - eww.

Maybe it's a cultural thing, but I used to live in Forest Gate, which has a large Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi population and this random slapping would happen to me (and I would see it happen to other women) as we were walking along the street. I experienced it three or four times and saw it several dozens of times over three years or so. It was always directed towards women who appeared to be unmarried too. I've also been rubbed up against on the Tube and bus a few times over the years and each time it was a Sikh man (not the same one).

I must have a vibe about me. I carry mace and am too passionate to not stab someone in the eye with the pen in my purse if someone even attempted this on me. I don't even think I'd think about it - I have no filter from my brain to my mouth anyway. Stuff like this (knock on wood) doesn't happen to me but I constantly hear stories of it.

Me too, eatdonuts - I've developed quite a "shut off and distant" face that I pull out when I'm in the city. I have no problem saying, loudly and distinctly, that a certain person should remove their hand before I break their fingers, and I probably project that persona. But I have complete symapthy for people who weren't raised by a woman as boisterous and brash as my own mother is.

It's sad that men are growing up learning things like what is described in articles on "eve teasing".

It's been almost two decades since I last was in Hyderabad, hadjiboy (I went to boarding school about a day's ride outside the city, but none of my family lives there anymore). I was in Bangalore and Bombay in 2003, and might go back sometime this winter.