All about power

Football, gym and the swimming pool were addictions Norbert D’Souza* grew up with. The personnel management graduate enjoyed the attention he got with his dusky, athletic looks, baritone and height. The graduate was thrilled when a pharma major picked him at campus recruitment. “The HR manager Neha Bhatia* was being indulgently informal in the interview. I thought that was sweet,” he says. After the initial orientation and a week of working under Bhatia, she asked him to join a four-day training programme in Lonavla. “I thanked her profusely. It was raining and the cloud-kissed foggy hills seemed like a godsend.”

Over the weekend, everyone got into a holiday mood after the training. After a long walk in the rains, they ended up singing and enjoying drinks at the bar. By the time they wound up, it was close to 11pm and had been raining profusely. Bhatia insisted that he share the sole remaining umbrella upto her room. They had barely reached her room when the power tripped plunging the lobby in darkness. “She threw her arms around me and began aggressively kissing me,” recalls D’Souza, who then ran to his room in fear. The following morning, Bhatia greeted him as if nothing had happened, but later called him on the intercom, asking him to come over. “She told me that she liked me and wanted to have sex. I declined, but she reminded me of my probation and began fondling and arousing me,” he says. D’Souza says he feels disgusted with himself for giving in that day. “It became a regular thing even when we came to Mumbai. After a while it started to affect me so much that I quit.”

Diwakar Parulekar* says he knew he was gay since he was seven. “But my parents didn’t know so I grew up trying to suppress it and suffered a lot of teasing and ragging all through school. It was only in college where, thanks to support from friends, that I opened up and began meeting guys.”

Yet nothing had prepared this hotel management graduate for what he experienced at work. After working first at an Aurangabad hotel, he got selected for a hospitality job in Dubai. His soft-spoken nature meant he was jeered at work from day one. “Though I ignored all that, one of my Arab bosses was hard to ignore,” he says. This boss would pat Parulekar’s behind and wink at him. “I thought if I pretend not to notice, he’ll tire and stop but that didn’t work. He began first flashing whenever we were alone and then force me into fellatio.” When Parulekar refused, he was told he was a laggard and not up to the mark. “Once, when he grabbed me in the store room and tried to rape me, I raised an alarm. But given that he was a local and I an Indian worker, I eventually had to leave.”

High stigma 

While an overwhelmingly large number of women find themselves at the receiving end of unwelcome attention at the workplace, men too face this problem. “The same patriarchy, which shames women who come forward to complain of sexual abuse, is 10 times tougher on men who are socialised from early childhood into believing that any owning up to being subjugated will be equated with loss of masculinity,” says sociologist Meghana Kashyap. 

Labour laws in India don’t have provisions for a man to complain in case of sexual abuse, admits advocate Flavia Agnes who runs the women’s rights advocacy organisation Majlis. However, given the disproportionately larger number of women who suffer abuse and harassment at the workplace compared to men, she says she is not in favour of making these laws gender neutral. “It’ll open doors to cross complaints, further frustrating women’s fight for justice.”

If straight men can find it so difficult, do gay men stand a chance? “Not at all,” says LGBTQ rights activist Pallav Patankar who remembers how he was himself subject to ridicule and shaming by colleagues over his sexual orientation when he was in the corporate sector. “Gay men are assigned what are seen as non-competitive roles. If work involves travelling, then there will be whispers about sharing the room with you. It’s made out as if all gay men indulge in predatory sex which is hardly true,” he points out.

“Gay men not out to the world are worse off since their sexuality is often thrown in their face at the  workplace, making them put up with indignities and worse for fear of being outed.”

While all praise for the opportunities opened by corporate groups like Godrej, he rues that such examples are few. “We still have a long way to go towards equality based integration.”

(*Names changed on request)