International Women’s Day is around the corner. Actress Ileana D’Cruz admits she’s faced eve-teasing when she was young. “I was 16 then,” she recalls, adding, “I nursed the ‘Is it my fault?’ and ‘Have I encouraged this?’ state of mind for months. I wondered, ‘Is it because of something that I had done unintentionally, that I was harassed?’ I told my mother many months after the incident. It was amazing how she handled it. She said, ‘We need to sort this out right now.’ She tried to have a conversation with the guy who was just a cocky teenager himself. He said, ‘Call the police if you want to’. She was quick to retort that she would if he didn’t don’t stop harassing me. The police inspector, I spoke to at that time, pointed out how serious the problem was as he informed us that many girls who have faced this problem have contemplated suicide.” Ileana, incidentally, had taken to social media recently to support a victim of harassment and intimidation.
