Strange, Stranger or Neither?

Some time ago I took this American guy to an Indian restaurant for the first time. No, this post isn’t about the food. After we left the place he told me that one of the male employees at the restaurant had been staring at me inappropriately till he caught his eyes in the act. “Oh well!” I thought. “Indian men don’t know how to behave in public”, I said. No sooner had I said those words my years as a teenage girl in India flashed in front of my practiced eyes. No, this isn’t about the incorrigible Indian men either. In fact, it’s about one particularly incorrigible Indian man.

 

In about three months I’ll turn twenty-one. That’s how old the stick-figure said he was about five minutes after he suddenly sneaked up beside me on his bike (Or did he say twenty-three?) I was on mine too, at the same time, on the same trail I went biking on everyday. This was eight years ago when I was barely twelve.

 

It has always been difficult to shock me. I did not flinch or gasp when he appeared unexpectedly. I recognized the face, he lived somewhere near where I took my dance lessons. He said his name was Rohit. Regardless, he was since known as Ashwini.

 

(Why Rohit became Ashwini is another story which will be more relevant if I ever decide to analyze my best friend’s amazing sense of humor and one of a kind personality on my blog.)

 

Ashwini was everywhere. Near home, at school, at the bus-stop, the candy shop and all those places a twelve-year old would go to. He was becoming almost as inseparable as my best friends, who were becoming increasingly bothered by his inescapable presence. I wondered what would they have been like if they really knew what was happening.

 

Ashwini was good at sneaking but sometimes he just wouldn’t bother. He knew where I lived, where my friends lived and he knew when I would be alone on the street. He would just walk up to me and then talk a little bit. Once he tried talking to me in Hindi, which wasn’t his language but was mine. I still remember his words and I sometimes still amusedly wonder if he really knew what he was saying. “Aaj aapne kya sabzi khaya?”

 

He once came to me and said that he was suffering from jaundice and was prescribed bed-rest but ignored his doctor to come see me. Another time he asked, “Don’t you know I love you?”

 

Self-introspection always retains some bias. But let’s try and analyze what was going on in my mind all those years ago while I was being smothered with all this maniac attention from this stranger, this stalker. I know one thing I wasn’t pleased. Sometimes the displeasure edged frustration, but looking back I find it so strange that I really wasn’t that bothered.  I was embarrassed in a way, who wouldn’t be – the guy chose to wear bell-bottomed pants … and those were the nineties. I even shied away from telling my friends and parents how vigorously I was being stalked. But I wasn’t scared from this guy. Didn’t I notice he was a foot taller than me? And did I mention he was at least 9 years older than me. Did he not know that I was only twelve?

 

Although he never sexually abused me, some people whom I’ve spoken to about this say he was a pedophile.

 

Was Ashwini a pedophile? Or is there a possibility that he just did not realize that I was only a little girl? Was he truly in love with a child about a decade younger? Or was he just fooling around with me?

 

Regardless, I chose to give him the ‘indifferent’ treatment for the three years he continually followed me around the whole town. Sometimes I would yell at him and ask him to leave me alone. But generally I gave him the ‘I don’t know you stranger (although I have seen you a million times), so don’t talk to me’ look. I sometimes wonder, by not taking a tough stance against him, did I make big mistake? Ashwini is still out there somewhere, but is he victimizing some one else as I type? I was lucky in the fact that he never affected my blunt and naive (read dumb) soul too much, but would all twelve-year old girls be as cold (read dumb) and insensitive as I was?

 

I pray to God Ashwini did better. And that I, was just a phase.