“Live Responsibly or Anticipate Death and Destruction” reads the title of an article on the death of model Sonika Chauhan.
“We want ‘equal rights’ – we want to be able to go out late at night as men do, bar-hop, drink and relax, have several rounds of drinks. It’s our ‘right’. We too need to relax. Do that, but why not do it in the safe confines of your friends or your home? Why do parents abdicate on their responsibility – do you feel if your unmarried daughter is earning in lakhs or whatever, she can do what she pleases as it’s her life, she has earned the right to do with it as she pleases and you should not interfere?”
This is just one of the many obnoxious excerpts from this article where the author blames everything from Bon Jovi (?!) to Feminism for her death. Could Sonika have said no to getting into the car knowing her friend was drunk? Of course, she could have. But does bad judgment imply she deserved to die? I don’t think so.
We’ve all been in situations that could have gone either way. A lot of us have let friends and boyfriends drive us home after a few drinks. This could have been any one of us. Sonika just got unlucky. It wasn’t her fault.
However, apparently women (and women alone), do not have the right to “go out late at night, bar hop, drink and relax”. The author even brings up the murder of Saumya Viswanathan, the Delhi journalist who was shot dead in the middle of the night as she drove home from work. So, I guess women don’t have the right to work either.
We should stay at home, never touch alcohol, never relax (?), because those are things only men are allowed to do. However, if we get raped, assaulted or murdered at home (as many women do), that’d be on us too. There’s no winning.
Seriously, how about not using a tragedy like this as yet another justification in restricting our right to public space?
Sonika didn’t deserve to die like this. No one does.
Shamolie is a foodie and a feminist who finally worked up the courage to start writing! Through her blog, she hopes to make people question beliefs they’ve long taken for granted, and view the world from a different perspective. She blogs at https://bicyclewithoutafish.wordpress.com/