ABSTRACT
This article reads literary texts on sexual violence in Delhi in relation to social texts such as the successive plans for the development of Delhi, notably documents produced by the “Safe Delhi” campaigns to assess the culture of sexual violence in Delhi today in the wake of the horrendous gang rape of 2012, and a 2013 report evaluating public safety and legislation. It focuses on Manjula Padmanabhan’s [1996] 2013 short story “Teaser” which describes a man’s prurient excitement, sexual harassment of women and his sexual humiliation during a bus ride through Delhi. This is compared to a 2009 story by Anglo-Indian writer Irwin Allan Sealy, “First In, Last Out”, in which an auto-rickshaw driver metes out justice to rapists who stalk their prey on the isolated Delhi Ridge. The article argues that feminist inputs are crucial for imagining and bringing to reality a city free from sexual violence.
