Yesterday, while I was on an important call via Facebook Messenger with a Dhaka-based photographer, my phone kept buzzing insistently. It was a close friend who lives in my neighbourhood who was trying to get in touch. I cancelled thrice, thinking I’d return her call the instant I got free, which I eventually did, just as my upstairs’ neighbour rang the bell. She wanted to take back the fan she’d left in my storeroom when winter had set in last year. My friend sounded frantic. She’d gone for a run to the big park that connects our colony with Nehru Place and the ISKCON temple. A creep began to follow her and started to make perverse conversation. 

A woman talks on her cell phone while crossing a road near Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus in Mumbai