Ten Bucks of Courage
Or the time my mom kicked serious ass. Quite literally.
NB
In 1985, my mom was a 'shy girl' on a cycle in Indore. Then, three guys made the mistake of thinking her silence was a weakness.
This is a story about the day she surprised them, and herself.
Happy Women’s Day folks!
The Setup
Time: August 1985 or around that time.
Place: Chandrabhaga, Indore, MP, India
Picture a 20 something conservative girl riding a cycle en route her typing class.
Picture three trademark hooligans the likes of whom are found abundantly in Bollywood movies of 80’s and 90’s.
Lean frame, filmy haircuts, handkerchiefs tied around their necks, goggles to match; complete with the usual catcalls and testosterone to spare.
So this girl was minding her own business trying to reach her typing class on time. She knew that three guys had been following her for nearly half an hour now.
They were tripling on a rickety old cycle. They were calling her names, soliciting, whistling and passing lewd remarks while being dangerously close all the time.
She was panicking, getting very very nervous and angry too. She feared what the three would do. Afraid, she tried to cycle faster but the intermittent traffic allowed the rascals to catch up with her consistently.
The Mistake
She was on the extreme left of the road while the trio rode in the middle, a few paces behind her. A vehicle came up parallel and the three guys had to shift course. As a result they came really really close to the girl.
Then, one of them grabbed her shoulder and tried to pull her dress.
Pushed Too Far
Something came over her. In the tiny moment between the mistake the guys made and what followed next, she overcame her fear. It wasn’t a conscious decision probably, but it was building up inside her.
This shy girl, who had never been in an eve teasing situation this grave, swiftly dismounted to her left and pushed her cycle onto the three. They fell with two cycles over them.
This girl, angry at that cheap stunt and the prelude to it, attacked the three guys who were just beginning to get away from under the cycles.
A Special Brand of Hell
They didn’t see the ass-kicking coming.
The guys were awestruck as this girl tore their shirts from collars and sleeves, smacked them on head, face, shoulders, scratched them, kicked them, punted their empty heads like the choicest of goalkeepers while they were still under the cycles.
They never expected her to stand up to them like this.
A blitzkrieg like this was out of question because experience told them that a girl like her would just bear with the nuisance. She would just let it go. She will be her ‘usual’ ‘timid’ self like she was expected to be, being a girl you know.
Not this girl though. This girl was someone entirely different.
She unleashed a special brand of hell on them, surprising herself in the process.
Unstoppable
The chumps must have thought they could grab her chain or do something more terrible and get away.
But the ferocity with which she laid the smack down on those three guys crippled their response completely.
They moved away from under the cycles somehow and dragged slowly along the road. But the girl kept going after them, smacking them around as people came out of their homes and gathered along with passers by.
They saw this young girl beat the crap out of three guys, single-handedly. They had never seen anything like this before.
Some people tried to intervene on her behalf, to stop her from beating these guys because she was hurting herself physically in the process.
But, for a while, no one could stop her.
The growing crowd served as her silent backup; its presence likely kept the cowards from retaliating while she laid into them. The girl was brave nonetheless.
Stand Up for Yourself
She kept going after the lowlifes, again and again, for a few hundred meters, crying furiously.
For several minutes that uneventful road witnessed an Armageddon of its own as this girl went all bad-ass on those three asses.
Finally, people stopped her and kicked the bastards away.
It was difficult to contain the fight in this little girl flush with anger and fear. But, after some reassurance and a glass of water, she finally calmed down.
People were whispering, applauding and cheering. Many had kind words.
“You did it girl!”
“Why are you crying? You did good.”
“Those rascals will think twice before trying to grab a girl.”
“Oh no they will never think about it.”
Bloody But Unbowed
The girl’s right arm was swollen, her knuckles had her blood on them and her breathing was labored, punctuated with an occasional sob.
Her dress was a mess and so was her long hair.
The women there helped her clean up. Someone brought her cycle from half a kilometer away where it had been lying over the cycle the three rascals left.
What became of the three imbeciles? No one knew, and no one cared.
Ten Bucks of Courage
She does not remember now whether she went to the typing class that day after all this.
But she does recount that her elder brother, though concerned for her safety in the future and the state of her arm, was very happy that she stood up for herself.
He gave her ten bucks as a prize, an amount that mattered at a time when Television was still a luxury for Indian households, people had time to help others, hooligans used cycles and had to share, typewriters were still in fashion and yours truly was over 24 months away from invading this world.
The Legacy
No one created problems for her from then on.
For days after this incident, the people of Chandrabhaga and nearby areas would whisper to each other when she passed by on her cycle.
I imagine most smiled on seeing her while a few cleared off of her trail, never so much as breathing loudly.
They named her after the firebrand character played by the late Ms. Priya Tendulkar in a popular TV serial of the time.
They called her Rajani.
Epilogue
True Story.
Our greatest opponent is not the people or the situations outside. It’s the fear inside that gets the license to steal our thunder.
I believe that we all have the capability, just like the woman above, to surprise ourselves against that fear.
And while I do pray that none of us find ourselves in situations where we absolutely need to beat the crap out of someone, we do need to stand up and beat the fear however we can because it will always be there.
But then what is courage if it’s not merely an absence of fear, but the triumph over it.
Happy Women’s Day.