Perfectly normal crimes against women

It's been raining in Chennai for almost three weeks. There's one thing I love about the rains – I get to wear my raincoat! It's brown, thick, long and big enough to cover me with my handbag, and has a nice visor which keeps the rain off my glasses. I look like a witch in it – not a cute witch from Harry Potter but like a proper hag from Macbeth.

Obviously, when I wear my raincoat, I don't get wet. But you know what I do get? Totally non-creepy offers for lifts by men on two wheelers (which I can't accept), lower fares in autos, and a nice walk in the rain without any stares or catcalls. Why? It's a men's raincoat that I bought it to test out the 'men's clothes are comfortable while women's clothes just look good' theory, and only part of my face is visible when I wear it. It makes me look more like an adolescent boy than a woman. And that's the difference.

Till these things happened to me, I didn't realize why I saw only women stranded at the bus stops when the city goes underwater. And, I'd always ignored all the catcalls I got when I walked with an umbrella. Sometimes I blamed myself for getting my clothes wet and looking 'indecent'. Just like all women in Chennai. It's one thing to know that women are oppressed, but realizing that I was actually accepting some of society's perversions as normal...too much!