Sometimes there are no words to explain what she has gone through, discussions fall short to see her wounds, she is the only one who is being questioned and is expected to prove her allegations always. No one has ever questioned the culprit or rather the so called educated and elite stratum of our society who had passively played the role of subjugating and collapsing all those voices that rose to scream and name the shame, b’coz it is only her silence that could buy a comfortable night with starry dreams for these sexual predators.
Women are a substance of abuse. Like any other narcotic drugs, women are also considered to deliver euphoria to this “Dhinkchak” society. Oh it’s not me who is saying this kind of sickening words; this is a regular communication by some of my extremely qualified, high profile Corporate Bosses who find female colleagues and juniors as means of sexual pleasure and they believe that these socially presentable women can suffice to all of their greedy and lustful needs for the sake of a secured job in the corporate industry. “You give me something, I give you many things” … these sentences are something that She gets to hear in every one-one meetings with her Boss.
My friends, my juniors and that very special and loved one of mine, every one of us are dealing with these sexual predators in our own way. Some choose to remain silent; some choose to resign, while my loved one chose to fight- the fight that has no ending, she is alone fighting with these Corporate Misogynists day and night. She knows that she will be burn down to ashes; her story will remain confined in some of the torn pages of the Internal Complaint Committee’s file, still she is fighting.
31st August, 2017, she receives the Report from the Internal Complainant Committee duly signed by the external member and you must know that any sexual harassment reported in an organization is investigated by Anti-Sexual Harassment Committee and the Report is duly signed by an external committee member who should and must have experience in social work and is a part of NGO serving for the betterment of women. However, this External Member has a very crucial role to play in any investigation as she by the law has to be unbiased and conduct the investigation with transparency, honesty and oblige by the rules laid down by the Supreme Court of India.
Anyways, coming to the point Teesta was shocked to see the content of the Report. As you know that in my previous chapter, I did mention that there were three people involved in ragging and sexually harassing Teesta, but, the Report primarily focused on that person who had already resigned from the Organization in the month of April 2017 and was serving notice period during the phase when the incident took place. Ravi was using this time frame and was fully supported by Teesta’s manager and a fellow co –worker. The main harassers in this story were a girl named Tanuja and a senior guy Ravi. However, the manager is an extremely unprofessional and a criminal minded guy whose primary objective was always to put Teesta into uncomfortable position and then use her situation. This was a regular practice for these guys. They do not oblige to Company’s code of conduct neither they are afraid of the system. They are those Corporate Hooligans who are constantly backed by some of our Industry Stalwarts. No matter what situation the victim undergoes, no matter how the victim is threatened to keep her mouth shut, these Hooligans finds their way to home only because of these so called sophisticated corporate Honchos who are doing multi million business in India and will pay anything to safeguard the accused.
The Report stated that Ravi was genuinely involved in the sexual harassment while Tanuja was also an active part of the banter. These banters were extremely sexual in nature, unwelcome and cannot be considered as friendly. The Manager was found to play abrasive power play, though his behavior toward Teesta cannot be considered as sexual in nature. The shocking part of this Report was despite of submitting a video that recorded the Manager threatening Teesta that ‘’ this is their culture to bully fellow co-workers and as he now finds that this fine culture of bullying each other is getting disturbed as Teesta had complained for being ragged and harassed, he is putting Teesta’s Confirmation on hold……’’ no action was taken against him till date. The Report concluded that Ravi’s case remains closed now as Ravi has apologized to Teesta both in person and by sending out an email and have promised never to hurt a woman’s dignity in future, Teesta has accepted Ravi’s apology .
The Report came up with some recommendation that were needed to be executed by the Company within three months from the date of publishing the Report.
That day was 19th June 2017. Teesta lost all her hope; they failed her as a woman. Ravi, Tanuja and the manager laughed aloud and cracked jokes on her. Her team mocked at her. Well the senior management was playing with the sentiment of this poor girl and was using her situation of joblessness.
Months flew by and time spoke out the harsh reality. No actions, I mean literary no actions were taken against these three harassers. Teesta’s plight was worser than the worst now. The manager and Tanuja were becoming just impossible to bear with. The manager was misbehaving with Teesta on a regular basis and Tanuja kept on demeaning and de- faming Teesta every day. Teesta has now become a topic of discussion in the Company. There were some eyes that stared at her with dirty indications-hey girl are you free tonight while some were scared to talk to Teesta as they felt that girls like Teesta usually uses the situation of sexual harassment to safeguard their jobs while the rest just turned their faces off her.
Teesta is now a symbol of trouble and tagged as a disturbing element. The humiliation is killing her from inside. It was just on the day of ‘Mahalaya’ her manager called her in for a one-one meeting and crossed all the limits of his decencies. He abused her, threatened her and believe me he just drenched Teesta with his hatred and revengeful thoughts.
Teesta is terribly scared and so are we. We will remain to be the unblessed, we will be the untouchables but raped in every 3 seconds, we will be burnt to death in the name of dowry, they will dig into us one by one and we will be the corpse who can’t scream, we will be the deaf girl who is forced to ignore all those noises, we will be the ones who will fail proving our allegations, we will be the ones who hide in the corners of darkness and uncertainties and wish “Can you help me please, I also want to live”
Disclaimer: Names and characters mentioned here are purely the author’s imagination and bear no resemblance to any actual person living or dead. The content is not intended to offend the sentiment of any individuals, institutions etc.
