New Delhi: A midnight march by women to protest against "touching, staring, groping, pinching and stalking" sounded heroic enough until the protesters ran into stalking Romeos lining up the path.
With 3,850 cases of violence, including 654 rapes and 197 sexual harassment complaints reported in the national capital in 2005, the event seemed the right way to highlight the women's safety issues.
But that was not to be.
The Night Action Plan I - as the event was christened - was organised by the Blank Noise Project. Their invite to "come in something you always wanted to wear on the streets but could not" seemed irresistible.
However, the protesters were "leched" at, ridiculed and booed along the three-kilometre stretch of the march - the first of its kind in New Delhi - that began at the Dilli Haat cultural complex and culminated at the Sarojini Nagar market.
The organisers, who ran into trouble even before the roadside Romeos, managed to round up just 15 participants.
The protesters, in their spaghetti tops and accented English, made quite an impact on the streets. Those who hadn't turned up in a "mod and hep" attire seemed clearly overdressed.
Armed with placards, posters and red arrow tags, the protesters split into groups of three and four and headed towards Sarojini Nagar, one of the city's most popular middle class shopping area.
En route they discussed their harassment experiences on the streets even as eve-teasers chased and sneered at the posters and stencilled messages against them.
There was Susan who had left her three children behind to attend the midnight march. When she was groped by a man on a bus as a child, she had burst into tears. "I want girls to put up a fight, not weep."
Almost all the participants were molestation victims.
Abigail, an American who works for an NGO here, said she refuses to make eye contact with Indian men. She has been sexually harassed in buses and markets in New Delhi as well as other cities.
Abigail, who speaks fluent Hindi, said: "Often men abuse me in Hindi, thinking that I do not understand the language."
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