Her Silence! Her Resilience!
“Mumbai evenings are to die for” as every mumbaikar would say, but not for every one of us it turns out to be one of the best ones. Itisha, a quiet and peaceful Mumbai girl was a die hard fan of Mumbai evenings, but she never thought that one of those evenings would literally turn out to be a haunting and humiliating evening for her. She never thought that Mumbai, which is one of the safest places, her home, and the place she was in great love with, would make her a victim of the cruelty she would never have imagined. 7:30 PM was the time as she looked in her phone with the earplugs on, in her casual attire. Coming after her coaching classes, the auto just dropped her near the Gurudwara from where her home was a 10 minute walk. Just a few seconds later she saw about 4-5 bikes and around ten BOYS after her, who she did not care about initially; but when those bikes just surrounded her she had to care! When they stopped and cornered her she had to care! When one of them came near her she had to shout!
When he pushed her down on the floor she had to scream! When he tried to hurt by pressing her every possible body part she had to cry! At the top of her voice, YES! She had to do all of this! But nothing happened; those desperate monsters did not care! Because they had the chance of showing their macho and they knew that the girl was vulnerable. They assumed her to be weak and silent. She just ran away from that place. Reaching home she pretended that it was all good and normal. Without uttering a word about what happened to her, she walked inside her room and struggled with her own body and her hands. But still she did not say anything. She couldn’t! She did not have the strength to utter a word, but she did have the guts to pretend in front of the world as if nothing had happened and that everything was normal. For months, she cried silently in the nights thinking that time would heal all her wounds and injuries and that everything will pass. She never thought that this one incident would make her lose hope and give up on the things she once would die for.Never ever was she in love with those nights and evenings after that! Instead every guy that touched her petrified the poor soul and sent chills down her spine. They terrorized her. Nobody could ever make her stand from that baleful place, where those hideous maniacs made her fall and till date she is lying down on that road screaming for help and running away from that humiliating place. Yes! She is a girl. She is delicate. She was humiliated. She was silent not because of fear but because those people severely wounded her right there and left indelible scars. They made her detest the evenings. They made her hate the touch of her guy friends. She never wanted the freedom that every girl wanted. Instead, she wanted to be in her room, all alone in a corner.They made her lose her innocence. Her priceless innocence! But this does not mean that she is not strong, she is! She is alive! She is here with us! What she needs is her delicacy to be not called as her weakness. What she needs are answers to the questions that are at the back of her mind. What she needs is that this cruel mentality to change. What she needs is change! ————– About the author: The article has been s contributed by our intern, Devika Sharma.