I recently returned from a holiday and landed at my local airport. Flying through the corridors and through e-gate I was as normal superfast next to the luggage carousel; then I had to wait.

It was a busy evening due to the end of the Eid Holidays but despite there being some empty carousels, the airport thought it would be wise to unload luggage for two planes at the same carousel. So after waiting for 30 odd minutes, we were suddenly beseeched with Indian passengers from the Indigo flight whose luggage was coming at the same carousel.

As always with Indian people, they don’t understand invasion of space. This young man was a prime example of this. With his dell backpack he stood as close as possible to me, hitting and pushing me with his body and bag several times. I couldn’t move back as there was a man standing close behind me. I wasn’t going to move away from my spot as I had been here for long enough and I was sure my suitcase would come.

After a few hits, the young man’s suitcase came. When it came, I was whacked with the backpack and suitcase. As I cannot seem to control my mouth, I tapped him on his shoulder and quietly said “will you be saying sorry to me for hitting me so many times”.

The man turned around and the following was what was said to me

“I didn’t hit you”

“Yes you did”

“It was my bag that hit you”

“Will you be saying sorry”?

“No, I wont be saying sorry to you, you don’t deserve it” [starts yelling]

“So its fine to hit a woman and not apologise”

“You are not a lady. No one would go out with you as you are so ugly”

At this point another man piped up and asked me what my problem was. I responded to him telling him to mind his own business and was he ok about another man hitting a woman. He shut up.

 “So you are fine with hitting women then”.

“Yes you deserved it”.

(Under my breath I swore – slip of the tongue but very quiet admittedly even for me)

“See you are not a lady, you are a piece of shit and an idiot. I am from Dubai and you cannot talk like that”

“I’m from here as well so fine I will tell the police how you have behaved”.

“The police will do nothing, you deserved it”.

“Wonderful, so its fine to hit a woman like it is to rape women as well isn’t it” (Yeah I said that – not proud, but it shocked him enough to walk away slightly).

I finally gave up.

I didn’t move but during this time I was surrounded by other Indian men just glaring at me.  If you have seen a Bollywood movie you would have seen the mob mentality that prevails when there is an argument or fight going on. Same thing here.

I was worried, but I am too stubborn to move and to allow bad manners to prevail. He hit me. Any gentleman or normal person would have apologized immediately and moved away. He started being defensive, yelling and getting personal.  I am sure that this man and the men surrounding me thought I would shut up after being yelled at, but they didn’t realize I was a mouthy British girl. I was also concerned that no police or security came to help even though he was yelling very loudly at me.

It wasn’t just the men, an old woman decided to slam her trolley into my leg after this argument, and then push me out of the way as well. I had given up by then to say anything. The purposeful way she behaved, showed that she was not amused with me arguing with this man. The general consensus was that it was fine for this man to do what he wanted and get away with it.

No one came to defend me, but the passengers from my plane (mostly Sri Lankans) did not behave in the same manner. It sounds awful but it was all the passengers from Indigo who acted like animals pushing and shoving at the carousel.

I did have a chance to do payback. I decided that going to the police would escalate the situation too much and I didn’t want to wait around; I wanted to go home. So I went up to the customs man and kindly asked him to torture the bloke for a while with his luggage and just generally harass him. I gave him a description of the nasty boy and went on my way. I was reassured they would sort him out. Luckily there was also a CID man nearby who heard me and hope assisted with the harrassment. 🙂

Fortunately for us ladies, the local men generally deplore mistreatment of women so they were not amused by my story of what had happened.

What happened is unfortunately not an unusual occurrence with men from the sub continent. They have this desire to push and shove going into the lift, metro, anywhere. They will not hold the door for you and will be rude to you especially if you are an Indian looking woman. It is a generalization, and there are some men from the sub continent that I have met over the years who are kind, gentlemanly human beings; but the majority that I keep meeting on my travels and here in this town fall into the general category of acting disgracefully.  

I don’t know if their mothers taught them to behave like that, they have learnt it from other men or have just been allowed to behave like this, so they just keep doing it. However they have been brought up, this behaviour has to stop. They cannot get away with bullying, hitting, harassing, and dare I say it, raping, women.

I will always speak up when treated badly but we all need to make a stand against these awful imbeciles.