Touch me not

I recall one of my lecturers when I was a house officer. A decent person, really! Perhaps her command on grammar was not very good. One day there was a case of eclampsia, and I was performing a central venous cut down on her. It was my first house post, and I was still learning. She found that I was not finding the vein very easily. So she took over and made me into an assistant. Being senior, she perhaps believed she did not have to wash up, wear sterile gown and gloves. She she just donned a pair of sterile gloves and started. I was mopping any blood that collected in the operative field. She also had some difficulty finding the vein. So she was a bit irritated. My gauze probably touched her bare forearm some time. Suddenly she said, "Hey, don't keep touching me everywhere." I knew I had not touched her anywhere. I also knew the degree of her command on the English language. So Inderstood what she meant and did not let the gauze touch any of her bare skin of the upper limb again. When I recounted the story to a couple of my women colleagues recently, they were amused. Then they themselves had a couple of things to say. "Sir, do you know what Dr. X Y ZZZZ does?" "What?" I asked. "He keeps touching women colleagues inappropriately. He had put his hand on my shoulder once. the next time he started doing that, another woman professor warned him with her eyes not to try it with me. After that he did not bother me." "Huh!" I said. It is not appropriate in our culture to touch women like this. "He did something even worse to me" the other one said. "We were taking ward round. Suddenly he came along with his unit, stopped and tickled me on the neck." I was stunned. "He puts his arms around women residents too." "Why do you women not tell him firmly that you do not like it and he may please refrain from such touching?" I asked. They did not answer me. Perhaps they are reluctant to offend a senior person. Perhaps they do not want to create a situation. Perhaps it is their modesty that keeps him assured that he can continue to do this and no one will object. I remembered having heard of his activities like thin in the institute he came from, and warning him not try those things in our institute. He probably believed he knew better than I did, or he was so addicted to it that he could not stop.