This woman 'felt like a man' after landing in Mumbai at 2 am. Here's why

A woman who landed in Mumbai at 2 am said she felt like a man after a woman-driven cab ride let her travel without constantly worrying about her safety.A video shared by a woman of her late-night cab experience in Mumbai is viral. (Photos: potraitsbyapoorva/Instagram)New Delhi,Oct 28, 2026 16:58 ISTAt 2 am, a cab ride should be just a cab ride. But for many women, getting home safely means tracking every turn, keeping someone on the phone and staying alert until the door closes behind them. When Apoorva landed in Mumbai and booked a woman-driven cab, she experienced what it felt like to travel without those fears weighing on her. Her description of that feeling was unexpected: “I felt like a man today.”What followed was not a dramatic encounter or an extraordinary act of kindness. It was an uneventful journey, and that was precisely the point.“I almost forgot that I had to worry about my safety,” she said in her Instagram video. She did not have to keep checking her phone or pretend to speak to a family member to make it seem as though someone was following her journey. Instead, she could simply enjoy the ride without rehearsing precautions in her head.“During the ride, I wasn't constantly checking my phone. I wasn't on a call with a family member, pretending someone was tracking my journey. I could just relax,” she said. That feeling of being able to let her guard down made her reflect on what it means to move through a city at night. Her comparison was not a claim that men never experience fear or vulnerability. It was about the possibility that, for many men, a routine cab ride does not automatically come with the same list of safety checks.“Not because men never experience fear or vulnerability, but because I got a glimpse of what it might feel like to move through the world without safety being a constant calculation,” she wrote in the caption.Apoorva's point was simple: women often have to plan around dangers that should not be part of ordinary life. Taking a cab, travelling alone or falling asleep on the way home can involve calculations that others may never even notice.“Sometimes, freedom is simply being able to exist without fear. And that’s a privilege not everyone gets to experience equally,” she wrote.Watch the video here:Her video has gone viral and many acknowledged how easily such everyday freedom can go unnoticed.“This articulates something so profound that many of us as men rarely have to think about. We take for granted the simple freedom of living normal life, which is an invisible privilege,” one user commented.Apoorva's ride was ordinary in almost every way. What made it remarkable was that, for a few minutes, she did not have to treat getting home as a risk to be managed.- Ends