All about living in this crazy, wonderful city called Bombay

February 05, 2004

Heard something terrible today...a friend was fired from her job for threatening to blow the whistle on her boss, who has been coming onto her for the past two years, and in the process has made office life severely traumatic for her all this while. She stuck out because she needed the job as she has a lot of financial responsibilities, but when things became so bad that she started feeling physically insecure in the workplace and threatened to tell his wife, he fired her.

To think that this could happen in 21st century Bombay sounds unbelievable, but in the last few months I have heard of at least 2 more cases of the same sort.

One can't even begin to imagine how emotionally traumatic this kind of situation is for a woman...it just shatters you and makes you loose all confidence in yourself. And the worst part is that the law does not really help, or rather is not able to help, because these perverts are too smart to leave any sort of evidence. Your colleagues all know about it, but will not stand up for you in court as they are scared of the repercussions their testimony will have on their jobs. And, most unfortunately, the industry hates whistle blowers and there is a good chance that you might never get another job if you become too militant. Sad but true!

Is there a solution to this mess?

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