the beauty and the beast

Yesterday afternoon, while walking across DLF Phase 2, I heard inhuman squealing up ahead. A couple of guys had bound the feet of a pig, and its mouth, with a sutli and were dragging it along on its back on the road. Wincing but accepting this as an unavoidable reality of our country, I walked ahead.

A black car stopped and the window rolled down. An aunty started speaking to the men and I assumed that she was the one who had asked them to drag the pig so. Another girl passing by stopped, and started speaking to the guys. A crowd of onlookers started agthering now. I walked over. A third girl joined in.

All the girls were absolute stunners - no doubt about that. the crowd of men ogled at them in the unabashed manner of Indian men -- a few tittered again in the wretched manner that indian males have. the girls were asking the guys why they were dragging the pig so. they gave some half-hearted talk of how they had been authorised to remove the pig because of the nuisance it was creating and there was a vehicle waiting at the corner.
I admit I again accepted this definition.

Authorised by whom?
Which vehicle?

The girls persisted. Some mumbled answers.

One of the girls pointed taht the pig was bleeding through the nose. Its chest was heaving heavily too.

I finally stepped in and asked the men why they could not at least have taken a rickshaw to transport the pig. One of the men whipped out a mobile and walked away. The other, seeing a male adversary, tried to get heavy-handed with me but when I didn't relent, he again fell to mumblings. We asked him to cut the ropes.
I am not authorised.
Authorise by whom? We screamed in unison. Police was mentioned.

The ropes were cut, the pig ran to a ditch and sat there heaving. A dog which had followed the proceedings with a strange empathy, walked to him, touched his nose with his, and walked away.

The man started walking away saying that he has to call the authority. I followed him to a distance only to see that the other man had brought in a bike, which the man clambered over, and they fled.

Thoughts:

I accepted the sight as unavoidable and nothing you can do about it: the girls didn't.
The girls braved unwanted attention from thirty men to stand for what they believed in -- I shied.
When the question of police came, even tho' I knew that the station was barely a kilmetre away I didn't know A) the number and how to get it B) what I will tell the police C) how I will follow it up.
The men for all their swagger were scared the moment their bluff of "chalta hai" was called - all it took was the lady in the car to stop.
In this country, women have more balls than men.