A Planned City and Eve-teasing

Between the two hill stations we stopped in Chandigarh, Punjab for a day. There are three noteworthy things about this city.

1. It is a "planned city" and was designed by French architect, Le Corbusier. There are sectors and each sector has straight intersecting roads. If it weren't for the tuk-tuks and bicycles, I would think I was in Coralville, Iowa. Not only is it organized, people do not honk their horns. A hornhonking free city in India. That's downright amazing. It's blatantly middle and upper class and quite clean. Of course, after the first couple of beggar children stalked and found me, I knew that Chandigarh must be hiding something. On the way out of town on the train, I saw the slums, as bad as any in Delhi and Kolkata, and like most slums, not planned.

2. The one and only real tourist attraction is the Rock Garden, a 40 acre oddity of sculptures and buildings made completely from rubbish. The creator, Nek Chand, started it by taking debris from places that were destroyed around the city to make it "planned". No one knew about his little illegal project for 18 years. It was a brutally hot day, but we saw most of it. What was maybe the most strange though, were all the Indian tourists who asked to have their picture taken with me. I have no idea how many facebook pages are graced with my mug.

3. Once we took the public bus rather than a tuk-tuk. It was only 5 rupees--70 rupees= 1 euro-- and was crammed full of Sikhs going about their day. I was wedged in between S and the window, when I noticed the sign written with a sharpie pen above the door. "No eve-teasing allowed. If there is a problem, kindly tell the bus driver." This was the first time I had seen a public acknowledgement of a pervasive problem in India: men harassing women. I'd experienced it constantly. On the subway, men grabbed by ass, touched my hand and made no effort to hide that they were undressing me with their eyes. Men leered, stared, and licked their lips in my presence. Even with my better half standing right there. I shudder to think of how I would have been treated had I been alone. It was disgusting and I often felt violated. Before we left I read of a Swiss woman who was brutally gang raped while her boyfriend was beaten nearly to death. While  we were there, an American woman who was hitchhiking was picked up by two men and raped savagely. For the first time ever, I felt a bit of fear traveling to a place. The "no eve teasing" sign didn't really make me feel safer, but it at least suggested that in one city, a planned city at that, the behaviour is not deemed civilized. It seemed to weird to take a picture of the sign, however.