About bullies, tormentors
This 'n' that
By Renee Ranchan

HOW about a stroll down memory lane? Remember when you were in school? When you could hardly wait for the school-is-over-for-the-day gong so that you could dash home? Not because you did not enjoy schools but because home was a safe haven. Home was off-limits for the school bully. Yes, that class-mate or senior of yours who had reduced you to a bundle of nerves. The same bully who would be waiting to jeer you at the school-gate, who you would always — save the days when he was absent — block your may in the school corridor, trip you over, snatch your pen (the one that had been awarded to you for penning the best essay) and in general do everything in his power to destroy you.

Why? For the sheer ‘fun’ of it, for the sense of power he felt when he saw you dissolve into tears. I do not think further elaboration is needed — the picture of the bully is complete. He is the predator that lurks all over the school compound, the person who wakes you up in the dead of night.

How? Via nightmares that leave you in cold sweat and with a palpitating heart. How on earth, you think at that moment, will you be able to go through and survive the next school day? Incidentally, boys alone are not bullies.Girls too can bully. They differ only in their way of functioning. You can, perhaps say, the bullying ways vary. Girl-bullies work in a much subtler fashion. The push-and-shove technique, generally speaking, is not the way they ‘flex their muscles’. They can hurt you via their sing-song taunts that are usually directed at your physical appearance. Why did you stammer so, did you not know there were speech therapy schools? What, pray, were you doing in a school for normal kids? These taunts, jibes hurt but you cannot gather the courage to tell this she-bully that your lips quiver out of fear. Because you are scared of her taunts and her chamchas. Shall we take a few cases to illustrate the trauma a bully is capable of putting its prey through? The emotional and physical effects this predator has on you?

Case 1: Shobha tells you that every morning when mummy would wake her up to get ready for school, she would complain of a stomachache, dash into the bathroom because she would feel nauseated. Mummy even took her to a few doctors. The diagnosis was the same: nothing was wrong with Shobha. It was all a psychosomatic ailment. Shobha tried — repeatedly so — explaining to her mother that it was Supreet, the class bully who was giving her this problem! The mother, could not for the life of her understand how anyone could feel physically ill on account of a girl with (to quote her) not too pleasant manners! Shobha believes that because of Supreet even today when she is nervous or frightened, she feels nauseated. A spill-over from her school days. Incidentally, Shobha is in her early thirties.

Case 2: Sudha, the mother of 8-year-old Anant had it with her son’s ‘kicking up a major fuss every morning’ over going to school! Says the lady, "He would threaten to throw up when I would order him to get dressed, after which he would literally do so. He would also whine about a senior boy who made fun of him, would pull at his school-satchel and other such similar things. I listened but did not hear him until he gradually lost his appetite and sunny smile." Sudha says she mistook Anant’s reluctance to go to school as a natural reflex. Children, after all, would rather be anywhere than at school! The distraught mother, then went to the school to talk to the principal. When no constructive action was taken, she transferred her son to another school. In this case, the re-location worked. However, there is no guarantee, assurance that the next school one attends will be, how would you put it, bully-free. As shows the next story....

Case 3: Aprajita gives the appearance of being permanently on tenterhooks. She seems uncomfortable and self-conscious. Her parents sadly tell you that they had made a wrong decision in allowing her to change schools, all on account of ‘that monster of a classmate’ who had been making Apra’s life miserable. They go on further to tell you that had they known better, they would have instructed their daughter to ‘fight back’! One cannot run away just because someone is bullying you, harassing you... so say the couple. The present school has its share of bullies and the fall-out here was that, that the friends of the earlier school were missing. Such pathetic situations bring to mind, bully-related suicides.

In 1993, Curtis Taylor, an American schoolboy could take it no more. Fed up of being harassed and attacked by the school bully, he shot himself at his Iowa home. He was only 14. His mother later found a couple of poems detailing the humiliation he experienced at the hands of the brute. In 1995, Brion Head, another 14-year-old American, did the same. In this case, the boy took a gun to school and blew out his brains right in front of the entire school. He shot himself at assembly time.... And just as I write this, was there not an incident last year in Delhi where a Class XI student hung herself from the ceiling fan because she could no longer cope with the jibes of school bully? But bullies, don’t prowl in educational institutions alone. Once you are through with your academic career, unfortunately you still meet bullies, tormentors at the workplace. The same man (or woman) makes you do your job, as well as a wholesome sum of his own, parades your minus points at a meeting without ever highlighting the good work you have done, are doing.

In short, this ‘boss’ runs you down at any pretext, at no pretext and does everything in his power to ‘micromanage’ you. Your life is miserable because you cannot dare to say anything. Why? Because he will ruin your confidential report. And you are positive he has already done so. And secondly, jobs do not hang from trees, so you cannot afford to lose the job in hand. All you do, therefore, is pray the tyrant is transferred....

Yes, bullies are everywhere. And everywhere means everywhere. Even at home. (Unless, you are the fortunate few). This despite, the bland, flat reassurance you give to yourself that the man/woman you have pledged your life to, vowed to love ‘for better or for worse’ is in actuality no bully — just a strong individual with an overwhelmingly, overbearing personality.

Psychologists claim that the bully is born solely out of insecurity and the cannot-have-so-grab syndrome or some such thing. But forget the reasons. The reality is that the bully relishes control.

An anti-bully society is not a bad idea....