Streets

I want to tell you what happened on our street the year Nelson Mandela was released from prison. I didn't understand everything about who he was but I thought anyone standing up for his principles against hateful people and then suffering twenty-seven years for it had to be a hero. One evening, I was strolling up and down our street with my then best friend; both of us roughly nine years old, brown hair down to our shoulders, perhaps complaining about school or whispering about our respective crushes. A boy, a few years older than us was riding his bicycle with his friends. He lived on a different street but we knew him by face. As if on a dare, he began riding his cycle as close to us as possible, smiling proudly the whole time, like he was some brave Hindi film hero, teasing girls and getting away with it. I didn't want him to feel that good when all he was doing was being a nuisance. So I called out to him, telling him to mind his own business. His friends laughed, his face reddened, and he rode away, the tinkle of his cycle bell fading quickly in the distance. But a woman on our street, someone’s mother, heard the story the next day, and told me, good little girls should never be aggressive.

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Sayantani Dasgupta’s hometown is the wonderfully chaotic Delhi, India. She teaches at the University of Idaho. Her writing has appeared in Gulf Stream, SN Review, Sugar Mule and other journals. Her essay On Seeking Answers received a 2010 Pushcart Prize Special Mention and the essay Oscillation was the first runner up for Phoebe magazine’s 2014 Creative Nonfiction Contest. She is also the nonfiction editor of Crab Creek Review.