What began as a solo celebration of America‘s Independence Day turned into a distressing personal ordeal for a 28-year-old Indian man living abroad in the U.S. He had attended the Fourth of July fireworks alone. After the show, he was walking approximately 13 minutes to his parked car when the incident occurred. Holding his phone to navigate back, he stopped briefly at a crosswalk only to be confronted by a stranger. “An African-American man in front of me suddenly grabbed my shirt around the waist and wouldn’t let go,” he recounted in a post. “I panicked. I thought he was going to hurt me or steal from me. I started walking backward, then running. I was screaming.”
In his panic, the man fell to the ground. The assailant followed briefly, took the man’s phone, glanced at the screen, returned it, and left the scene without further interaction. The victim now believes the man may have assumed he was being recorded. No Help from Bystanders. Perhaps just as unsettling as the confrontation itself was the silence of the people around him. “There were people around me, but no one said anything or tried to help. I felt invisible,” he said.
The man was left shaken, ashamed, and deeply introspective. A soft-spoken introvert, he said he has struggled with social anxiety for years stemming from a childhood marked by bullying back in India. Masculinity, Fear, and the Marriage Question. The experience has also caused him to question his masculinity and sense of self-worth. He added, “Now that I’m at an age where I’m considering marriage, I really doubt my ability to protect a woman when I can’t even protect myself. I feel more like a cowardly young man rather than a masculine one.”
He described feeling like a “coward” for screaming and running emotions fueled by years of internalised shame and expectations of how men should behave in threatening situations. He added, “I don’t want to live in fear anymore. I want to stop seeing myself as weak. I want to grow even if it’s just a little bit,” he said.