RihView: Wrong Questions, Mother’s Day for Single Dads & Road Accident
Someone had to say it
The past week gave us a lot - people questioning Cassie like abuse comes with a script, dads getting Mother's Day shoutouts like fatherhood isn’t enough, and a mother in Kotmale making the ultimate sacrifice while the country barely blinks at another mass casualty on the roads. Let’s get into it.
“Why Didn’t She Leave?” Is the Wrong Question
The latest updates from the Cassie and Diddy case have been horrific. The surveillance footage alone is enough to turn your stomach, but what’s worse is the response from some people online.
“Why didn’t she leave?”
“Why did she say she was looking forward to those ‘freak offs’?”
“Why didn’t she say no?”
Babe, let’s be serious.
Abuse isn’t a bad date you can ghost. It’s a slow, strategic dismantling of someone’s agency. Abusers don’t show up wearing red flags and holding a warning sign. They manipulate. They isolate. They gaslight. And they blur the line between control and care until “leaving” no longer feels like an option - or a possibility.
Cassie’s texts aren’t evidence of consent. They’re a mirror of survival. When you’re scared, conditioned, or just completely worn down, you say what you have to say to keep yourself safe.
And the audacity of people to expect bravery from survivors when most of you can’t even tell your hairdresser you hate your bangs? Please.
Last Word: Survivors don’t owe you a perfect narrative. Ask better questions - like why abusers feel so protected, and why silence is their greatest weapon.
It’s Been a While Since Mother’s Day - But Let’s Talk About the Dads Who Got Tagged Too
Yes, Mother’s Day has become a commercial glitter bomb - flower bundles, sentimental ads, cupcake deals, and everyone suddenly remembering their amma’s WhatsApp DP needs updating. But live and let live. If capitalism can give you an excuse to pause and celebrate the people who raised you, I’m all for it. Sometimes we need that reminder to stop. To say thank you. To make time.
But here’s what’s been sitting with me: the single dad tributes.
The ones where people post their father and say, “Happy Mother’s Day to the man who played both roles.”
And look, I get it. I know those posts come from love. From reverence. From the ache of growing up with one parent who did the work of two. But I wonder if we’re doing those single dads a disservice by not celebrating them for exactly what they are: incredible fathers.
When we tell men they were “like a mother,” we’re saying caregiving, nurturing, and emotional labour belong to women. That it’s somehow not “fatherly” to show up in those ways. But being soft, patient, present, and emotionally available shouldn’t make you an honorary mother. It should make you… a really good dad.
Last Word: Let’s stop gendering care. Single fathers don’t need to be called mums to be applauded. Fatherhood, done right, is already worthy of its own celebration.
She Saved Her Baby. But Who’s Saving the Rest of Us?
On Mother’s Day, as people were posting flowers, memories, and filtered tributes, an image began to circulate - raw, jarring, and impossible to look away from. A mother, trapped in the wreckage of an overturned bus in Kotmale, cradling her 8-month-old baby in what would be her final act. Shielding him. Saving him.
She died. So did the child’s father. Their baby survived - now orphaned, in a country that keeps tallying tragedies like this and calling them accidents.
Many people lost their lives in that crash. The bus veered into a ravine. And before the headlines even cooled, it became one of many. Because this isn’t new. Sri Lanka has seen a disturbing rise in road fatalities. Reckless drivers. Poorly maintained roads. Zero enforcement. Buses packed like cargo and driven like weapons.
And yet, no real reform. No urgent national conversation. Just another mass funeral and a new bus queued up to replace the old.
We romanticise sacrifice. We call her a “brave mother.” And she was. But she shouldn’t have had to die.
Last Word: Road safety isn’t a tragic story. It’s a policy failure. If we keep accepting these deaths as fate, we’re complicit in the next one.
Until next week - think sharper, love harder, and seriously, can someone please fix the damn roads?
– Rihaab