Wednesday, August 1, 2007

Harassment

Just when I thought that respect for women in India was at an all time high given the number of women in top positions in the corporate world, NGOs, the President of India and so on, the common Indian man does not have seem to recognized it.

My personal experience a couple of days back replaced my belief and saw that man has not changed although women may be doing well in the country.

A married man, about 35-40 years of age, was allegedly harassing a young lady sitting in front of him. The trip from Mangalore to Bangalore was not pleasant in the first place after a hectic weekend and that too this act from a man who was married added to my mental agony. To top it all, this happened in a Volvo bus in which supposedly only ‘decent’ people travel…

After a fierce 15 minutes of verbal duel, the person received a well deserved slap from on of the co-passenger. This continued and after 45 minutes of begging and pleading, saying his career was at stake, his wife would leave him and stuff. Later, he was handed over to the police at a town near Bangalore.

God knows what has happened of him as I write this, but he should have thought of his career, his wife all that when he was committing the act. It was a good move by the young lady that she spoke out, else there would be many who would just avoid complaining and the guy would give a slip, only to continue making it a habit.