Amrita, with her female friend, planned a yoga session at Versova beach on Thursday at around 9 am as her friend wanted to experience doing yoga on a beach in Mumbai.
In an incident that paints a sorry picture of the city to foreigners visiting it, Amrita Kaur, a 30-year-old Mumbai resident, faced a torrid time with her female friend from Singapore while they were practising yoga on Versova beach on Thursday morning. A group of minors started hurling racist slurs at her friend, and vulgar comments about their yoga poses.
Furious at being subject to vulgar remarks, the woman decided to take action and approached the police in a bid to teach the minors a lesson.
Amrita, with her female friend, planned a yoga session at Versova beach on Thursday at around 9 am as her friend wanted to experience doing yoga on a beach in Mumbai. The duo arrived at the beach at around 8.30 am and began their session with meditation. Soon after, a group of class X students who were roaming on the beach gathered near them and began staring their way. After a while, the teenagers started hurling racist slurs at Amrita's friend.
"They were whispering to each other and laughing. We heard words like 'Nepali' and 'Chinese'. After a while, a few friends of the teenagers also joined the group. These boys took their shirts off and were just talking loudly for no reason. We didn't pay much attention, thinking they were probably doing their own thing. A while later, they came and sat closer to us and started asking me stupid questions like 'are you doing yoga?' and 'your phone is ringing'. I didn't answer them so they started talking to each other loudly while using choice expletives. I felt uncomfortable, so I asked my friend if we could leave. She suggested we finish the session quickly and then leave," Amrita said.
"The comments became nastier. Continuing with racist slurs, the boys started passing loud comments about pornographic movies they had viewed. They even started talking about the yoga poses we were performing. I was livid. I stared back at them, but they continued passing lewd comments. Considering my friend did not know what the boys were saying, I asked her to get up and leave. They hooted as we left," Amrita said. Thereafter, Amrita approached Versova police station and urged the officers to take action against the youth. By the time the team reached the beach, only three boys from the original group were present. The others had fled. The boys admitted their wrongdoing, but claimed that the others who fled were the main culprits.
"When we asked Amrita whether she wanted to file a complaint against them or not, the students requested her not to take them to the police station as they were preparing for board exams next month. They apologised to Amrita and her friend," said an officer.
"Girls in India are subject to this everyday, but we often remain silent. I urge girls to raise their voice," Amrita said.
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