Just like most of us were looking forward to celebrating Christmas, and in all likelihood ended up doing just that, Vijaya Das from Kolkata too, had great plans for December 25. But how her day ended was something she wouldn’t have thought of at all.
Das, who went out for Christmas dinner with her family, raised an alarm after she noticed a man leering at her. In a post that she later shared on Facebook, Das said that instead of reprimanding the man, the restaurant authorities asked her to leave!
The eatery in question here was Sher-e-Punjab in Kolkata’s Sukanta Nagar.
Not that this is the first time a Kolkata restaurant has come under social media scrutiny this year. Earlier in September, another popular Kolkata restaurant Mocambo received a lot of flak on social media after they refused to serve food to a driver, because apparently he wasn’t dressed according to their standards.
In Das’ case, she uploaded two videos along with her Facebook post recounting the incident. “I suddenly saw a shady man was looking at me with the most dirty look one can give”, the 26-year-old wrote, after she became uncomfortable when a man in the restaurant kept staring at her. She wrote he was drinking heavily and that she ignored him first, “as society teaches us to do”.
But when he continued leering at her, and as she wrote, at every other woman who was passing by, she shouted at him. The Facebook post further read that he pretended to not know who she was pointing at. While Das’ father supported her, the men refused to accept their mistake and asked her to complain to the authorities.
She was in for a shock when she finally did. The restaurant manager came up to Das and asked her and her family to leave immediately. “Only if the manager would have said us to have a seat somewhere else I wouldn’t have been this furious at our society where there are oodles of rape and molestation grasping us every day and we all kind of passively supporting it.”
According to a report by the Times of India, one of the proprietors of the restaurant denied the charge, and said she was threatening and shouting at them to ask the other customer to leave. He reportedly said that the video footage shows police surrounding the woman when he told her that they will not throw a customer out until he hasn’t finished eating or they themselves are convinced that he was a perpetrator of crime.
