There is something fascinating about our relationship with abuse (gaalis).

We tolerate it when it comes wrapped in power. We laugh at it when celebrities throw it around. We excuse it as ‘passion’ when politicians lose their temper. We even romanticize the foul-mouthed hero in our films.

But let an ordinary person, especially a woman, use the very same language to protect herself, and suddenly society develops impeccable manners.

I learned this lesson many years ago, somewhere on a dusty highway in North India.

I was travelling with my grandparents. We had stopped at a roadside dhaba for tea before continuing our journey. It was one of those places where everyone knows that if trouble arrives, help probably won’t.

And trouble did arrive.

A few local goons began harassing my grandparents. Not violently. Not yet. Just enough to remind everyone around who controlled that little patch of earth.

My grandparents did what decent people often do.

They tried to avoid confrontation.

They smiled nervously.

They reasoned.

They stepped back.

Because sometimes age teaches you that surviving is more important than winning.

I watched all of this from a distance.

I had just started my career a few months earlier and had been living in southern India. I came from a home where language had boundaries. My parents never abused. I had never heard my father use a gaali. My mother never did either.

I was probably one of the least qualified people to become the heroine of this story.

But then something snapped.

I walked straight towards those men.

And what happened next would have made even seasoned truck drivers blush.

There wasn’t a comma. There wasn’t a full stop. It was uninterrupted – creative, grammatically flawless and culturally authentic Hindi abuse.

The kind that could make dictionaries resign.

The men froze.

Perhaps because they hadn’t expected a woman.

Perhaps because confidence is far more frightening than violence.

Or perhaps because I sounded like I had graduated from a university they didn’t know existed.

Finger pointed.

Eyes locked.

Gaali after gaali.

Step after step.

Until, quite unbelievably, those mighty guardians of masculinity quietly retreated into their Omni van and drove away.

I turned around expecting applause.

Instead, I found horror.

My grandparents looked at me as though I had personally destroyed Indian civilization.

On the drive home, there was complete silence.

Then came the family trial.

My grandparents narrated the incident to my mother with greater emotion than they had described the actual harassment.

“Do you know what your daughter said?”

“Even boys don’t use such language.”

“We’ve never heard such filthy abuses in our lives.”

The house fell silent.

My brother, of course, was trying very hard not to laugh.

Then my father came home.

The story was repeated once again.

I quietly disappeared into my room, convinced that the final verdict was about to be delivered.

My brother and I sat there drinking orange juice while I complained.

“What exactly did I do wrong?”

“I saved them.”

“If that’s the reward, perhaps I should have just stood there and watched.”

Then my father walked in.

“I heard what happened today.”

I sighed.

“Please, Dad. I know. I shouldn’t have abused.”

Instead, he looked at the glasses in our hands.

“What are you two drinking?”

“Orange juice.”

“I’d be very surprised if this house had alcohol and I didn’t know about it,” I replied.

He laughed.

Then he looked at me and said something I have carried with me ever since.

“Life will put you in situations where there won’t be a perfect answer. You took the decision you believed would protect your family. You don’t have to spend your life justifying actions that cannot be undone.”

Then he smiled.

“And remember… Well-behaved women rarely make history.”

He told my brother to continue the juice party and quietly walked away.

That conversation changed something inside me.

Today, when people argue endlessly about whether abuse is always unacceptable, I think of that afternoon.

No.

Abuse is not a virtue.

Civil conversation is always preferable.

Respectful disagreement is a mark of maturity.

But language is also a tool.

Sometimes a scalpel.

Sometimes a shield.

Sometimes a siren.

And occasionally, when every civilised option has failed, it becomes the only language a bully understands.

The real moral question isn’t whether a gaali was spoken.

It is why it was spoken.

Was it used to humiliate the powerless?

Or was it used to stop someone from abusing power?

Those are two entirely different acts wearing the same vocabulary.

My grandparents remembered the words.

My father remembered the courage.

I know which memory I would rather carry.

Even today, whenever life presents me with impossible choices, I hear my father’s voice.

“Well-behaved women rarely make history.”

He was right.

History has rarely been written by people who were more concerned with appearing polite than with standing up to bullies.

---

Afterthought

Some parents teach us to speak politely. The rare ones also teach us when silence is the greater mistake.