Is Any Girl Really Safe In Our Country?

Everyone who hasn’t been living under a rock has heard of mountaineer Neillima Pudota – the Andhra girl who scaled the Mt. Everest. She is a person who has broken boundaries, challenged stereotypes and maybe even paved an inspiring way for other girl mountaineers. The most inherent point of it all is that, she’s a woman, just like any of us. And just like any of us, she is also not allowed to forget the fact.

True, being a woman stands for many things in our society, and we don’t mean to say it’s a bad thing to be reminded of at all. After all, a woman is irreplaceable in the multitude of jobs she plays – that of a daughter, wife, mother, friend, lover and more. But the other side of the coin means a woman is perceived as someone who doesn’t deserve equal human rights, someone who will always be looked down upon, someone who has to pay taxes on her sanitary napkins (that for some reason are classified as a ‘luxury’) and most importantly, someone who’s nothing more than an object to be gawked at. Neillima Pudota recently shared her harrowing experience with a man on Facebook.

She wrote:

This is what happens!!? Name Calling? Abusive Language? And what not!!! SO soo tired of all this.
If this person is in your list, let him get this msg. Stalking and Abusive Language hurts. Block one medium and they’ll find another. When will this end? When can women be at Peace!?
I’ll stop using FB today (like so many times before) and they’ll find another medium. Am I safe only at home? Really tired.

The person whom we shall not name, because he has hopefully been shamed enough by his own conscience already, DM’d Neillima Pudota, calling her ‘dear’. When she didn’t reciprocate like he expected her to, despite her politeness, he was offended she basically said no. Putting a woman down and blaming her ‘ego’ for the fact that she simply doesn’t want to talk to you, how many of us have gone through the same? How many of us have also been humiliated later on with the barrage of insults that followed?

This story isn’t anything new really if you think about it. So when an empowered, independent, inspiring woman like Neillima Pudota isn’t safe from such acts, who really is?

If you’re one of the few who don’t know Neillima Pudota, read her story here.