Social media cringed collectively on Tuesday at Anna Linda Eden's Facebook post, in which she shared visuals of her husband and Ernakulam MP Hibi Eden and their flooded home with a caption that read, "Fate is like rape, if it cannot be resisted, it must be enjoyed."
In torrential rainfall in the city till Monday morning, the Edens' home witnessed severe waterlogging and their porch, cars and ground floor were submerged. Ms. Eden, who was a television anchor and worked at a radio station, shared a video on Monday night of her daughter and some belongings being taken to higher ground in a rescue boat. She also shared another video of Mr. Eden, who was away, enjoying a bowl of ice cream.
Under fire, Ms. Eden later deleted her post and apologised in another Facebook post, acknowledging that her comments may have hurt women who have been through devastating experiences and that she did not mean to cause any harm. "As the wife of a representative of the people, I have always tried to understand the problems of the people and empathise," she wrote.
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Though the original post was deleted after it drew a good deal of flak, users shared screenshots and pulled it apart on multiple counts. Several users demanded an apology from Ms. Eden for an insensitive comparison between the floods and rape. Others pointed out in anger and disgust that the continued use of rape jokes trivialised the issue and provided an insight into a persistently sickening mentality. A Facebook user commented that as a woman, a mother and a journalist, Ms. Eden should have been more sensitive to the seriousness of rape.
Netizens also lashed out at Mr. Eden, who had represented Ernakulam in the State Legislative Assembly since 2011, for having done little to fix the situation in the constituency, where life comes to a standstill in repeated rounds of flooding through the year. A Twitter user took a dig at the MP in a tweet which said, "While the city of Rome drowned, Nero enjoyed ice cream."