What the Pachauri case reveals: Men can't take a polite no for an answer

You’re 28-years-old. You get a break working for one of India’s most reputed think tanks on climate change, The Energy and Resources Institute, or TERI. You’re told that you’ll be working directly with the 74-year-old head of the company, RK Pachauri, who has recently won a Nobel prize as part of a panel on climate change. You join work and realise your boss seems as interested in you as he seems in the climate. You’re polite, civil and professional. You fob off his advances and carry on working. He carries on, relentless, and adds insult to injury by buttressing his lechery with very suspect gifts – a red, heart-shaped candle, a (free) duck he picked up while flying First Class on Lufthansa, a plastic planter with three tulips painted on it and a stuffed toy dog. These are served up to you along with an order of inappropriate groping and multiple lewd and over-friendly emails, smses and WhatsApp messages that proclaim love as the reason he’s grabbed you repeatedly. [caption id=“attachment_2143297” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Courtesy: ibn live[/caption] Yet another Indian big boss indulging in a spot of sexual harassment with a female employee who could well be his granddaughter. If anything, RK Pachauri comes across as one of a type: a successful, affluent man in a senior position, afflicted with what in Bengali we refer to as aloo-r dosh. Or The Fault Of The Potatoes, which, when applied to men like Pachauri, is giving the poor potato a bad name. The tawdriness of Pachauri’s overtures aside – his smses, gifts and explanations of grabbing her are nothing if not tawdry - what’s surprised me is how many (including seemingly bright journalists and CEOs) have questioned why the complainant didn’t resign earlier or complain. Why did she reply to his smses, they ask, as though her decision to do so is justification for Pachauri’s behaviour. Here’s an example. Pachauri allegedly sms-ed he’ll go on a fast to prove his love for her, but said he would start the fast only after a cricket match. She replied saying she wished he wouldn’t fast and would take care of his health. How this could be considered encouragement of any sort is a separate problem. The issue that many have with Pachauri’s accuser is that she didn’t read him the riot act and submit her resignation when he took the liberties he did. Pachauri’s complainant isn’t the first to opt for a non-combative approach to harassment and she won’t be the last. These are incidents I personally know of, and a few of which I have been personally involved in, where confident and vocal women have remained silent in situations similar to that of Pachauri’s complainant. There’s an editor of a well-known website who at 23 and working in her first job was asked out for a drink after work by her boss, who was 10 years older than her. She was flattered at the attention, as most employees would be. The two of them had a beer and at the end of the night, her boss lunged at her and smooched her. She let him drop her home after that pounce, spent the rest of the night weeping her eyes out and went back to work the next day, as though nothing had happened. She just didn’t speak to or acknowledge her boss unless absolutely necessary. Did she quit? No. Did she file a complaint (keep in mind, this was nearly 20 years back, before harassment was taken seriously)? No. She decided ignoring him was the best option and her job was more important than the showdown that would follow. Another friend was in an edit meeting with a media house where she used to head one of the media wings, when another editor-in-chief (again two decades her senior) placed his hand on top of hers while making a point. He then left his hand there for the rest of the meeting. At one point, she simply removed her hand from under his. When I was 25, my boss (who was easily 20 years older than me) used to blow on the nape of my neck and make it a point to come running into the room and kick my heels off my feet in what I assumed he felt was a football move. Another professor, with whom I was very friendly, asked to see my stomach when I said I felt I’d put on weight and had run his hand across my stomach and said he didn’t think so. Did I think it was inappropriate? Yes. Did I complain? No. Was I was scared of the repercussions of doing so? No. I simply felt that my behaviour following this would make it clear I wasn’t interested. Whether most of these men, like Pachauri, are interested in a sexual union or not is moot. But they are men who are senior to us, and therefore in a relative position of power. Should they be doing what they are, even if they aren’t physically violating us? No. Is our silence simply egging them on? Maybe. But if we’re portioning blame, surely it’s their responsibility as bosses and seniors to be able to gauge from a subordinate’s behaviour without a complaint being filed against them? For the subject of unwanted attentions, one way of dealing with these situations is to not acknowledge them publicly while another is making an official complaint immediately. To prescribe only one option as the solution is more than a little myopic. It’s not only in the workplace that you are the recipient of unwanted attention or advances. If outside the workplace, we’d simply shrug it off or make our lack of feelings clear privately or by giving someone the cold shoulder – why shouldn’t the same practice be applicable to work? This has nothing to do with fearing repercussions, but everything to do with wanting things to settle down cordially and keeping the professional and the personal separate. You don’t want to make a big deal or embarrass the other person. If as a result, we try and behave in a civil manner, why should we – simply because we are women, and in some cases men – be told that our silence is encouragement or a sign of weakness or a flawed character? If the woman in question kept replying to Pachauri’s smses politely while making her lack of interest clear, more power to her. Full points for being mature while maintaining a professional attitude. She, after all, had to report to friendly Pachauri every day. In an age when working people spend long hours in work places and one’s colleagues often become like an extended family that you love, hate and rely upon almost as much as your birth family, it’s arguably unreasonable to expect there won’t be office romances. Personally, I’m all for healthy flirting as well as romances and dalliances between colleagues and across hierarchies, but only so long as both parties are consenting. (And it doesn’t cause mutiny in the rest of the team.) When the ‘romance’ is one-sided - and made worse because the one being pursued is lower in the official hierarchy – that’s when you have a problem. Especially if the one making advances will interpret grin-and-bear-it politeness as encouragement to pursue an affair of the heart and loins. It isn’t, and the next time someone says no politely, the Aloo-r Dosh Club would do well to accept the rejection gracefully. If not for anything else than the threat of the very public embarrassment that may follow if their behaviour pushes someone to make a very public complaint.