Interesting story Part 1: The Habit he confessed, the control he claimed

I was kind of gathering the courage to write about it. There is always this hesitation when it comes to placing the truth in front of the world. Fear. Fear stops all of us from overcoming our struggles.

Crazy little life we have, isn’t it?

This is a story from my life by the way. The best way to start will always be self. So here I am digging my own grave for some views.

Ha! Ha! Ha! What a joke I cracked!

Well, I was in my late 20s. It’s a very stupid age to be in. You are not young. You are not old. Young people are flirting with you. Old people are flirting with you. Dead people are flirting with you. But nothing comes from people your age. Maybe because either they are totally fucked up with their jobs, or they are drunk and having coffee to compensate for their messy schedules.

Overcoming my fatal age filled with dilemmas, I was also searching for a job. I am an advocate. Pretty hustle aura it gives. But honestly, it is extremely laborious. I got sick and left my last job (also because the partner there was chicken shit). So I joined a law firm at Tiz Hazari. Some of the people who know that place already reached the end of this blog to check if they had correctly assumed the ending on a 100 rupees bet. They just know it. But I will still make sure the others who don’t get some clarity over here.

So, when I joined, I was initially a bit hesitant because I was supposed to provide them freelance legal drafting work, but he hired me to work there full-time, which I wasn’t much interested in. He asked me to join instantly. I should have known it then and there. But I didn’t listen to my brain, and also to my sixth sense, who lost her vocal cords screaming and begging me to listen to her. Poor her.

Anyway, by the time it was day three over there, things became a bit clearer to me. As you may know, I am a bit lazy in understanding signs. I generally think people are just naive, while it is actually the other way around.

That senior I was working for was indeed starving for a very glittery life. Although, the interests he held were such that even the thought of them would make others blind.

One day, after I had been there for almost a week, he said, “Dear one, you’ve been working here for days now, and I still haven’t had the time to properly talk to you.”

At that point, the only thought that came to my mind was, “What on earth do you want to talk to me about in that particularly cheesy tone?” But I didn’t say it out loud. I just remained silent.

He said, “See, Deepa, you are a bright girl. You will achieve many things in life. But while you work here, and I know you will enjoy working here, you should also know that I have certain habits that I am not particularly proud of.”

I still said nothing.

He continued, “I am a decent man. Old now, of course. But I don’t have many bad habits. I have always been a caring husband and a doting father. I worked hard to build all of this. But there is one habit of mine… one thing… that I could never quite get over.”

He paused for a while, even sighing as though he regretted his own actions. Somehow, as if reliving his past deeds, he began again.

“I am a bit of a touchy person. I… I don’t really have control over my hands,” he said, lowering his head, while at the same time placing his hand on my thigh.

“Once, I was absentmindedly playing with an intern’s hair, and my wife saw it. You know, we both cried a lot afterwards. I genuinely feel guilty about things like that, especially when it hurts her. But eventually, I had to make her understand that this is just how I am… almost like a reflex. Deepa, I am a man with a good heart. There’s this child inside me that simply wants to enjoy the world without worrying about society or what people might think. I just wanted you to know this beforehand. This is the only part of myself I truly regret and still cannot control. Otherwise, I really don’t have any bad habits,” he said, smiling at me with the strange expectation that I would somehow sympathize with him.

But of course, there wasn’t any sympathy. All my eyes wished to see was him carried away on four shoulders. Which, unfortunately, still didn’t happen.

I was there for hardly fifteen days before I left. But those fifteen days were frustrating enough to make me question whether all of it was actually happening. The washrooms were filthy. I ended up getting a UTI. And I also noticed that even though the washroom entrances were separate, there was still a connection between them because the wall dividing the two didn’t reach the roof, leaving a gap above. So there was always this lingering fear that some man could simply leap over.

And one thing I noticed repeatedly was that whenever a woman went to the washroom, he somehow went too. He was obsessed with the very fetishes he claimed to regret. Disgusting, no? But that is reality. Reality for many people who go to work every day and deal with this kind of shit.

And because we live in India, the most common response when you share stories like this is, “Why do you even need a job? Just marry a rich guy.” But can anyone answer the fact that this man already had a wife? She is herself an advocate. More importantly, she worked in the same office as him. Yes, he did all of this right in front of her. Every single day.

And she said nothing. Though I could see the discomfort in her eyes. Having a wife, two daughters, and a granddaughter still could not take away the perversion he carried within him. So no, marrying rich is not the solution. Accepting it is not the solution either.

But maybe moving on with life while writing about it, and posting it on a platform where he might eventually read it too, can be some kind of solution. At least for me, it is.

Out of all of this, what hurts me the most is not just that he was a molester, but that a woman kept supporting it while she could have saved so many others simply by standing up against it. Or maybe by refusing to believe those people who told her to just marry rich and tolerate everything that comes with it.

To all the women out there, you should know that it is often only fear that stops us from achieving what we truly want in life. People will stop you, point fingers at you, and blame you as though you are the one at fault, while men walk away freely after doing all kinds of crap.

So whether you are given an opportunity or you have to fight to grab it, never let other people decide your life or your fate. And never tolerate bullshit.

P.S.: He also asked me once whether I had a boyfriend. What exactly was he thinking? Dreaming of dating me? Dear God, half of him was already standing at the gates of the graveyard.

P.S.S.: The only question that still comes back to me is why his touchy hands never played with the hair of a man? Were his hands gender biased too?

(The blog was originally posted on wordpress.)