I live in Kolkata and here in autos, generally three people sit at the back and one passenger sits on the left of the driver. Once, I was travelling on the backseat with two other men next to me. They were friends and about the same age as me, 22-23 years old. I was sitting in the corner. A girl boarded the auto. She must have been a little younger than us. Generally, it’s expected that the driver will shift a little to the right side to make room for the passenger. But this time, I noticed that the driver moved to the left instead. From where I was sitting, I could clearly see that the driver was using his elbow to touch the girl’s breasts from the side. He was also using the excuse of tricky manoeuvres on the road to inappropriately touch her. The route was 15-20 minutes long. Five minutes into the journey, I asked the driver to stop even though my destination hadn’t come. I asked the women to take my seat at the back and she happily agreed. The auto driver gave me dirty looks as if he would beat me up. However, the route was familiar to me and I knew most of the drivers who worked on that route. I knew I could navigate the situation if things got out of hand. Such incidents of girls being touched/groped are very common.

I live in Mumbai and was travelling in a crowded bus. Generally, men don’t stand where you have seats reserved for women. But I saw one man standing very close to a woman who was seated. The man was touching his body on her shoulder. Most people were observing this but not saying anything. I think the way he was standing and how he looked scared people. I paused, observed what he was doing for 3-4 minutes, realised that nobody was intervening and so I decided to go. I rushed to the man and said, “I am watching what you are doing”. He said, “I am not doing anything”. I asked the woman if she was feeling uncomfortable. She said yes and explained what the man was doing. When I intervened, a few other people also stood up and said that they saw it too. We all asked the driver to stop the bus, the conductor came and asked the man to get off the bus. This made me realise how everyone was waiting for someone else to do something and how my speaking up gave everyone the courage to speak up too

I saw a car in which a man was hitting a woman on her head, aggressively shaking her and shouting at her.lab At first, I went my way. But, then I mustered up some courage and turned back. I stopped my bike in front of the car. I was scared. The man was stronger in build than me. The man came out shouting asking why I had stopped the car. My response was to ask him about what he was doing. He said the woman is his wife and that he was talking to her. I told him that it definitely did not seem like talking and what he was doing was wrong. I asked the woman and she told me that he had been hitting and abusing her the whole evening and that this is his usual behaviour. I asked her what she wanted. She wanted me to make him understand. I said, I am going to call the police and then you can talk in front of them. When the man heard me say police, he backed off a bit and tried to defend himself. I gave the woman my number and asked her to contact me in case of anything. The woman called me a few days later and told me that her husband’s behaviour had been better. I have learned one thing - the importance of having a conversation or just speaking up. Each time, the person facing violence has come back and appreciated the fact that I spoke up for them, when no one else did.