My Dipti Sarna experience

The Darr-inspired stalking a Snapdeal employee created headlines but she’s not alone. A first-person account of a harrowing ordeal ...
I read what happened to Dipti Sarna, and the dramatic story of her abduction by a stalker. And my own fear was renewed. Fear makes you sit up all night with a knife in your hand. It makes you jump at every crash, whistle and footstep.It makes you worry about every missing or displaced object. My stalker was a 23-year-old former intern, more than ten years younger than me. He first swore love, then revenge because love was unrequited.
In the beginning were the phone calls, shattering the silence of the night. Then one day when I walked up to my barsati, I noticed the bathroom light flash on and off. I noticed too that the storeroom door was unlatched. Luckily I was accompanied by a friend. We went into the bathroom where I noticed the clothes didn’t look the way they had when I soaked them in the morning. Someone had been there, and was perhaps still around. That’s when I saw him standing near the fridge. It was June 2014.
He said I hadn’t answered his calls or emails so he had decided to come and meet me, climbing in through the kitchen window.
There was no reasoning with him. My friend tried to tell him he had trespassed, but he wouldn’t accept it. I said if he didn’t leave immediately, I’d call the police and as he ran down the stairs he promised I’d regret this.
Then came an email saying I would soon learn the cruelty of liberal Delhi, and for a while I was imprisoned in my own house, checking and rechecking windows and doors, looking under the bed, tugging at the locks to make sure they were secure. I bought pepper spray, and started sleeping with a knife.
I finally filed a police complaint, but my stalker secured bail the next day. I deposed in front of the magistrate who said she knew of such things, and suggested I go away for some time. I went to America, and when I returned, I moved to another apartment. He created fake Twitter profiles and sent mass emails to acquaintances calling me a “lonely, damaged spinster” and a “harasser”, while referring to himself as a whistle-blower.
This is what he wrote: “When I say whistle-blowers have always been men, it is a logical fact. I can’t recall any memorable image of women in the profession of whistling. Even in the school, Games madam never hung a whistle around her neck, Women whisper while the men whistle. It is the natural order of things.”
He harassed everyone I knew, sending them messages in which he called me a whore and a misandrist — a hater of men. Because I chose to remain single? To not respond to his advances? But being single is my choice. And to be a writer who writes about sexuality doesn’t make me a “whore”.
In May last year, he threatened to kill me. He tailed me to Patna. He defied the restraining order and continued to call me. He called from different numbers — one call was made from a Nizamuddin PCO. He was evidently still looking for me in the neighbourhood I once lived in.
He got arrested a second time, and got bail again.
I was tired of going to courts, and having the police stand guard at my door. I was tired of waking up at every noise in my room, and I was tired of keeping knives for company.
They ask me what he wants. I don’t know. I do know that I am under surveillance 24/7. But I have decided to live my life and write my stories.