saturday night struggles

I like electronic music and dubstep and D&B, and I love going to concerts (in case my post about seeing David Guetta couldn't tip you off). I was really excited to be in Delhi by myself so that I could see some shows here, but that hasn't been the case for a bunch of reasons. For example, last weekend was shot because I was in the hospital, but I was hoping that this weekend would be different. This weekend, I thought, I was going to grab the bull by the horns and go out.

To get more "in touch" with the music scene here, I liked a couple of pages on Facebook because that's how it's done these days or something. Most notable is BASSFoundation, which bills itself as, "a collective of DJs, producers and MCs promoting Drum & Bass, Dubstep in Delhi and India." Great. Totally up my alley. And they just posted this status, which I'm posting below.

Now here's the thing. I looked at their website, and Zook is right by my house; it's no more than a fifteen minute ride by auto. It's also would be so much fun to go and see a DJ in Delhi, and I would love to get out of the house and do something a little bit different. The one catch is the 11:30PM start time because I can't be out of the house at 11:30PM by myself. In fact, I'm terrified to be alone in Delhi at a bar at 11:30PM. If I was in Boston or in New York, I would have no issues with hoofing out on my own to see a DJ at 11:30PM on a Saturday night, but it's a totally different story here.

While I've been here, there have been a couple of high-profile rape cases in Gurgaon, a city that's 18 miles south of New Delhi. Basically, a 23-year old woman was by herself at a pub and was gang raped. Although that in of itself is frightening, what's even more frightening to me is the response from police. Essentially, their answer to this problem was to ban women from going out past 8PM. Granted, New Delhi isn't Gurgaon, but the two cities are very close. To create an analogy that my readers would understand, the relationship between New Delhi and Gurgaon is like that between Boston and Cambridge. They're technically different cities, but if you spend the day in Cambridge and say you were visiting Boston, you wouldn't necessarily be wrong.

I'm in a bit of a pickle, because I really want to go to this show. It sounds like a lot of fun and I'd love the opportunity to meet young people in Delhi who are interested the same music that I am. But the 11:30PM start time is a deal breaker, especially considering the fact that I would be going by myself and going anywhere by myself in this city is an invitation to be harassed and catcalled even in broad daylight. The worst part is when I think, "If I was a boy, I could go by myself with no problems." That's just not a productive way to think, and I know that, but I often wish there was a way for me to fly under the radar, to go places without being on the defensive. My two least favorite sounds are when men smack their lips at me like you would when you're calling for your dog and when they say, "Ma'am! Oh, madam!" in a vain attempt to grab my attention for whatever reason.

But back to the main point. It boils down to the fact that I can't take the risk of going out by myself as a foreign woman in New Delhi on a Saturday night, and it's absolutely killing me that I can't do what I want, when I want to do it because there's a safety risk or because it's socially inappropriate, which in turn causes a safety risk. I need to trust my gut on this one though, and my gut is telling me to stay in tonight.

So that's exactly what I'm going to do. I bought "The Dirty Picture" on DVD today, so I'll be watching that and eating Oreos with peanut butter. I wish I could go to that concert, but the benefits aren't worth the costs. I need to grit my teeth and remind myself that there's nothing I can do, that I'm making the responsible decision, but that doesn't make it any easier or any fairer.