We insist that our parents accompany us, said Hashim, a teenager in Old Seelampur. My mother has stopped complaining because, for the past one week, I have not loitered around on the roads, he said. Housewives have stopped cooking in the evening for fear that the mysterious stalker might attack them when they are alone in the kitchen. Some of them are cooking in groups of three or four. Women are even having their baths together.
None seems to have escaped the hysteria.
Asma, a young weaver in a handloom unit, said she was woken up this morning at the factory by what she thought was an electric shock . She even found scratch marks on her right arm. Factory workers, especially young boys, have started leaving for home early and shopkeepers are downing shutters an hour earlier. In Noida and east Delhi, rickshaw-pullers have stopped ferrying passengers after dark. Earlier, I would earn Rs 150 a day.