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A few of my friends and I were just paying our bills and coming out ofour regular Friday night watering hole and dinner place in Rest HouseRoad, just off Brigade Road, and most of the women in the company werealready standing outside. Some of us outside were smoking, people werehappy, there was laughter and jokes, as there were many other peoplein the street, all coming out, satiated, in the closing hour of thevarious pubs and restaurants around.Suddenly from up the street a massive SUV comes revving and speeding,hurtling down, and stops in a scream of brakes and swirling dust,millimeters away from this group of 4 women, barely missing one oftheir legs. A white Audi, imported, still under transfer, with theregistration plate of KA-51 TR-2767. Some millionaire's toy thing,that in the wrong hands can kill.Naturally the women are in shock. And quickly following the shockcomes indignation. These are self made women running their ownbusinesses, managing state responsibilities for global NGO firms,successful doctors. They are not used to being bullied. So they turnaround, instead of shrinking back in fear. They protest.And as soon as they turn around in protest, the car doors are flungopen, and a stream of 4-5 rabid men run out towards these women,screaming obscenities in Hindi and Kannada against women in general,fists flailing. Some of us who came in running at the sound of thescreaming brakes now stand in the middle in defense of our women, andthen blows start raining down. One of the goons make a couple of callsover the cellphone, and in seconds a stream of other equally rabidgoondas land up. They gun straight for the women, and everyone – a fewwell-meaning bystanders, acquaintances who know us from therestaurant, basically everyone who tries to help the women – startsgetting thoroughly beaten up.Women are kicked in the groin, punched in the stomach, slapped acrossthe face, grabbed everywhere, abused constantly. Men are smashed upprofessionally, blows aimed at livers, groins, kidneys and nose. Afriend is hit repeatedly on the head by a stone until he passes out ina flood of blood.A plain-clothes policeman (Vittal Kumar) who saunters in late standsby watching and urging people to stop, but doing absolutely nothingelse. A 'cheetah' biker cop comes in, with our women pleading him tostop this madness, but he refuses action, saying a police van willcome in soon and he cannot do anything. Everyone keeps gettinghammered. Relentlessly.The carnage continues for over 20 minutes.Finally when the police van does come in it is this vandals who areraging and ranting, claiming to be true "sons of the Kannadiga soil",and we are positioned to be the villainous outsiders, bleeding,outraged. How do the cops believe them, especially seeing the bloodyfaces of our men and the violated rage of our women, while they carrynary a scratch on their bodies? Don't ask me! Yet, it is us who thesegoondas urge the newly arrived law-keepers to arrest, and the policepromptly comply, and we are bundled into the van, some still beingbeaten as we are pushed in. Some blessed relief from pain inside thepolice van at least, even if we are inside and the real goons outside,driving alongside in their spanking white Audi. The guy who was hit bythe stone is taken separately by the women to Mallya hospital.Inside the police station at Cubbon Park it becomes clear that thesegoons and the police know each other by their first names. Thepoliceman in charge (Thimmappa) initially refuses to even register anycomplaint from me, on the purported grounds that I am not fluent inKannada and I have taken a few drinks (3 Kingfisher pints, to beprecise) over the evening. No, it doesn't matter that I didn't have mycar and was not driving, and no, it doesn't mater that the complaintwill be written in English. We watch them and the goons exchangesmiles and nods with our our bloodied and swelling eyes and realize inour pain-clouded still-in-shock brains the extent of truth in theclaim of one of the main goons when he claimed earlier in the eveningin virulent aggression: we own this town, this car belongs to an MLA,we will see how you return to this street!!This was the turning point of the saga, I guess.. For we refused to liedown quietly and be victims.One of our girls, a vintage and proud Bangalorean who is running oneof the town's most successful organic farming initiatives, took uponherself to write the complaint, when I was not allowed to write thesame. Another Bangalore girl, a state director of a global NGO firm,wrote the other molestation complaint separately on behalf of all thegirls. Some of us called our friends in the media and corporate world.Everyone stepped up. And even when the odds were down and we were out,we did not give up, and as a singular body of violated citizens wespoke in one voice of courage and indomitable spirit. That voice hadno limitation of language, not Kannada, nor English, or Hindi. It wasthe voice of human spirit that cannot be broken.And in the face of that spirit, for the first time, we saw the uglyvisage of vandalism, hiding behind the thin and inadequate veil ofpolitical corrupt power, narrow-vision regionalism and self-servingmorality, start to wilt.We spent 6 hours next day in the police station. The sub-inspector ofpolice who filed our FIR, Ajay R M, seemed a breath of fresh airinasmuch that he did not appear a-priori biased like others, eventhough the hand of corruption and politico-criminal power backingthese goons was still manifest in many ways: a starched, white-linenpower-broker walked in handing over his card to the sub-inspector insupport of the goons; the goons got an audience with the Inspectorbecause of this intervention, while we had to interact one level lowerdown in the hierarchy; the plains cloth policeman of last night, eventhough he had arrived far too late in the crime scene, gave a warpedstatement, passing it off as a "neutral" point of view, repeatedlystressing that we came out of a pub and hence were drinking,positioning this as a 'drunken brawl', while completely forgetting tomention the unprovoked attack against the women and the one-sidedvandalism and violence that ensued. I guess one cannot blame the lowranked police officer – the criminal connections of these goons mustbe pervasive enough for him to be careful.Thanks however to the impartial handling of the situation by Ajay,soon the goons were all identified. The lead actor was one RaviMallaya (38), a real estate honcho and owner of a small property offBrigade Road which he has converted into a "gaming" (you know whatthat means, don't you?) adda. The others identified are Mohan Basava(22) of Chamarajapet 12th Cross, R. Vijay Kumar Ramalingaraju (25) andShivu Rajashekar (20). All are residents of 12th & 13th Cross inVyalikaval. Their bravado and machismo were by that time evaporated.It was good to see their faces then.Of course nothing much happened to them, nor did we expect it. Theywere supposed to be in lock up for at least the weekend till they wereproduced in court, but we understand that they were quickly releasedon (anticipatory?) bail. The car, purportedly belonging to an MLA,also does not figure in the FIR, apparently for reasons of"irrelevance to the case".The media also have given us fantasticcoverage and support so far, strengthening the cause.The goons meanwhile, as an after thought, also filed the customaryreverse complaint on the morning after we filed our own complaint: thewomen have apparently scratched the car! (Why did they not file thecomplaint the same night, considering they came to the Police Stationin the same car? Why was the car allowed to be taken off policecustody? Why is the car still irrelevant to the case and not in theFIR? Questions.. questions..).Is this the end of this saga? Probably not. Are these women, moreprecious to us as friends and wives than most things in our lives,safe to walk or drive down Brigade Road from now on or are the goondaelements, slighted by this arrest and disgrace, are lying in ambush,waiting, biding their time to cause some of us more grievous harm? Wedon't know. Is there reason for us to remain apprehensive of futureattacks and victimization? Perhaps.But here is the point.We stood up.We believed in the power of individual citizens even in the face ofhooliganism, intolerance, corruption and power mongering. Even thoughmany of us have the option of leveraging political or governmentconnections, we deliberately chose to fight this battle asindividuals. Sure, these connections have been activated and they havebeen kept informed, should the worst case scenario unfold tomorrow.But we have chosen to not leverage them. And in every small win weregister as a group of individual outraged citizens of Bangalore andIndia, however insignificant these milestones may be in the largerscheme of things, there is one small notch adding up in favor of whatis right, one small notch against what is wrong. And we believe thatevery such small notch counts, each such mark is absolutelyinvaluable..It is the people who make this city, this country, this world. It isyou and I, as much as the terrorists inside and outside. And in oursmall insignificant little ways, it is my responsibility and yours tonot shirk from investing effort – not just lip service or any tokenattempt, but real effort – in backing up what we ourselves believe in.It is so easy to logically argue that everything is corrupt, nothingis worth it, there are so many risks involved. We must not fall trapto this escapist trend. We must not fail to try.Next time you feel outraged, violated, abused, don't let it go by andadd up to your list of litanies and complaints. Stand up and take itto the limit - at least your own limit. Not in the same way as theywrong you, but in the way that every citizen, at least in theory, isentitled to complain and protest. Do not let the hooligans power rantscare you or prompt you into submission. Do not allow the corrupt copmake you give up trying. Carry the flame forward. Try harder.If are up to it, start right now.Forward this note to everyone you want to be made aware of this. Postit in your own blogs. Talk about it amongst your circles. And ifanyone of you should like to step forward with a word of empathy oradvise, talk to me. Comment.It is not Bangalore that is going to the dogs. It is us. We have fartoo long become accustomed to let everything go. And the more we letthings go without any protest or fight, the dormant criminal and darkelements of the society get that much more encouraged. Every time weturn the other way, the hooligan next street gets incentivized to pushthe boundary a little further, provoke a little more, try something alittle more atrocious. It is time for us to refuse to let this go on.We are responsible for making ourselves proud. Lets believe inourselves. We can do this.My name is Saugata Chatterjee. And I am standing up.I refuse to letBangalore go to the hooligan slumdogs, even if some of them are petsof corrupt power millionaires.