I am delighted to read that one of my previous articles has helped you. I am so proud of the fact that you stood up for yourself at such a young age; this is indeed commendable. Kudos to you for that! First you need to appreciate and congratulate yourself for this victory. In life, we will have many such people who try to put us down knowingly or unknowingly. This will first make us feel sad and disheartened; if we don’t stand up for ourselves, it will make things worse for us. The fact that you did what you needed to do, you will not feel worse about the situation but the past can often unnerve you. What you need to do now is learn to validate yourself. Make a list of all the things big or small that you have achieved so far, all those things you never felt you could do. This will help you feel validated and accomplished. This will also increase your self-confidence and morale.

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Cast: Neha Saji, Kavitha Rajesh, Rajesh Ramakrishnan, Navin Augustin, Adithya Chandra Bose, Sreehari Rajesh
Director: Sreehari Rajesh
Rating: * * *

Sreehari Rajesh, 16-year-old teenager, is an independent, amateur filmmaker. Sreehari has made six films already; three each in 2020 and 2021. Niha, his latest project, can be summed up in a sentence: School-going teen suffers cyber exploitation. This ambitious, youthful endeavour (Malayalam language with English subtitles), to give due credit to the filmmaker, is embellished with fine camerawork, decent editing and a tuneful music score, but diminished by a virtually non-existent screenplay.

In the film, the titular protagonist is cajoled and bullied on the phone into sending her photos to an anonymous caller (clearly, a sexual predator) who morphs them and shortly after, demands images of her best friend.

The central character exhibits a moody, withdrawn persona. Much in the manner of some teenagers in real life, the celluloid single child, Niha, is uncommunicative with her parents and only becomes animated in the company of her school buddy, and presumably, social media chats.

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Avni was a teenager. She led a normal student life with loving and caring parents and friends who were like family to her. She wasn’t very popular in school. She didn’t talk to many people but had a few close friends whom she knew she could always trust.

She was a very happy girl, a little bit clumsy at times, a little childish, but everyone loved her for who she was. But little did she know that there was someone who didn’t like her.

It all started with a message on her phone telling her “Stop”. Avni was confused. She replied, “I’m sorry, maybe you have the wrong number?”

After a few days there was another message: “You are Avni. I have the right number.”

Avni thought it was a friend from school so she replied, “May I have your name, please? And I don’t understand what you mean by ‘stop’.”

The reply came, “Stop being who you are.”

Avni was confused. She decided to ignore the number. But the messages didn’t stop; they increased day by day and became worse. The person told her that she didn’t deserve to be happy, she didn’t deserve nice friends, she was very weird, and she should stop acting like she was the happiest person on earth.

All this hurt Avni very much. She stopped smiling, started avoiding her friends, and started crying a lot. She felt alone. She didn’t realize it but slowly she started changing. She stopped wearing the clothes she liked and changed the way she spoke. It was becoming too much to handle for her.

She didn’t tell her parents because she thought they wouldn’t understand or listen to her.

Her friends noticed this peculiar change in her behaviour. They tried talking to her and asked her what was wrong, but she just got angry. Her friends decided to remind her of the happy moments they spent together in classes or sleepovers where Avni made everyone laugh. Avni thought they were making fun of her so she suddenly burst into tears and ran away from them.

When her friends realized what was happening to Avni, they decided to tell her parents. But they asked her parents to let them help Avni.

They went to Avni’s room. She was sitting on her bed crying. Her friends went to her and gave her a huge hug. They felt so bad for not having been able to help her earlier. They all sat there and let Avni speak. They sat with her for hours, just letting her cry and talk.

And that was when Avni realized that she did not have to care about what a stranger thought of her. Her friends wanted to take revenge on the person, but she stopped them, telling them that she could handle it.

She took her phone and went to the chat app that had become her most frequently visited app. She typed, “Thank you for helping me realize I have very nice friends. Thank you for taking so much interest in my life. You have helped me grow strong, but I am who I am and you cannot do anything about it.”

She got a reply: “I was just jealous.”

Avni never received a message from the number again.

That day, as she looked at her friends and family, she knew for certain that they would always be there for her. That much was a given.

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Bullying: A new way of life?

Time and again, people allow others to take them for granted. They listen to unpleasant things said about them, swallow the hurt, bury the pain and ignore the resultant scars. After a while it appears like they welcome the crowd to step on their dignity and treat them without respect, care and kindness. Why some bullies like to do this to others is a complex and vile mystery of human nature, but why some of us endure it incessantly is even more flummoxing.

Do you like passivity?

At the core of our passivity lies the fear of what will happen if we actually stood up to fight for what we believed was right in the first place. We don’t like being crushed, but we don’t like standing up for ourselves either, do we? There is always a vicarious gain to passivity. It allows us to brood, grumble and protest, even though we don’t enjoy any of this. It consents for passive aggressive resentment to build because we have forgotten how to build on better and stronger emotions so these are the only ones that are allowed to fester.

You miss the point

Do you know the story of the man, who fed grains to the pigeons outside his kitchen window every morning? He complained every day — these birds mess the place, make noise, leave their droppings on my windowsill, their feathers give me an allergy; and yet I can do nothing about it. They come every morning to trouble me. If I don’t feed them they’ll sit here forever. At least I’m at peace for the rest of the day, for once I feed them, they fly away and I’m relaxed until the next morning.

Are you missing the same point he was missing?

You bully yourself

We don’t like it when people bully us but if we had to oppose them we worry we’ll be further humiliated. And we fear they’ll come back with a vengeance to bully us further and harder.

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What is bullying? When someone uses force over another person in the form of physical force or by using words through teasing or humiliating someone; it’s called bullying. The intent is to make fun of the other person, make them scared, make them lesser than you, and to give the message that you don’t belong. It is generally done to gain power over the other person, and make them feel lesser.

Giving someone tags or names qualifies as bullying — “skinny”, “fatso”, “you have a big nose”, “you are so dark”, “you are ugly”.

Bullying can be physical by hitting, kicking, slapping. It can be verbal by teasing the person for being different, making fun of their body parts, their habits or their mannerisms in a way that the other person finds hurtful. It also can be emotional and is meant to scare the other person, and make them feel left out or that they don’t belong to your friend’s group. Rumours also lead to emotional bullying. You, or a friend you know, may also have experienced bullying on the internet or through your phone. This may have been in the form of hateful messages, or messages making fun of someone, or sending visual images, videos to make fun of a person. This is called cyber bullying.

So what does it feel like when you are bullied? A lot of youngsters have answered this question. They have shared feeling scared, lonely, really sad and low. They feel left out, do not have friends, start staying alone, feel extremely lonely and cry very often as they feel helpless.

How can you stop this or help this? You can seek help from your parents or a trusted adult. You could tell them about it. The idea of telling an adult is not to complain and get the bully into trouble. Punishment can only stop them temporarily from bullying. Instead they need to be dealt with sensitivity and care, too. You could also help by talking to the person who bullies when they are calm and in a good mood. However, you need to be open to the fact that this may work or not work. You can also speak to the person who is being bullied, and just be present for them.

Often youngsters who bully others face bullying themselves, experience being a part of conflicts at home, or feel lonely because they do not have friends, or that they are afraid that they may be picked on by others. In order to defend themselves, or feel a sense of power and gain social popularity, they pick on others. They usually pick on those who are unpopular in order to gain the approval of the others.

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