Male prerogative

I have a new admirer in the office, one who thinks I am attractive and who wants to get to know me better. He has suggested a glass of wine, dinner, anything, but insists that running around trees is not on his agenda at any time. For once, someone is straight, adult and mature about showing an interest in me. But it feels good and could be fun, if I had the time and mindspace to allow myself to let it develop. Which, unfortunately, I do not right now. It is, however, a refreshing change from the speechless, open-mouthed yokels that my world seems to be populated with.

Speaking of which, for many years I have had one of those stalking me. At first it was silly. Soon it got irritating. Very gradually, it got frightening. This man would stare at me at the station from which I commuted in to work, stare at me on the train most of the way there so I would be more careful about the seat I chose and the time I travelled and, then, to my consternation, he would be everywhere I went, from the service provider’s office I went to check my site designs on, to the small café I sometimes picked up lunch from to the bookstore I frequented. One day he was stopped and given a good talking to by a very large and very quiet friend, which deterred him…but not for long.

I spent a few years away from Mumbai and came back to life in the city with a certain unhealthy degree of cynicism in my emotional baggage. And there he was again, haunting my every footstep. But this time I ignored the niceties of my upbringing and brought out the cops. The chowkidars from the apartment building I live in turned up at the station to grab him and he hid, like the despicable coward that he was, behind pillars and assorted travellers. At work, the head of security arranged an ambush and he ran, like a scared little rabbit. And he called – on my home telephone, on my office line – and was told exactly what to do with himself. Finally, he started sending emails to my official address – which have been and will always be trashed.

There have been others rather braver that that creepy character. One chappie at work stood for many months and stared at me over the cubicle partition, never saying anything and shying away if I smiled. Another, who has known me and worked with me for years, prefers to stand at a distance and smile idiotically, making very stupid monosyllabic or completely irrelevant conversation. And yet another gets completely incoherent when he speaks to me, the end of his sentence entirely unconnected with the beginning.

In this context, my new admirer is indeed novel for the situation and the environment we all function within. His behaviour is his prerogative, as it is all the others’. As for me – I plan to enjoy it while it lasts. After all, a girl can’t get enough attention of the right kind, don’t you think?