Small Town Girl with Big Dreams and Even Greater Courage

Shrutee Choudhary was a small town girl, simple in her ideas and approach to life, with dreams to make it big, came to Mumbai to make those dreams come alive. Little did she know that she would have to first fight a struggle that was greater than the struggle required to fulfill her dreams.

Mumbai is considered the New York City of India. It is a city that never sleeps. The shiny lights and a fleet of cars that the super-rich of the city own are easy enough to fool anyone.

Yes, the people there are helpful and sweet. That is the case with all humans, right? All human beings are helpful in nature. But she was not prepared for what was in store for her.

The Incident:

Shrutee is known for her write-ups on Instagram and has a fair share of fans too. Now we all have a habit of sliding into our favourite celebrity’s DMs and let them know how much we appreciate their work. Something of this kind happened with her too.

So, out of the blue, a man messaged her who claimed to have come across one of her writings and expressed his admiration for her, too. He offered her to work for him. She agreed, not knowing what was brewing in his mind. One thing led to another and they fell for each other.

But one trip to Scotland and everything changed, and for the worse. The guy had ulterior motives. He wanted to sleep with her, but she wasn’t ready yet. So like any other girl, she refused.

He did not like her refusal one bit. And so, he changed completely. He stopped talking to her and began behaving rudely.

Also Read: HOW A GIRL NEEDS TO BE RAISED

Now, she began to feel like it was her fault that she refused to have sex with him. This is what every girl feels. It doesn’t matter if you belong to an affluent or a middle-class family. When a girl loves a guy too much and refuses to give him something he wants, you feel bad about it as you are too afraid to let him go. The pressure of saying ‘no’ got the better of her.

So she decided to sleep with him. And in turn, he abused her! He bruised her and to make matters worse for her, he refused to wear a condom. Coming from a small town, you don’t realize people’s true intentions as you are so transparent with your own.

You are loyal, forgiving; someone who holds their values so high and who loves so deeply. She was not wrong when she refused to have sex. She has every right to decide when and with whom she was going to have her most special moments.

The sadder part of all this is that she had no idea that she was being abused. She thought being submissive to his ‘orders’ was better than refusing them. And in doing so, was being a good partner to him. She shut out her inner voice in the process.

Her Fight-back:

She realised he was a monster in a human’s guise only when she caught him sleeping with other women and causing them the same trauma. The guy turned out to be a sexual offender! The next sane thing that she did (or any girl should do), was leave him for good and move on to have a better life.

She shut herself out completely from the outside world as she had her own emotional traumas and wounds to tend to. Her only fault was that she believed that good humans and intentions exist and she loved someone deeply holding the same beliefs.

She also realized that violence within relationships does exist. Sometimes all of us aren’t lucky enough to have partners who respect our choices as much as we respect theirs.

What We Learn:

Everything that Shrutee has gone through is just a small glimpse of what every girl goes through in every relationship. We, from the very beginning, are taught that men should always be kept at a step before ours. His choices will always make more sense than our own.

We have to heed to his demands because our demands do not make sense. It is not for us to decide when to have sex. No, we do not decide the time. Our ‘pati parmeshwar’ or in this case ‘boyfriend parmeshwar’ decide it for us. And the list simply goes on and on.

However, it’s not just Shrutee’s fight-back that is inspiring. It is rather the public admission of her traumatic experience. She had the choice to keep quiet and let life go on as it was going on before. Why relive that trauma for others, right?

But she chose to open up just so that girls like you and I, of all ages, do not feel like we are alone. She told her story so that we do not feel that we do not have a say about our bodies and our choices in a relationship. We realized, through her story, that being in a relationship does not mean being meek and timid.

The female gender being submissive dates back to the invention of time. We, women, are always expected to bow out first in a fight, keep our choices secondary to those of your spouse, expected to stay loyal even when we know what happens as soon as our ‘other halves’ leave for work.

I do not say that being loyal is a weakness. NO. Rather, it requires pure strength to admire a whole lot of other flowers in the garden and still choose the one that made you feel and smell like home (if you know what I mean by the metaphor). This is something that the other gender lacks in large proportions.

We CHOOSE:

We choose to be submissive because we love our man whole-heartedly and unconditionally. Under all circumstances, no matter what we choose to stay by our men even when we have the choice of moving on for better things in life.

Remember, we CHOOSE. But we often forget is that it is our choice to keep ourselves above our man. And there is nothing wrong with it. Let them also have a taste of what it feels like to always be kept second, right?

Shrutee’s story is an empowering example of how you can choose to be submissive and at the same time, take your power back when you feel like having it back. She chose to be submissive because she felt that it was right. It is not her fault to feel that way.

But by choice, too, she fought back and brought her power back into her hands as she now not only get to decides what she wants to do with her life, but also gives a voice to those women who feel gagged in such situations.

Millions of people messaged her who not only lauded her for speaking out but also gathered enough courage to speak out on their own experience. See what our voices can do?

Kudos to Shrutee for speaking out, despite the social stigma she knew she would face.

Her experience is just a glimpse of the power our voices have. We can create earthquakes if we choose to.

Odyssey’s Article on a Small Town Girl – Read Here