No Eve Teasing

Thursday, 13 September 2012

On my last India visit in early 2010 Delhi was in chaos, the city was being torn apart as they raced to get the Delhi Metro finished in time for the Commonwealth Games. This time I got to ride the Metro and, just as for hundreds of thousands of local users every day, the most important news is ‘it works!’ No trouble finding a station, no trouble understanding the ticketing, no trouble working out which line to take or how to change lines. And – very important at the tail end of the monsoon – it’s air-conditioned.

◄ Plus, if you’re female, there are no opportunities for ‘Eve Teasing.’ That’s the wonderful Indian-English expression for what in countries with less colourful language we’d call female harassment. On a crowded Delhi Metro carriage (although the crowds are not up to Tokyo subway standards) Eve Teasing could have been a problem. ‘Women Only’ carriages are the solution and although you see women in the other carriages they overwhelmingly congregate in their own colour-coded (pink!) carriage.

▲ PS, it’s in Hindi as well.