The Xenophobic Man
My first engagement in the Bank as narrated was short-lived. I did not consider that as employment. The first regular employment was shocking for me, more so because I never imagined that I would face such a person directly, and nobody ever cautioned me about such possibilities at an office. Office, where you must carry your shield always to stop the pouncing swords of males, whether colleagues or seniors, from hurting you physically. Mental hurt, well, none bothers about a Girl getting mentally hurt. I carried the effect for a large part of my life.
This company was having about 150 employees when it recruited me as the receptionist in the office. The office was in a neighbourhood colony having around 20 employees with the rest of them in other premises which I never visited.
The administrative bosses of the company used to be in the office whereas the local director used to come later in the day after visiting other offices and showrooms around the city. There were many operating units under the control of this office. After joining, the couple of days were uneventful with existing girls explaining to me the process of call management, appointment management, introduction with the names of important connections across the different offices and some short notes on the type of communication mostly needed in the office.
The girls in the office appeared to be a bit cautious about the administrative manager but none told me anything. I got only one piece of information he was not a local person, being from a different state and was not quite liked by the office staff.
After almost three weeks on the job, the Administrative Manager called me and handed over some papers to be entered in specific formats on my computer. I started to do the job as required. Within two hours, he was at my table and wanted to see how I am doing my job. He intended to stand at the back of my chair to see what I was doing on the computer. He could not do so as there was no space between the chair and the wall. His body language was somewhat irritating.
The next day, I found my table and chair moved a bit forward creating a gap between the wall and my chair. As I was doing the data entry, he came and stood in that gap. Within seconds, he put both his hands on the backrest and I could feel that his eyes were travelling from the screen to my shoulder, trying to peep inside my clothes. It was frustrating, irritating, humiliating. Such persons were not very rare in city buses, but unexpected for me in the office.
I had not yet completed my first month and did not have any courage to protest or say anything. I did not have space to push my chair to the other side. He left after spending around ten minutes in that position, primarily directing me on how to handle the computer and what I needed to learn from him in computer operation and communication. That position of instruction became a daily routine, from once a day to twice a day, from 10 minutes to 30 minutes a day.
He was becoming more and more aggressive with every passing day. He also started calling me a few minutes before the day end to his cabin and asking about the data processing, asking the maids to serve tea to me in his cabin, and talking about calls and messages to other officers and everything, relevant or irrelevant. I could understand that he used to ensure that I should be the last person among the staff to leave the office; mostly after everyone had left.
After a few days of detaining me for 10 to 15 minutes, he moved forward. One day, he asked me to have coffee with him after office hours, offering to drop me home. I refused both offers. The offers as also the refusal were repeated, for many days. The situation came to a stage where every day after 3 pm, I used to start getting vertigo fearing his call if he was in office.
His actions started affecting my health. I tried to speak to a couple of girls but they told me I would have to deal with it, and they would not be a party to it. I knew then that I would have to decide what I would do. Other women in the office had started maintaining distance from me fearing my call for help might put them in a dilemma, about office versus morality conflict.
And then the worse, he invited me for dinner with him, as his family was out of the city. He told me that my performance review was shortly due on which my confirmation of service will depend and I needed to reduce my hesitancy to come up to expectations. As I refused the same, he became more aggressive. He even threatened that if I did not agree to spend time with him, he will ensure that I would not be able to continue in the job, and also that he would be able to ensure that I should not get any job anywhere.
As time passed, my patience was weaning away and his behaviour was exceeding his own limits of the behaviour of each past day. One day, while he was standing on my back, I could feel his hot breathing on my head and felt as if he was going to kiss me. His hand slipped from the backrest and groped me. It was an electric shock, the limit was exceeded certainly. I left my chair in an electric reaction, in a swift move, and in that move, though unplanned, my head hit his chin quite strongly, and I presumed he was hurt a bit. But his hurt was not my concern.
I got up and went upstairs for going to the washroom. I spent considerable time in the washroom splashing cool water on my face, on my head, putting a lot of water in my eyes which were burning with rage, trying to calm myself, trying to think what should I do next.
I spent considerable time upstairs, and when I came down to the office floor, I approached the HR manager and told him the entire episode of a few days. The HR manager, who was a quite reasonable person, at least visibly, asked me what I wanted to do. I told him that I had just completed one month and this person was an old hand, thus expectedly the company would certainly vouch for him and I might well lose my job. He replied in the affirmative. I requested him to do whatever was possible for him to enable me to remain in the job as without the job, I might have gone hungry. I needed it badly.
He said that he would try and told me to expect results also because the administrative manager was not a local person but an outsider. In the evening, I saw the HR manager going into the cabin of the local Director. After some time, both called the administrative manager. After that, the administrative manager stopped calling me to his cabin in the evening. But he continued coming to me, standing near me as if luring me every time.
He was displaying, albeit in a concealed manner, his extreme prurient drooling in rendering an endless parade of naked flesh.
Fortunately, I got another job before the end of the second month and I did not think twice before shifting. That was my formal introduction to the harassment because I am a girl, not a human being as per their definition.
During that short time, I could recognize very well the risks which I run for being a female in a male-dominated world. However, as life unfolded, I realized that probably it was not males only, but females as well were not ready to accept me as an equal colleague, nor as a partner in the growth of the office and organization. But most importantly, I always found people who were good in nature and were ready to help also, but sadly, there was too little number of those who could exhibit the courage to protest.
And, I, as a fighter in the path of life and justice, carried on to assert myself as a female as well as a human, equal, rather much more important than others. And explore a newer powerhouse of explosive activities domination, brute domination. Nothing surprised me thereafter normally.
And the story continues
Anup Mukherjee "Sagar"
Comments
Post a Comment