Twenty-year-old Dolma Choden remembers how one day she came across this one guy who, at first, seemed pretty decent. [break]
"He was a normal-looking guy -the kind you meet every day on the road. He sat beside me on the microbus and the fifteen minutes next to him were the scariest moments of my whole life," says Dolma.
Choden remembers how at first he talked to her and slowly put his hands across her shoulder and then began to caress her back.
"I asked him to move away but the microbus was too crowded. He even took out a ring he was wearing and forced me to wear it," Dolma recalls.
Dolma then asked the microbus to stop and walked down. She says she walked for the next forty minutes but did not have the guts to get on another vehicle. She did not even have courage to lodge a complaint to the police.
The guy Dolma faced is only a minor instance of what girls have to go through daily while traveling in public transport.
Ritu recalls being pressed against her private body parts by an elderly man.
"He must have been in his 50s and he had grey hair but he did not stop harassing me even after I asked him to leave me alone," she says.
The elderly man molested her every now and then and Ritu had no other option than to get off the vehicle. Nobody in the vehicle would take her side.
When asked about the state of girls traveling on public vehicles, the drivers and the conductors remain apathetic.
"What can I do? I have to concentrate while driving," says Ram Chandra Thapa, a microbus driver.
Drivers hardly ever look back. They are busy looking outside for more passengers. The micro buses are mostly overcrowded and the conductors are busy collecting money.
"I am busy collecting the fare and I don´t get to see what is going on," says Bikash Regmi.
When asked why they had to cram so many people at one time, Regmi says that he wouldn´t be paid otherwise.
It is not only in public transport that girls have to face the evil menace. Girls are harassed even while walking on the street alone, especially along lonely narrow lanes. Girls are also more prone to be harassed if walked after dark, after the concerts or public festivals. Crowds provide good opportunity to molesters.
"I recall a guy I met on my way to college. He constantly asked me questions about me and after a while he was purposely touching me while he talked," confides an 18-year- old Sameekcha.
The guy insisted her to tell him about her sex life when she tried to end the conversation by telling him that she had already tied the knot.
The girls who suffered from sexual harassment blame the social educational and psychological reasons.
"It is also due to the movies that show scenes and songs that are sexually appealing," says Dolma, "Girls are harassed by boys even singing sexy songs at them."
Sexual harassment has affected girls psychologically and academically. Prachi, a 21-year-old girl confides that she had to be absent from her morning college many times in winter for fear of being sexually harassed by unruly boys.
"Concerned authority should ensure security," demands Prachi.
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