Opened Doors [COMPLETED]

Stalking

Whenever we think of the word 'stalking', we tend to imagine a situation in which a person (typically a boy) who follows a girl. And most people have no issue with that, as if it is completely normal or even cute. Do you know the reason behind this? It is because the movies (mostly Bollywood) have romanticized stalking. There the hero stalks the heroine (even if it is physically), the heroine then find him cute and bold, and they get into a relationship and live happily ever after. Several movies, including very famous ones like 'Ae dil hai mushkil', 'Tere Naam' , 'Ranjhaana', and not to mention 'Kabir Singh'. This is rather depressing, how we as audience have normalized it as well without much objection. I can't help but think how these movies have shaped the current generation, such that the boys think that it is romantic to stalk girls and the girls think that it is flattering to have a boy stalking her. Just, unbelievable! 

Let me tell you that cyberstalking exists as well, and you would be surprised to know that it is way more common than you would imagine it to be. About 50 % of women in their teens and tweens in India have been cyberstalked to an extent at least once. And honestly speaking, this is just as scary as physical stalking is. If you are following someone on every social media, making more accounts with different names each time one is blocked, contacting her friends and family to extract information about her, it falls under cyberstalking, mostly because she has asked you to cut all contacts with her. Like seriously, how desperate can you be? 

No matter what your intentions are, whether you just want to get in touch again or you are actually trying to get revenge or what so ever, you have to remember that she has decided to cut you out of her life, and you need to respect that, even if you have no self respect. You need to know that a NO means a NO, and not a YES, like the song states "You Haa kar ya Naa kar, tu hain meri Kiran". Yet another instance of how consent is not a question in love. I mean how can people come up with these. It is just that the minor instances of cyberstalking is not considered harmful enough in India, and we can not report that.
Therefore, if you have even a little bit of dignity left in you, if you consider yourself humane enough, please stop stalking. It is not cool nor romantic to stalk someone. 

A/N- I had been meaning to write on this topic for a few months now, but honestly I didn't know exactly where to start. It is a really sensitive topic, at least to me. And even though I felt the urgency to raise awareness about it, I was a little skeptical, a little scared to write about it. But now I am not. I am in fact proud of myself to have been able to write it all out, and I hope that it would help you all to open up too, if you face anything like this. (God forbid, you don't.)