"I'll be home before eight."

Two things happened on July 22, this year.

My mom’s what would have been her 50th birthday.

I boarded the train to Pune to start on the job I always wanted.

Exactly a month later, a 22-year old photo journalist was gang-raped in Mumbai. You read about these things happening every other day now and even then, I felt different, very different about this one. Maybe, because I was the same age. It could so easily have been me.

The news piece said, her mother called her when it was happening and one of the 5 men switched off the phone from then on.  My thoughts immediately went to my father who let his only daughter move away from his already empty home so that she could do what she always wanted. I called him twice every day. Still do. I’d talk about the new place I was sharing with my friend at the time, her absolutely crazy neighbours, how I travelled through 6 buses back and forth between my apartment and office, how I got lost one of those six times every day and somehow managed to find my way back in a city I knew nothing about.

Every month after making my routine payments of rent, food and internet, I tell him I might be short on money and he insists I take some from him to get me through, after all ‘Why did your mother and I work all these years?’ he says as I accuse him of being filmy and turn his offer down.  "I still have a quite a few bucks left." I tell him, “I’ll manage.”  And I do.  (Actually I know I will be fine from the beginning only. I’m just messing with him. Its fun and I’m dramatic like that.)

I’d be leaving for Diwali next week and I stopped to shop for things I could take home as I went empty-handed in the suddenly-planned trip last time.  I picked up two t-shirts for my brother. After a while I realized, I really liked one of those two and suspected I’d keep it by the time I got home so I got another one just like that for myself. Talk about greed. I called up my Dad to get his shirt-size and he refused to tell me. "Buy something for yourself, no? I don't need shirts. I already have many." He told me as I rolled my eyes all the way to my brain, standing in the middle of the shop.

"So do I, now are you telling me or am I supposed to get the first thing I lay my hands on?"

"Forty two. You just don’t listen to me."

"I know. That’s what I am supposed to do. It’s in the job description."

This one time, I'm out with people from the office. I know I'd be late and my battery is low. It's seven thirty when I retreat into a corner and give him a call. 

"I might be a tad bit late. Out with office people. Phone would possibly die so I thought I'd let you know in case you call and worry." I tell him, slightly bothered that he might not be very pleased. 

"I'm not in town, why should I even bother?" he says. 

"Oh wow. So cool are we now?"

He laughs and tells me that he knows I can take care of myself. "I trust you." He says, "More than I trust myself." There is a certain weight I feel everytime he says this to me.

This week a 23 year old software engineer was abducted by 2 men and raped in a moving Volvo.

For this one time, I won’t give you a paragraph of feminism. I won’t tell you how critical it is to teach your boys to respect women and to not look at them as mere objects or prizes to be claimed. I won’t tell you how it makes me cringe with rage within, every time I see victim blaming in the name of culture. I won’t tell you how badly I wanted to slap that piece of shit who cat-called me when I was walking home from office last week.

But, I will tell you this. Somewhere very far away, a 51-year old man calls his daughter who lives 800 kms from him - alone, when another such incident comes to light.

In that moment, there is nothing sadder that listening to him try hard to strike a normal everyday conversation amidst all the very noticeable concern filling the distance between them.

"I’ll be home before eight."

She tells him out of nowhere,then.