In a moving social media note, Kerala actor of Kumbalangi Nights fame shared that she was sexually harassed in a shopping mall in Kochi on Thursday, 17 December. Taking to Instagram to share the incident which took place at Kochi’s Lulu mall, the actor says she was groped by a man while shopping with her family.
The actor called out about the disturbing incident through a social media note, urging women to react strongly in such instances. “Two men walked past me in a generously spaced aisle in Lulu hypermarket which barely had people crowding and one of them not so accidentally grazed his hands on my back while walking past me. Because it caught me off guard I couldn’t react immediately. I wanted to give him the benefit of a doubt but you know when something is just not right, you feel it,” she wrote.
She was blank for a minute trying to process this, she writes. Though the actor tried to confront the men, they disregarded her. “Though I made sure that they knew that I understood what had happened, I was still so angry because I couldn’t say anything,” the actor said.
She wrote that the men followed her again, this time trying to make frivolous conversation with her. They showed the audacity to talk to me and my sister, the actor writes. “Trying to get closer as she spoke, he wanted to know the names of the movies I have been part of,” she said. She adds that the men walked away after they saw her mother.
“As I type this I can think of a thousand things I could have told them and a hundred things I could have done. But I didn’t. I just couldn’t. I just wanted to let this out here so I could feel a little relief. To feel that I have done something about it knowing fully that they walked away without guilt or trouble. Knowing that they might do it again, it angers me,” the actor wrote.
Adding that she ‘despises’ the deeply disturbing incident, she urged women to strongly react in such instances.
“Being a woman has been very tiring, to be on guard every minute as you step out of your house. To watch my clothes when I bend and turn. To guard my chest with my arms in a crowd… And on the days I’m home, I worry about my mother, my sister, my friends who have to do the same things. It is all because of these sick men. You take away our safety. You take away our comfort and the joy of our womanhood. I despise you,” the actor wrote.
Addressing men, she added, “If you have done anything remotely inappropriate to a woman, know that you are the lowest form of life and you don’t deserve anything but hell. And to all the women reading her post, she said, “I hope you have the courage to give a tight slap on the face of such men.”
(This was first published on The News Minute and has been republished with permission.)
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