of evenings and eve teasers

JNU's Ganga Dhaba is open till three in morning, and therefore itattracts a huge crowd, not just of students of campus, but also'elements from outside'. And some of these 'elements', seeing girls ofthe campus sip cups of coffee alone, think they are 'available.' Oreven if they don't think that, they definitely think they have alicense for cheap thrills. So there was this group of girls sippingcoffee near the condom vending machine, which serves a hundred foldmore as a coffee vendor than otherwise as the media would like theworld to believe. Anyways, there were these four guys from Ber Sarai,a place nearby that houses UPSC fighters, media persons and localloafers.So the boys winked at the girls, passed some lewd comments, asked fortheir numbers. Someone intervened and they followed the usual patternof "Do you know whose son I am? Come to Ber Sarai and we'll tell youthere" The students got incensed, the Group 4 guards were called.There is nothing unusual about this scene. It's routine. Lessons areoften taught, but never learnt. So the guards came, and now the boyswere on their guard. They begged for apology, but that too withattitude, "Yaar uncle maaf kar do." And yaar uncle unleash a volley offist fury and gave them quite a sound thrashing. Kicks, fists, headsbanged against each other. It was a spectacle. A crowd had gathered,and it seemed they'd be beaten up by everyone. They were whisked awayin the van in good time.What the guys did is abhorrent, but one wondered if the reaction isjustified. I've heard it's a deterrent – to beat them up black andblue - but how do incidents recur if it's a deterrent. If weapons area deterrent, how do wars happen? One wonders whether the crowds thatgather are themselves free of eve teasers? When these tales arerecounted by someone, One always jingoistically reeacts, "Achha kiyamaara saalon ko." But the spectacle made me rethink.I was reading Let's Kill Gandhi by Tushar Gandhi the other day.Nathuram killed the Father of the Nation amidst a crowd of eighthundred people, and lived to see his trial. I haven't heard of such acrowd ever before. The counter argument of course is, had Gandhiallowed securitymen with guns, it would never have happened.I do not have answers, but have questions for sure that need to be mulled upon.