Sonam Kapoor: 'I Was 13 When I Was Molested'

They tried to dismiss it as groping then—something most Indian women face— but trust straight-speaking actor Sonam Kapoor to call it out for what it is. The actor opens up to Tanya Chaitanya about being molested as a teenager and feeling disturbed. As she stands tall and proud today at 31, her message to young girls everywhere is clear: Nobody has the right to judge you or tell you what to wear; live just the way you want.

- Tanya Chaitanya

Right from the time we reached out to ace designer Masaba Gupta to create a dress with varying levels of hemlines to depict how we judge women, subject them to sexual violence and later shift the blame to what they wore—we knew our cover girl would have to be an outspoken one. In walked the very antithesis of a shrinking violet, Sonam Kapoor. She was game, not in the least because she had been judged way too often for her clothes but because she’d been saving up her forthrightness for causes that will make a difference. “I may come across as guarded in shows like Koffee With Karan because I don’t want to make inflammatory statements for headlines. I’d rather use it where I can speak my mind about things that matter,” she tells me when we meet in a Delhi studio with the capital city’s signature bitter-sweet nip around us.

Her candour has landed her in trouble in the past. She was called brash, a girl with no filter. “I feel that water finds its balance. In the beginning everybody was shocked by my personality. They didn’t understand who this girl who wore weird designer clothes was, this girl who said what she wanted to say. If somebody in the industry or media was bullying me, I’d give it back without being crass about it. I wasn’t scared of having an opinion or defending myself. And when you’re young and starting out, you don’t have a sense of self-preservation; you feel invincible. And people mistake that for brashness. It was very hard because I got trolled a lot. I got pulled down a lot. Eventually the initial shock died down and now it’s celebrated. Now everybody has a stylist, everybody has an opinion, and everybody is doing films with offbeat filmmakers.”