You never know to what extent an event has affected you until one day it jumps at you. I had my moment last week. A couple of days back, I had written on this blog how I suddenly felt calm and peaceful while going home in a bus one evening. The BEST buses must be my equivalent of the proverbial Banyan tree because I seem to reach some conclusions with alarming clarity while traveling in one. This time, I realized that the feelings that I had experienced were neither peace nor calmness – but just plain old relief. I was relieved to see that not every male in this country is out to rape women, that there is still some measure of normalcy left in the day-to-day life where people are just interested in reaching home to their loved ones at the end of the day, that women need not look over their shoulders every time another passenger in an almost empty bus gets down at the next stop….

It was then that I realized how deeply the Delhi incident - plus the continued barrage of news of similar incidents being displayed over and over in a ticker on the display in the bus – has affected me. L