He is tall, dark and heavy-set. I call him Wipro, because that is the company he works for and I do not know his name. He is a fellow resident of the hostel/paying guest accommodation I live in.

I met him first some time after I had begun challenging those of ‘them’ residing in the same hostel to come and speak to me directly if they had a problem to solve, rather than just commenting and talking at me rather than to me from a distance. “Jaldi bhagaao aise logoN ko yahaaN se, jinki wajah se raat-raat bhar jaagna paRtaa hai.” (We should drive such people away soon, because of whom we have to stay awake the whole night.), he said to some one else, before he began to speak to me, in obvious reference to commenting duties given to some of them, in case I woke up at night to go to the toilet. He did not speak of any of the problems ‘they’ had with me, of course; just some useless drivel.

Following that, he has hardly been speaking to me, but making some comments on and off about some of my thoughts or incidents in my life, probably in an attempt to intimidate me.

Now, Wipro has a girl-friend, or, at least, a girl who is a friend, whom he hangs out with often. I believe she is a student in an educational institution of some repute and lives in the women’s hostel located opposite ours. Let us call her Wipri for quick reference. She used to repeat my thoughts verbatim and comment on them to carry out a sort of ‘telepathic’ conversation where she communicated through spoken words, while I replied through my thoughts. One day, when I called her a b*tch, she got very offended and said that I should treat her with respect. I was quite amused by the fact that here was a Petty Criminal indulging in invasion of privacy and criminal intimidation who wanted to be treated with respect while committing a crime!

Similarly, there are hostel residents employed with other leading private companies, such as Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), who have chosen to join ‘them’ in an attempt to intimidate me. For example, there are three employees of the company occupying the flat opposite the one in which I have rented a room, who would gather in a room in the evening to hurl abuses and discuss the amoral thoughts I had about some of my Female Colleagues during my previous employment, after I developed obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) while working there, as described in some earlier blog posts. They would not, however, respond to any challenges for a direct confrontation, just like the rest of ‘them’.

Then there is one chap employed with the leading world-wide retailer Amazon, who is polite to the core and often greets me with a smile and engages in some small talk when I see him. However, I heard him mutter the name of one of my female colleagues under his breath when I passed him one day, while I was facing the OCD problem. This very afternoon, he was with some of his mates who muttered “gaanD phaT gayi!” (His anus is torn!) as soon as I turned my back on them.

There also are many other residents of the hostel who are students of reputed management or insurance education institutes in the vicinity, who are clearly with ‘them’ and indulge in attempts to intimidate me through ‘standardised’ comments and verbatim repetition of my thoughts or comments on them, in the manner I have written about earlier.

Working for some of the elite Indian or multi-national companies or studying in premier educational institutes has obviously not given any of these people a moral compass and they are no better than any other petty criminal, as far as I am concerned.