I'm on the radio!!! Radio Indigo, the color of music, 91.9FM here in Bangalore. For about ten seconds once or twice a day. I just recorded the spot a couple days ago. Let me explain...

I've been volunteering all my free time (which is considerable, now that I'm no longer working) with the Blank Noise Project, a group which fights street sexual harassment (known euphemistically here as "eve-teasing"). For Women's Day on March 8, we've got a big event coming up, in partnership with Radio Indigo. So as a promo for the event, we've got these clips on the radio of women saying what they 'want', for themselves or for the city. And I'm one of the clips. I say my name, and then "this is what I want. I want smiles to be innocuous. I wish I didn't have to analyze whether a man's smile was friendly, or threatening. I want to smile back without an implied invitation." Some clips from other women: "I want to get a double doctorate and not worry about settling down." "I wish I could walk down the road without the weight of a hundred eyes on me." "I want to be able to walk - slowly, deliberately, calmly, alone."

Volunteering with Blank Noise has been fantastic. I love the people, and it's a great outlet for me. Like a lot of women here, I get harassed/eve-teased regularly when I go out, no matter what I'm wearing. I've tried a variety of responses -- ignoring them, snapping back, laughing it off, etc. But it still makes me incredibly angry and frustrated and sometimes a little ashamed -- as if I have done something wrong. So it's a good release to be a part of a group forcing people to confront the issue. I'm so tired of hearing people say that there's nothing that can be done, you just have to ignore it and pretend you don't notice.