Swara Bhaskar says she didn’t realise she was being sexually harassed by a director until much later

Actor Swara Bhaskar has revealed she was sexually harassed by a director but it took her nearly six to eight years to realise what had happened as the culture doesn’t teach women to recognise predatory behaviour. Swara, without taking any names, said the harassment happened at workplace and the director was being “predatory.” “It took me 6-8 years to realise when I heard someone else talk about their experience of harassment at a panel discussion like this. The actor said she wasn’t able to recognise that pattern or behaviour because as a culture “we do not teach our girl children to recognise predatory behaviour for what it is.There is so much of culture of silence, around sexuality in India, around the issue of sexual harassment, actually not just In India, everywhere around the world that we are just going through are lives without recognising it properly. We just recognise the discomfort.” Before moving to Mumbai, Swara lived with her parents in Delhi, who had a university background, and so was very aware of things, but said “the real world is the world.” She said she came to the film industry thinking if someone dares to proposition her, she will show them her “upbringing and values” but nothing of this sort had happened.