Mischief mongers and their monkey business

Even as the tinsel town is haunted by sex, sleaze and dopes, the hoi polloi of Hyderabad is being wrecked by a peculiar lot suffering from kinda Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). Though women - both married and unmarried - are the direct victims of these troublemakers, often husbands, brothers or parents have to undergo mental trauma due to this monkey business. 

It all begins at workplace, bus or train terminals, in a casual meeting at a friend’s party or even a social network site. First, a decent looking guy approaches a girl - married, engaged, or otherwise – and makes a ‘friend’ request. It sounds harmless in the beginning, but if the credulous victim shows some positive signs, her ordeal begins. This ‘good friend’ collects her mobile phone number and lo and behold, she starts getting calls repeatedly regardless of the time. And hell breaks loose, if she ever objects or ignores his calls.

This is perhaps the hundredth time, some of my good female friends were telling me of such ‘mobile’ harassments. A friend of mine met me in the morning and told me about her tribulations at workplace. Remember, she is working for a reputed publishing house in a senior position and is happily married! This cranky colleague of hers started calling her aside first and making a friendship request. When she tried to avoid him, she started getting phone calls pleading her to accept his friendship. She said he had promised to do ‘anything’ for her during those innumerable calls. Peeved by the calls of the OCD patient, finally my friend threatened to call the police and it worked as a good antibiotic for the neurosis. 

Another girl whom I know from close quarters expressed her helplessness in handling a similar case recently. The guy in question is an ‘artist’ known to the public and is hailing from a financially sound family. Apart from making a zillion calls, this man with recurrent, persistent obsessions or compulsions, went to her mother and made wild claims and also cut his veins to express his ‘deep’ love to the girl. Fearing bad publicity, the girl, left the city and went to another metro and joined some college there. “I’m too scared. He got hold of my new mobile number and has been calling me endlessly. I don’t know when he will land here one day. I’m damn afraid,” said the terrified girl.

In another case, it is the pilot of a private aviation company plays the villain. He even offered to take care of all her family members for just keeping him as a ‘special friend’ and allowing him to share all his experiences!

Such cases are growing alarmingly in number and our womenfolk are afraid to tell others. In a very recent incident, a middle-aged man (a rich industrialist, for that matter) asked his daughter-in-law to download some porn material from internet and also fondled her private parts. When she complaint to her husband and mother-in-law, they asked her to keep quiet and ‘adjust’! In such a society, no wonder, girls live in perennial fear of these OCD cases and curse their fates! Cops tried to shoot stalkers and acid attackers dead in ‘encounters’ but didn’t succeed in putting an end to the menace.

Are the guardians of morality listening?