How #MeToo turned into a people's campaign in smaller Indian cities, too

A GoogleTrends visualization of hotspots for #MeToo searches around the world shows India's landmass alight with sparkling gold dots that represent unusually high reader interest

It was a seemingly harmless tweet that enraged Mahima Kukreja and put the 28-year-old on the frontline of India’s #MeToo firestorm.

The advertising professional was on her way to work Oct. 4 when she saw a message from popular comedian Utsav Chakraborty, who has a television show and nearly 50,000 Twitter followers, about a recent incident of Indian men behaving badly on a cruise ship in Australia, which he said was an “embarrassment” to fellow citizens. Wasn’t this the same person who’d sent her an unsolicited photograph of a penis two years ago?

“I was like, ‘this is a man