Why did you call me, she asks. She hasn’t done anything special, she says, only what everyone else was doing – making TikTok videos. Naseera Melattur, as she is known on her TikTok profile, feels there is nothing extraordinary in what she has been doing – making fun videos by lip-synching to film songs or dancing to them. However, it is not just those fun videos that have brought her attention, but the way she responds to the inevitable abusive comments.
In her videos, the native of Melattur, Malappuram in northern Kerala speaks in the sweet local slang, telling what she has to in a matter of seconds. “You say there is no one to ask (for me) at home. Yes, there is no one, so are you coming to ask? Another comment was asking if there were no men at my home, only women. There is no need for men, brave women are strong enough. Why did Indira Gandhi rule in the 1970s, is it because there were no men in our land then? Without understanding any of this, can one simply rattle anything they want? Ok, see you, bye.”
“That is a question I had asked once in real life too,” Naseera says in an interview to TNM. “When my dad died and I needed to get his death certificate, policemen were repeatedly asking if there were no men at home. I mentioned Indira Gandhi at that time too. I didn’t understand why they were constantly asking for a man in the house,” she says.
Naseera Melattur's TikTok videos got talked about, after the kind of responses she gave to the abusive comments that came on her inbox. pic.twitter.com/yKoVKxyu0A
— Cris (@cristweets) May 26, 2019
Naseera has removed all the videos from her TikTok profile now. There is no reason for it, she says, she just felt like it. “I deleted them, but it is all on the internet, anyone can see them.”
She works under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Generation Scheme and her videos show her in her natural getup, a shawl around her head. “There is no make-up, nothing. I shoot in my town, my locality. But the comments that come are as if I did something wrong. People can’t see the humour in it,” says Naseera, whose dancing videos do have a touch of humour in them.
She joined TikTok to ‘know Divya’, the actor who appeared in the music album, Kalbanu Fathima, years ago, when Naseera was doing her SSLC. “I felt Divya should know that I like her. I have such ‘likes’ for people I find inspiring. Like Renju Renjimar, a transgender make-up artist in Kochi, whose interview I saw and liked.”
Naseera would set out to somehow contact the people she reads or hears about and admires. She got the phone numbers of Surya and Ishan, the first transgender couple to get married in Kerala, and came to meet them in Thiruvananthapuram. “I came to meet another TikTok user Changile Koottukari, whom I knew only through TikTok. They have all been so nice to me.”
Naseera may not post any more TikTok videos, or maybe she will. She says she’s gotten busy with work, that she hasn’t decided if there should be more. But on social media, there are quite a few voicing support for the TikTok Ithatha, for her brave stances.
Called by many as TikTok Ithatha, Naseera did not shy away when abusive comments came for her casual videos, made with a touch of humour. pic.twitter.com/6RzFAeelWu
— Cris (@cristweets) May 26, 2019
In one short clipping, Naseera says, “If you don’t like to see my videos, avoid it. Doesn’t your phone have that facility? If not, break your phone. Whatever you say, I will go forward. I won’t put back the foot I put forward. Words like edi and podi, (intimate or derogatory terms of addressing women in Malayalam), you call people in your home. If you address me that way, I will smash your teeth.”