Are women not allowed to take up space without punishment? To dream boldly, to walk into rooms with purpose, to want more for themselves without it costing their safety, their dignity and their peace? Must our ambition always be balanced against the threat of violation?
Because I promise you, our minds are far sexier than our bodies. But that kind of power - quiet, intellectual and self-possessed, terrifies a world that thrives on control. And so, we are taught to shrink. We are trained to read between the lines of a compliment, to flinch at kindness that feels too warm, to stay silent because speaking out might cost us everything.
In my case, it cost me my college tuition.
I was eighteen. Naive in the best way, still believing that relentless hope could move mountains. I drafted email after email, attaching SoundCloud links, writing to anyone who might believe in a South Indian girl with a songwriting notebook and a stubborn dream. I even sent pitches to CEOs of Forbes-listed companies, completely unaware of how the world works. But I believed in my art, and I believed that someone out there would too.
We didn’t have the money, but my mom and I had enough to take the train to Mumbai for my Berklee audition. I remember the weight of that notebook in my hand, the trembling excitement in my chest. We walked into the audition room together, me with my guitar, her with a silent prayer on her lips.
When I got accepted, I cried. She did too, but her tears were laced with a different emotion: fear. That complex, quiet panic only a mother knows. My daughter got into the best music school in the world. But how will we afford it? How do I tell my family she wants to be an artist? What happens when she leaves me?
Still, I wanted it so badly I didn’t let myself see her worry.
I kept trying. I kept showing up. I even walked into corporate buildings with my guitar in hand, asking to speak with executives. I am not sure if it was brave or foolish, but I had fire in my blood and I wasn’t ready to give up. Eventually, a door opened.
He was sixty-five. A CEO of a pharmaceutical company, known for funding education and donating to charity. A mutual friend introduced us, saying he had helped many children before. I met him with my mother and the friend. I presented my case, told him about Berklee, sang a Lady A song in his office, explained why this education mattered to me, how it could change my life. He looked at me with something like admiration and wrote me a check for my first semester. Just like that. I thought I had made it.
The months that followed felt like a dream. Visas, flights, suitcases packed with too many clothes and too little certainty. Suddenly, I was in Boston, at Berklee, among people who spoke music like it was their first language. Every moment was gold. I pulled all-nighters for sixteen-credit semesters, wrote until my fingers ached, cried from both joy and exhaustion, fell in love for the first time, and discovered a version of myself I didn’t know existed.
He funded two more semesters. Each time I came home to India, I met him. I shared my recordings, my progress, my songs. I still felt indebted. I still felt grateful.
But then, slowly, his gaze changed.
At first, it was subtle. The compliments about how I looked lingered a little too long. He commented on my clothes, asked if I had a boyfriend, chuckled when I blushed. I tried to dismiss it. Tried to pretend it was harmless.
But women know.
We feel it in our skin, in the way the air shifts, the sudden discomfort in our gut. We know when a look turns into something else, something hungry, something entitled, something unsafe.
One day, he simply stopped.
No warning. No explanation. Just a meeting in his office, the same one where I had once sung songs with trembling hands and a hopeful heart. Only this time, his tone had changed. It was curt, dismissive, devoid of warmth. He told me he could no longer fund my education, that the money couldn’t be allocated. That was it.
I sat there across from him, my palms damp, my throat dry. I couldn’t understand what I had done wrong. Had I failed to prove myself? Was my music not good enough anymore? Had I become too much? Or worse, had I become too visible?
I went home numb.
But not defeated.
I began building a new portfolio from scratch, recording songs, printing grades, collecting proof of my progress like evidence in a case I was desperate to win. I had made the Dean’s List. I worked part-time on campus. I wasn’t just dreaming, I was doing. And I wanted him to see that.
He agreed to meet again. Then he asked me to come alone, to meet him outside a Big Basket in Bangalore. Said he was nearby and could spare a few minutes. Something about the way he said it made my skin prickle.
I ignored it, or tried to.
But deep inside, something was screaming. So I took my mother with me.
When he saw us walking toward him together, his expression twisted into rage. Right there in public, in broad daylight, he began to yell, accusing, humiliating. A man decades older than me, shouting in the middle of the street. My mother stood frozen, trying to stay calm, trying not to jeopardize the fragile chance she thought I still had.
She didn’t know he had told me to come alone. And I couldn’t tell her, not yet. I was still untangling my own confusion, still trying to figure out if I was imagining the wrongness in all of this.
He eventually composed himself. His rage cooled into something quieter, more calculated. He asked to speak with me privately. My mother hesitated, but she stepped back. She hadn’t yet grasped what I was beginning to understand. She still believed this was about education.
I followed him to the car. It was daylight. The driver was in the front seat. I told myself I would be fine.
We sat in the back. He asked about school, my classes, my music, as if nothing had happened just moments earlier, as if we were still playing the same roles: benefactor and student. I answered cautiously, trying to keep the conversation focused, professional, and safe.
Then, without warning, he reached across and placed his hand on my thigh. His fingers slid across the ripped denim of my jeans slowly, deliberately. Like he was claiming something, like he thought he could.
I froze. Then I did what too many of us are taught to do. I laughed, lightly, nervously, and I moved his hand away gently, like it was a misunderstanding, like I was the one who had to keep things under control, like I was the adult in the car.
He said nothing. The driver was there. He wouldn’t dare do more, not there, not then.
He handed me a check anyway. I took it and stepped out of the car with legs that barely held me up. My body moved forward, but my mind stayed stuck in that moment. I hadn’t fully processed what had just happened. I told myself I was fine. That I had gotten out. That I had handled it.
But had I?
I didn’t speak about it for months. I buried it somewhere deep, convinced it wasn’t serious enough, that it hadn’t been loud, that I hadn’t been touched too much. I repeated those lines to myself like a prayer.
My mom took out loans to help cover what he no longer would. He contributed a little again, just enough to keep the illusion alive. I told myself I would never see him again.
Then one night, he called.
He said he was in New York. Calm, casual, composed. He said if I came to spend a few days with him, he would pay off my entire tuition.
His words weren’t coded. There was no pretense. Just a proposal, a transaction.
I froze, but this time, I didn’t pretend. I said no, quietly, clearly. Then I hung up.
That night, I crumbled. I cried into the arms of my college boyfriend, the only person I had told at the time. I cried not just from fear or shock, but from grief. Grief for the dream I had to leave behind. Grief for the girl who thought this journey was about talent and hard work. Grief for the loss of something innocent.
I had to leave. I packed up the life I had fought so hard to build and returned to India. My friends stayed behind, carried on with their classes, their shows, their futures. I came home with an unfinished dream and a cracked heart.
I didn’t tell my mother the truth until almost a year later. When I did, she broke, not just from rage, but from sorrow. From the guilt of not knowing. From the heartbreak of all the things she couldn’t protect me from.
But she never blamed me. She stood with me, fiercely.
I was her warrior, and she was mine.
He thought he had control over my story, that he could play god with my future, that a check was enough to own my silence. But he didn’t know who I was becoming.
I rebuilt everything, slowly, piece by piece. I started over. I took on every opportunity I could: performing, recording, producing, between India and Dubai. I rebuilt my network, my audience, my name. And with my mother’s help, I completed my Berklee degree online, on my own terms, with my own grit.
He faded into the background. Another man with a clean public record and a private file of unspoken offenses. Another man who used generosity as a disguise for entitlement.
And me? I kept going.
I’ve only shared this story with a few people because this kind of abuse is rarely loud enough to be believed, because it doesn’t leave bruises, because it lives in shadows, in the grey areas people love to dismiss.
But ask any woman. Ask her about the favors with conditions, the smiles that turn to threats, the hands that hover too close under the guise of help. Ask her about the fear of being called ungrateful, of being told she misunderstood, of wondering if she was the problem for dreaming too big. Ask any woman, and you’ll hear a version of this story.
Maybe hers is worse. Maybe it’s softer. Maybe it ended before it began. Maybe it never did.
But it’s there. Always there.
So no, my fears were not exaggerated. My boundaries were not too rigid. My ambition was not too much.
Because I survived, and more than that, I built my future, not in exchange for my body, not in return for silence, but because I knew who I was.
And no one, not even him, could take that from me.
Beautiful 🖊️💫