THANE: It’s a humid March afternoon, ideal for a restful siesta. But Shama, 40, has dropped her chores and is running frantically through the grimy lanes of Gaibi Nagar, Bhiwandi. She is drenched in sweat, her breathing heavy with panic, as she searches for her three-year-old daughter, who has suddenly vanished from the neighbourhood.
Shama’s older daughter had taken her younger sibling to a shop to buy chocolates. After having their fill, they decided to play in a nearby ground, but in a blink of an eye, the toddler went missing. Realising her absence, she rushed home to inform her mother.
Since then, Shama has been searching for her. “I thought he took her,” she told this reporter in a faint voice, still shaking. A week ago, Shama had confronted an inebriated man who tried to molest her.
She retaliated and a war of words ensued between the two not before the man turned away in anger. Women in the neighbourhood are used to strategizing to ward off the male gaze. And when Shama’s daughter went missing, she was sure “it was him – I still remember the menacing look in his eyes when he turned away from me”.
By the evening, it came to pass that her child had wandered off from the playground to stock up on candies and drifted into the neighbouring Fatima Nagar, where one of Shama’s friends spotted her and called her mother. “I don’t want her to suffer in this inhuman world. Every day, we hear of molestation and rape cases here.
I just want to keep her safe,�.