Women's Helpline

Living with a bunch of gals makes you have so many late nights gossiping about everything and nothing. On one such night, when three of us were up chatting away to glory, one of the gals got a prank call. She told us that this same person had been calling her, although infrequently, but over a period of a year. And somehow when she got a second phone, he got the new number as well. The guy wouldn't tell his name but insisted on the gal telling him her name and whereabouts. Now why would a gal do that?

That particular night if you cut his call, he would keep on calling. If you received it, he would call again after 10-15 minutes. And then there were the lovey-dovey smses... So on a high of being together and sharing a false bravado, we threatened him if he were to call again we would tell the police. He started getting abusive at that and that's the last we took his call though he called at least another 20 times after that.

Idealistic that we still are at times and the belief we still have in authority however unwonted, we gave a call to 100 to take the Women Helpline Number - 1090.

It was 11 in the night, and we gave a call to 1090. The person on the other end asked us to give us a call in half an hour. Is this the response one expects when one is in need? And why was the helpline answered by an insensitive male? There should have been a compassionate female at the other end. We told the person it will be too late for us to give a call so late, so he asked us to give our number and he would give us a call. When we insisted on taking down a complaint right away, he refused and asked us to call within half an hour again. We were disheartened.

By 11:30 p.m. we got a call from a mobile number and the person introduced himself as SI Rajinder Singh. He said he wants to take our statement and so will come down to our place. We said we do not want to give a statement so late in the night and he can do so in the morning or we can go to the Sarita Vihar police station in the morning. He became rude and started scolding us for not writing down a statement. We had to coax and cajole him and tell him that we are girls and we are scared and not comfortable with going to a police station so late in the night. And that too for no fault of ours. And we are not comfortable with a police officer visiting us late in the night as well. And asked him to not harass us more when we were already harassed by a random guy because of those calls. He cooled down a bit and asked us to go to the police station in the morning to write down the complaint.

At 1:00 O' clock the SI again gave us a call, but we didnt take it. There were some footsteps ouside our window followed by footsteps on our doorstep. But we turned off all the lights and lay quietly without making a sound, waiting for whoever it was to go away.

By the way, should not a lady officer be handling such cases? And why would a police officer threaten a gal who is already scared because of strange calls? Why do they publicize Women's Helpline if the people on the other end are neither sensitive nor compassionate? Why would I again give a call to them if I was ever in trouble? Why would I advise any of my friends to trust in the system and ask for help from the police or the helpline?

I wish I could still believe in the rightness of the system, the idealism of humanity and the goodness of people. I still do believe in some of it, but that's the optimistic in me. I doubt there are many out there who would go through such an experience and still find the faith...