A creepy old man begging at the Marathahalli junction and gesturing obscenities made me think about Ix. And how they are everywhere. Ix was my manager in a previous company for close to two months. He was very helpful. The first day in office, he offered to help me find a house, and when I said I already found one, he offered any and all help in setting up the place. He also asked me if I needed a drop home, but when I said I drive, he was very unhappy that he couldn’t be of any help to me.

Of course Bee and S teased me about the manager’s interest in me. Having been brought up in Kerala, and being the paranoiac me who distrusts every man, I did not give him my phone number once I got it. He was to call S for anything urgent, and he would screen the calls, and give it to me. It helped that S wasn’t the sweetest guy in the world to him. He still managed to send me Happy Diwalis and Happy weekends and all that crap(to S’s phone!), and S told me maybe I am beginning to look like a girl after all, hence the SMSes. I had to pull off the haughty bitch act for him to leave me alone. Except for his not buttoning up his tee shirt in office, things were pretty OK. (Oh yes, this is something I feel strongly about. Why don’t majority of the men understand their convoluted bodies are nauseating? Don’t show off your legs and torso if you are not one of those handsome models in the ads. It is fat in all the wrong places. When it ain’t pretty cover it up.)

In two months he was chucked out of the office. Sexual harassment and all that. It was pretty serious too, he soliciting a woman who was in his team, and slightly touching a lot of others. They let him go without any legal action because they wanted to give him another chance and didn’t want to spoil his life. Spoil his life? I wonder whether he is pulling off the same stunts in another office. If a woman accepts a lift in his car, he thinks she is all ready to sleep with him the moment they reach his house or what? No wonder women don’t trust men in India. Unfortunately (or fortunately,people will say) women are not as paranoid as me. When a colleague asks them if he can drop them somewhere, they say yes, unless they distrust him to begin with. That is wrong ladies. I have had this classmate who couldn’t help touching me if he wanted to ask for anything. I used to trust that group earlier, and now that is gone thanks to that bastard. It is so sad we have to be not trusting.

Well, what I began to write about is sexual harassment. Ix surprised me, because I did not expect it to happen where it did. Not that I wouldn’t write it off in him, but I really did not think he would do something like that in office or to a colleague. Not because I think education induced some culture in him, but because of the repercussions. Multinational companies have clearly stated laws on ethics and harassment, and those with such a work experience would hold back their leering hands at least in fear of the consequences. Or so I thought. But apparently, he thought he could get away with it. (If fact he did.) He must have been a veteran, having pulled it off at the various offices he worked, and was never outed? It took the women in my office at least a couple of weeks to come out with the story. They were scared and embarrassed by turns. Why is it that we feel dirty when someone else does a lewd act? The woman is a victim, but the shame is borne by her. Sexual harassment is not caused by your fault, but because the other person is a moron and a criminal. It is not your fault if someone comments on your body. But when it happens at a place you are in constant contact with the perpetrator, you are sorry for all the times you dint tell him off. Why is it so difficult to differentiate the shame and anger and guilt?

I wish all these men would just die away and leave the world in peace. I hate it that these people are reproducing.