Assholes at Bharatpur station

On our way from Vindavan to Jaipur, we had a stopover at the Bharatpur train station, which is in a town in Rajasthan, just on the other side of the border from Uttar Pradesh. We had a wait of about three hours, and we planned to just hang out and read. Danny needed to take a quick stop at the restroom, so we walked to where one was located, near the stairway which led to the main terminal.

There were a group of young dudes loitering in front of the restroom. “Dudes” in India can always be identified by the clothing labels plastered everywhere, particularly Ed Hardy, and the well-greased hair, as well as by the fact that they travel in packs. Danny went into the men’s toilet, after leaving me around the corner by the far wall. The dudes moved closer, though, walking down the steps toward me. They clearly wanted to take a peek at the Western girl. I turned, so that I was looking away from them and tried to ignore them. One dude – and guy in a neon green T-shirt – broke away from the group and began to come even closer. He said something to his dude friends in Hindi that I didn’t understand. He then walked in a circle around me, leaning as he came around to my front so that he could see my face.

As soon as Danny came out of the bathroom, I said to him, annoyed, “That guy in green circled me, like I was an animal in a zoo.” Danny got angry then, and he shouted at Neon Green in Hindi. Whatever he said, it made Neon Green and some of his dude compatriots take off running in the other direction. There was some giggling amongst the remaining members of the pack, but when Danny told them to shut up, they did.

Even though we were both still seething, we stopped at the magazine stand to take a look. At one point, I happened to glance up and look across the train tracks. I saw that a group of dudes (the same one? a whole new pack? I couldn’t tell) were watching me, and some of them waved. Of course, I didn’t acknowledge them. Danny and I retreated down the third platform, which was less busy, and sat on a bench to wait for our train platform to be announced.

I’m not sure why dudes think it’s okay to treat a woman that way, whether she’s foreign or not. It’s degrading and disrespectful to be looked at like I’m a piece of meat. From what I’ve read in guidebooks and on travel sites like IndiaMike.com, this sort of behavior is not uncommon, and women are frequently warned to be aware that harassment can be an issue in India. The advice is to wear sunglasses, dress conservatively, and be thick-skinned – because that’s just how men are in India.

Well, I’m certainly not going to put up with being treated like an object, and I’m not going to take “that’s just how it is” as an explanation to excuse away the dudes’ poor behavior. It may make me seem like a Western bitch, but those guys are most certainly assholes – and cowardly ones, at that.