By Robert Clements
Public Spaces, Private Fear..!
They were just two young women, Australian cricketers, guests of our nation, here to play the game we love more than we sometimes love our women. And yet, as they walked to a café in Indore, a man on a motorbike came close enough to touch, grope, and ride away laughing. Within hours, the police arrested him. Justice, we were told, had been served. But for the two players, and for millions of women watching that video replayed again and again. The damage was already done.
Fear, once felt, does not fade with an arrest. It lingers in the mind. It sits beside every woman waiting for a bus, walks behind her when the road turns empty, and follows her shadow home. Every honk, every revving engine, every group of men laughing too loudly makes her heart race. She clutches her bag tighter, adjusts her dupatta, and walks a little faster. This is not imagination. It is a lifelong conditioning born out of repeated betrayal by a society that does not protect her, and sometimes even mocks her pain.
We live in cities that boast of progress, where every corner has a CCTV camera and every government promises safety. But between the eye of the camera and the eye of the street lies a truth we refuse to see: safety is not about surveillance; it is about culture. You can install a thousand cameras, but unless respect is wired into men’s minds, the footage will keep repeating the same old scenes. And that culture begins right at the top.
A political leader walks out on his wife and is still cheered at rallies. A film star has two wives and we still give him and the home breaker, seats in Parliament to represent us. Who questions? Who even thinks it wrong anymore? When personal morality becomes optional for those in public life, we as a society lose the moral authority to demand decency on our streets.
Ever wondered or asked the wives how they felt after their husbands left them? Were you ever interested in knowing? Ever thought of the quiet humiliation she faces when the same society celebrates the man who abandoned her? The woman sits alone, her dignity torn, while the man who betrayed her walks the red carpet, hugging world leaders. We clap for him, elect him to office.
Why should we be shocked when decency disappears from the streets? When the men they admire treat women as replaceable, why should the man on the street treat a stranger with respect? Culture trickles down — from leaders, from stars, from those we put on pedestals. If the pedestal itself is corrupt, the street cannot stay clean.
We build temples to goddesses, call our country their abode, and chant slogans of “Bharat Mata Ki Jai.” But we cannot guarantee that the women walking our streets are safe. We teach our girls to cover up, to walk quickly, to avoid crowds, to carry pepper spray. But when will we teach our boys that dignity is not something you snatch, it is something you show? Respect cannot be demanded by rules; it must be demonstrated by example.
A woman walking alone at night is not being bold; she is simply exercising her right. Yet in our minds, we make her guilty before she is wronged. We whisper, “Why was she out so late?” not “Why was he there to harass her?” And that subtle shift of blame, that mental conditioning passed from father to son, from film to audience, from parliament to people, is what keeps our public spaces dangerous.
Because the truth is, our public spaces are theatres of private fear. A woman walking alone often plans her route like a soldier preparing for battle. She notes the exits, the lit stretches, the friendly shops that might offer refuge. She carries her keys not as tools but as weapons. And she pretends courage while her mind maps escape routes. Somewhere, a man speeds past, laughing — his act of assault disguised as a thrill, his conscience asleep. Between them lies a nation that has learned to look away.
Maybe, just maybe, it is time to stop looking away.
Safety cannot be outsourced to the police alone. It begins at home — in how we treat our wives, in how we speak of women at the dinner table, in what our sons see and learn from us. The police can arrest a culprit, but they cannot reform a culture. That job belongs to us — parents, teachers, friends, voters.
Every time a man laughs at a sexist joke, he adds another brick to the wall of fear. Every time a family excuses a son’s temper as “boys will be boys,” they reinforce the belief that women must adjust. And every time we let a public figure escape scrutiny for personal misconduct because “it’s his private life,” we send a message to every boy watching: character does not matter.
The women who visit us, like those two Australian cricketers, come expecting hospitality, not hostility. They come believing our words when we call India “Atithi Devo Bhava” — the guest is god. But what sort of gods are we, if our guests leave with fear instead of fondness?
It is time, truly time, to look inward. Time to realize that the safety of women is not a women’s issue — it is a mirror held up to our collective soul. And every time the world looks at us through the eyes of a frightened woman, we will know that it was not the city that failed her. It was not the police, nor the government, nor the camera on the pole.
It is us…!
