Actress Neena Gupta has shared some interesting details in her autobiography, ‘Sach Kahun Toh’ about being molested in her childhood days. She talks about not being able to even tell her mother about the molestations by her doctor and her tailor as she felt scared that it would be called her fault only.
Gupta shared an incident where she paid a visit to her optician for an eye checkup. She mentioned that her brother was asked to be seated in the waiting room itself while she went inside for the checkup. She wrote, “The doctor started with examining my eye and then went down to check out other areas that were unconnected with my eye. I was scared stiff while it was happening and felt disgusted all the way home. I sat in a corner in the house and cried my eyes out when nobody was looking. But I didn’t dare tell my mother about this because I was so scared that she would say that it was my fault. That I had probably said or done something to provoke him. This happened to me many times at the doctor’s."
Gupta also narrates another incident where she had gone to her tailor and she wrote that he got “too handsy” with her while he was taking the body measurements for an outfit. Even though she didn’t want to go back to the same tailor after this incident, she was forced to keep going back. “Because I felt like I had no choice. If I told my mother that I didn’t want to go to them, she would ask me why and I would have to tell her,” she explained in her autobiography.
At the age of 16, Gupta was also propositioned by a friend’s brother who had just gotten hitched. “I somehow managed to shrug off his advances politely without offending him or his family,” wrote Gupta.
Gupta realised soon that she wasn’t alone in all of this, and all other girls in her college had faced situations which were similar to the ones she had faced. However, no one would speak up and tell their parents because “that would mean that the little freedom we had would be taken away. Or worse – that we would be blamed for bringing it upon ourselves.”
Gupta also talks about how today’s children are taught about what is a good touch and bad touch starting from the age of 3-years. But they “were not taught about either” even as teenagers.
