#MeToo




Two small words with an immense impact. A voice that said I will take it no more. A voice that clearly claimed that I will not stand in a corner hiding with an imposed shame. A collective voice that rang across the world. A voice that echoed over and over again – loudly, strongly, repeatedly. I heard it, read about it, was disgusted by it and wept with it. But all along I was silent.

Not anymore.

I religiously attended GRE classes at 7 AM on a Sunday morning. I was bright-eyed with star-spangled dreams and a mind yearning to learn more math. For two hours I sat frozen as the professor pawed his hand on my hip under the guise of clearing my doubts. I was 21.

I was bicycling home from school. An unknown stranger followed me right outside, wildly squeezed my right breast and took off. I was 15.

I went swimming with my family. I loved the water and strayed too far from my group. A random stranger repeated touched my privates until I swam away back to my family. I was 8.

Everyone who knows me well know how much I love the water. But for almost two decades I was terrified of going into the water to learn swimming. I could not bring myself to trust an unknown male instructor in the water. The fear only grew and grew. In my thirtieth year when I decided to move permanently to Canada, I knew I would want to swim in Canada and was unsure if I would have to resources learn after my move. I then decided then to put aside my fear and take swimming lessons. I can still sense the palpable fear with which I got into the pool on day 1. But I did. I learnt and I swam. Cut to months later in Canada, me frolicking in the public pool, diving and playing in the pool in the summer. And the experience of the unmatched joy of swimming, which I will now always have in my life.

What I learnt then was the world is a devastating place, where crude name calls, dirty word passes, molesters, abusers, rapists will always exist. We can either let it shroud us or brush it aside and just keep walking no matter what. Just keep going. (Or swimming!)

This lesson that took me SO long to learn should not be anybody else’s burden. Finally, this post is also dedicated to the friend that wrote an evocative Me Too note last year saying that she stopped wearing a skirt after a crude name calling incident. My hope is this dedication makes her buy a skirt and experience the simple joy of a skirt twirl. This is with the hope that she can pass this message to the two precious daughters she is raising that we should not to let trash thrash us and hold us back.

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