I’m trying hard to write this calmly. Truth is, I am infuriated as I write. Not least, because I have a young daughter.
Many years ago, I was a teenager in Delhi. My sister, two years younger than me – about 13 or 14 – had an informal “summer job” with a friend who ran a travel agency nearby. She would go there every day, arrange papers and address envelopes and such like. It was really just a chance for her to help out and feel like she was contributing.
But one day she came running home in tears, barely able to speak. A young man at the agency had pawed her. We didn’t ask if it was “inappropriate” nor did she have to tell us. The state she was in said it all. He had touched her as no girl should be touched and yet as pretty much every woman in this country has been touched at some point in her life.
Leave aside legal language for a moment. An assault, and a sexual assault in particular, is one of those things we recognise without needing it defined. The…