Last week as I walked into a Super Market, I passed by a sharp slap on a girl’s face by a Boy who is her colleague in the super market. It was a friendly yet a hard one that came as a reaction to the playful whack she gave to him on his arms. The slap was so hard that I felt as if it fell on me.

It was not the first slap, it was a fourth one as the first 3 were exchanged as I was parking my vehicle and getting Nerthi safely aside being on a busy road. He kept hardening the slap in return to the whack that she gave to him smiling through it.

I hopped in to grab few stuffs in the market while my mind was totally there and I watched back a couple of times because I didn’t want to let them go without being given a thought.

As I walked off the market, I just stopped and asked the guy straight on his face “Don’t you feel tingling to slap her on the pretext of friendliness?”

I wasn’t surprised by his response, neither did I feel anything wrong in it… He looked for a second with an uncomfortable smile and turned back to the girl and asked”Hey, who hit first and how hard it was?”

The girl was shocked at someone stopping to ask about the incident and she gave a wierd look with a smile that refused to show up spontaneously.
I said the girl “I wonder how you allow a boy to slap you so hard…on top of it so many times!?” … And she blinked cluelessly.

I told the girl “If you can allow a guy to hit you like this on a friendly note like this, you will surely allow the man who marries you also to hit you too at the name of love” #saynotoviolence

A week passed by and during one of my regular visits to the shop, the girl identified me and pulled me aside and said, “Madam, Do you remember? You asked us about the slap incident?” I said, Of course Yes. She added saying ‘Madam, I was going to my hometown that very night in the bus and I was recalling the incident that happened in the morning when you intervened for both of our acts. Madam, my father used to beat my mom after coming home drunk. My mother used to suffer so much because of the injuries but we as children have watched that years together but we never stopped my dad when he used to beat my mom so hard or never even thought to ask my dad even once.

She added saying that, Madam, You don’t even know us but you stopped and asked when someone slapped me. It really made me think and regret, that I never voiced out even for the abuse that happened within the house. I wish I had asked my dad to stop beating my mom and to stop his drinking habits. Had I done that, may be my dad could have stopped drinking & could have been alive and maybe we could have lived a better life.

I felt so sorry for what her family went through but what I want to leave here is, Never be silent to an unjust incident happening in front of you, be it small or big. Do voice out, it can make a difference to someone’s life in some way. #DoVoiceOut