Freaky stalkers in Chennai

We have been dodging stalkers for a while now. When stalkers pursue their interest, they wouldn’t let it go for months or years at a time. What a stalker thinks is that, a continuously led chase isn’t going to turn futile. His consistency is what drives him to the darker side.

Girls walking on roads or using public transport are more accustomed to being harassed by strangers, being followed till we reach our homes and being mocked about our body parts. Any reaction to this would just trigger them more towards us. We always want to bore them out, and not reacting to all of this would help in some cases.

I was constantly tortured on Facebook for months and he would mention that he is following me to so many places. He would mention a lot about my body parts, he'd specify which ones he likes, he'd mention which part is bigger, how my character changes if I wore jeans. He'd even ask me to wear saree and meet him, so that he can see more of me. No matter how many times I block, he’d return with another profile. Any action wasn’t possible as he remained anonymous. I never knew who the pervert was. So I deleted one profile and created another one with another mail ID, with no profile photo nor I mentioned my city. He started harassing me there as well. I was managing some pages for office work so I couldn't delete my profile.

After so many months, the freak came forward in person, that too in a railway station. He got down from the same train I got down to switch to another train. He mentioned that he was the one who sent all those messages. He already knew that I got down in that particular station at that time, to switch trains (even I wasn't sure of taking the train that day; I had taken a bus the previous day). I was in shock, as I’ve seen this person at my office, but I never knew his name. He followed me to the other platform even though I thought he'd walk away after I shouted at him for doing such a hideous thing, I slapped him but he moved a bit so I couldn't even hit him; I wanted to file an FIR against him, just that I didn't know who he was. He was staring at me with such rage, and murmured something, that didn’t seem normal. He stood looking at me, and not moving even a bit. To think that all this was happening in a public place could have been even frustrating for him. But it was my luck that there were some people around. He took the same train I boarded. I got down at my destination. I knew that he would continue his ecstatic behavior some more. Who knows who he is torturing, at this moment?

He ofcourse denied the whole thing when the human resources department quizzed him. The HR never bothered to take any action. And now its been 4 years and still he keeps staring at the office. We never know what is gonna hit us when. His name is M. Balaji, a web developer at The Hindu.

This must be a disturbing read for a normal guy. But for someone who knows only one thing and who wants only one thing, all this must seem sane. I’m someone who respects men, for the fact that they’re kind and sweet to everyone they know. But this guy was the total opposite of anything that a normal human being would stand for. Very rare cases only turn out to be this way. Such cruelty can only come from a deep frustration of some sort. Understanding such people would be difficult. And so, any step that a girl takes will only trigger something worse than what has happened before. This is what my experience taught me.

The more the people know about such characters, the more they will able to defend themselves. Many women face this kind of problems on a daily or a weekly basis. Every stalker is different and anything that a victim does or doesn’t do during that period, is only going to make the perpetrator pursue his interest even more.

Some of the crimes that we’ve known to be faced by women depend on how long is one being victimised. One may say that Chennai is supposed to be the safest city to live in. But that may not be true, since such issues exist everywhere in this world. Even if we wear scarves and sunglasses to cover our faces, it wouldn’t matter if the stalkers already know our whereabouts. We can be equipped with a pepper spray, and can definitely start taking a self-defense class.

Being commented at, or touched by men walking on the streets, are common occurrences. What sets them apart from stalking is that, all of the eve-teasers and molesters do it in that moment, and forget all about it. But following a woman to all places, getting to know what she does, where she goes, and so on, is something that the girl is totally unaware about. The guy’s interest in the girl only grows even more. That leads to a total fanatic state of wanting something very badly, which in turn takes its toll on both of them. 

It cannot be said that it is young men who do such things. Women have been teased by men of all ages – right from teenagers to a 60-year-olds. We know a lot of women, young and old, who face such brutality.

An eve-teaser would pursue the girl to a couple of streets, drive behind them for a few kilometers, try to over-take them and call them names, but all this would end within a few minutes. A stalker, on the other hand, drives behind the female for months, constantly showing their face here and there, tries to make fun of them and makes it a point to be heard atleast after a few months of learning the person’s whereabouts.

All this may be due to the fact that the guys on the street aren’t someone who get the attention. They want to be seen/heard by someone. A cry for attention is what drives some stalkers to head towards women in a certain way. Such are the men who later in their 50s and 60s, tend to again stalk younger women, since they find only the young ones appealing. They prefer only the ones who are of lighter skin. Any woman with a slightly duskier skin wouldn't even be visible to them.