Radhanagar Beach, Havelock

You discover a whole lot of new things in every trip. You not only get to see a new places but you also discover a bit about yourself. We are just back from an amazingly refreshing trip from the Andamans. We visited Port Blair and Havelock island. Among these two we simply fell in love with the latter.

Havelock is a tiny island with around six thousand population. They are mostly bengali speaking people. I guess, that made us feel more at home. There are also a few south Indians. We stayed at Eco Villa Palm Beach Resort. Our cottage was only 10 steps away from the beach. In the mornings we used to have our breakfast under one of the umbrellas just by the sea. In the evenings we sometimes used to lie down at the hammock. It was during one such occassion, I realised how much I needed such a break where I can just relax, relax and relax.

There is not much to see and do in Havelock. There are 2 main beaches – one is Kalapatthar beach and another one is Radhanagar beach. Among these two, Radhanagar beach is the most beautiful beach I have ever seen. It has been rated as Asia’a number one beach by Time’s Magazine. And ofcourse, there is scuba diving. One of my friends said that one can swim with the elephants at Radhanagar beach. But we didn’t do that. That’s pretty much everything that you can do there. For moving around we rented two Indian bicycles which were heavy as big boulders. But mostly we relaxed, walked, ate good food. Oh yeah, you get very good continental at Havelock. If you are there, you must try at the Barefoot Restaurant which is just at the Jetty. They have a swedish chef and she knows her job. We had amazing pizza and roasted fish with butter sauce. We ended up going there twice in our 3 days stay at Havelock. There’s another place worth visiting once and that’s Moonlit Cafe at Island Vinnie’s. It also offers nice food.

So, talking about discovering about yourself, I discovered that I was not relaxed properly in our earlier trips. I got to see some amazing places but the tours were very hectic. Our last two trips were to Ladakh and Spiti. Awesome places but you only drive, drive and drive to reach new places. You get altitude sickness. Finding a clean toilet is always a big problem in the Himalayas. So you have to get used to do it in the nature’s lap. And on top of that if your periods are on, then it’s not at all a very good situation for you. We liked Leh a lot. And I still love the Himalayas. But this time, Havelock felt like – yes, this is it. This is where I would like to come to chill out.

The weather was also lovely. I like sunny days. Being brought up in Kolkata, I do not like extreme weathers. Too hot or too cold puts me off. Kolkata does get hot and humid in the summers but there’s cool evening wind to take away the heat. And there’s Kalbaisakhi the local thunderstorm which brings respite from the heat. In Havelock, it was a bit hot particularly in the noon when the Sun was directly on top of your head. But the nights were pleasant. Since we love to walk, we used to go to the jetty and come back by walking from the jetty to our hotel at night. The roads used to be pretty empty by the time we used to return. Twice we walked back from the Jetty after having our dinner at Barefoot at around 8:45pm. Initially I was scared as the roads were nearly empty, and only a few motorbikes were passing by. But the Panchayat head whom we incidentally met allayed our fear. And the waiter at the Barefoot also said that Havelock is a very safe place. Although it seemed quite unreal to me, but it made sense. Since it’s a tiny little island surrounded by the sea and Port Blair is around 2 hours away, there’s nowhere to run away after committing a crime.

Overall, we had a great time. We had our first scuba dive from Dive India. We walked at lot. We talked a lot which we always do – so nothing new in that. And we ate a lot – but that’s also nothing new. Only new thing is not doing much in a trip. And we thoroughly enjoyed that. So much so that we are planning to visit the island once again. And this time we want to enroll ourselves into a scuba diving course after which we will be certified divers. So that’s the plan now. Hope to see the blue sea soon again….

So one Sunday morning, when it was pouring heavily we left from my home to his home. Now it’s a solid 2 hours journey by first pedal rickshaw, then train, then bus, then walking. And during the rains there’s not much difference in Kolkata and a big muddy pond. So I chose to wear a shorts – a half pant which covers till my knees leaving my “legs exposed”. I had known that it would have negative repercussions in my in-laws place, but it was simply impossible for me to wear a salwar-kameez or a full pant or a skirt or anything that goes full-length.

Well, they didn’t say anything while we were there. When we came back, my mother-in-law called me directly after a few days. And she said

- that it was very uncomfortable for them to look at my legs.  (I don’t remember carrying a placard with me saying please look at my legs – I have exposed them for you to look at!)

- That my father-in-law was about to die of shame at what her daughter-in-law wore in front of him! (My parents, mind you, were quite fine with it. In fact it was my father who insisted me to wear something comfortable while it was raining so heavily.)

- That luckily not many people saw me in their building wearing a half pant! (Gosh! What would people think of a daughter-in-law coming to her in-laws place wearing such a dress!)

- That they won’t like to hear bad things about me! That there are other “modern daughter-in-laws” who don’t wear such things! And blah-blah-blah.

I don’t understand these feelings well! In fact it’s very difficult for me to digest them. Why should I be unhappy or uncomfortable thinking what others would think about me?! Why my action would be guided only by what others think?! I don’t want to make someone unhappy by my actions but at the same time I don’t want to make them happy at the cost of my own comfort and happyness.

I tried to explain it to her that it was raining heavily and I didn’t want to land up at their place with drenched clothes. But she was not convinced.

By the way, my husband also wore a shorts of the same length precisely for the same reason! But he didn’t have to hear any such thing.

Numerous surveys, records point out that the Notrh India – particularly the Delhi-NCR region is very unsafe for women. This region is also known as the stronghold of patriarchy and severe gender inequality which surfaces through numerous cases of rape, molestation, sexual violence against women and children, honour killings, female foeticide and infanticide, physical violence against women both at public as well as private places(the recent case in point being a female athlete being thrown out of a moving train and loosing one leg in the accident) etc. The female literacy is abysmally low here compared to the national average. And accompanying it women suffer from poor access to health services, economic dependency and various other disadvantages. Considering all these facts together it is very difficult to conclude that a mere tweaking in law can change the scenario. Rather going by the poor implementation of laws in our country one can safely predict that such laws, no matter however stringent, will not be able to bring major change in the society.

Because, laws are abided voluntarily by people only when they do not come in conflict with the prevailing social values. Otherwise they are mostly observed in their breach. One of the prevailing social values among the majority of the people in the north Indian region is that female are inferior to male. And mind you, this can be found even among the educated lot of this region too. So deeply entrenched has this value become that even the women have internalised it. Who was once a victim now turns into a perpetratior and this chain goes on. Since female are perceived as weak, she doesn’t stand a fair chance compared to a male. If a girl child is raped by a family member other family members come to hush up the entire episode and the criminal goes scotfree with some minor punishments. Recently a 5 year old girl in Ghaziabad area died in a similar scenario. If a grown up women is eve-teased or raped it is believed to be her fault. She must have provoked the men or wore revealing dresses or is of bad character. Even our courts base their judgements on rape cases on similar assumptions. They rely on the finger test which tries to find out if the rape victim has an active sexual life or not. It’s totally beyond my comprehension how that fact can be relevant in a rape case?

I consider rape or such sexual abuses no matter how minor they are, as not only a sexual violence but also physical and emotional violence. I consider it as an attack on the person’s right to life which also includes her right to dignity. And this attack is not motivated by libido alone. It’s the deeply ingrained value of gender inequality – the masculine versus feminine – where masculine is powerful and feminine is powerless – is the main culprit. Unless you break these values, no matter whatever we write in our constituion or make laws, these problems will persist. And this gender ineqality can be applied to other situations of inequality including patriarchy, caste discriminations, class divisions etc. Feminine doesn’t always have to be a women. It can be a man in an inferior position in the social ladder. These positions of masculinity and femininety are relative. A man may be feminine compared to his oppressive female boss and when he returns home he may be masculine compared to his oppressed wife and children. And in these inequal power equations one side always dominates and exploits the other. A dalit is exploited by the upper castes and even among dalits they rank each other. And since women of a minority community are doubly powerless compared to the powerful majority they are always targeted in communal or religious violences.

So what can be done? More laws, more punishments? Stringent laws and their strict implementation do act as a deterrent. But these can only act as supplements. Increasing accessability of female to education and women empowerment is a must. And the current colonial burden carrying education which only tries to bring out factory made products won’t do. Many highly educated people do indulge in patriarchal behaviour – overt or covert, at their home. Already some progress have been made by National Knowledge Commission, in NCERT books and by various NGOS to make education gender sensitive. But they have to reach the masses. We need to raise social awareness. There have to be powerful grassroot movements to break the shackle of gender injustice. And then only we can have “equality of status and opportunity” and a society free of discrimination based on “religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth” as the great wise men of our country dreamt while writing our constitution.

I was fleeing. I don’t know why but there were people looking for me. There was someone else with me but that person was not running away. He was only helping me. So we went to a jetty to take a boat. There was only one boat with a few people on it. But it was to leave after one hour or so. We decided to wait somewhere outside. When we were coming back to the jetty to take the boat there were police waiting for me. I somehow had known earlier that they would be waiting for me so I had put a scarf over my face leaving only my eyes open. I was very nervous. And I was struggling to keep the scarf in its place so that it doesn’t slip away. We crossed them and boarded the boat. It started rocking when we were boarding it. There were people on the boat telling me to relax as it always happens with boats and that the people onboard only need to balance it. I took my seat in the middle of the boat. I was anxious for the boat to leave as that was my ticket to freedom. And then I noticed a huge ship passing by. The ship was making such big ripples that our boat was rocking vehemently. And then I noticed the waterway was quite busy with ships, boats with people on them. Still the boat didn’t leave. By that time the police outside somehow got to know that I was in the boat. So just when the boat was to leave they intercepted. Then I don’t remember what happened….

Quite a bad dream I would say!

We were in touch on and off. But now he is no more! And it’s very hard to believe that I can’t reach him whenever I want to.

His mails now remind me of those lost opportunities when I could have reached him, talked to him, known more about him.

I wish I hadn’t lost all those opportunities.

I wish I had thought more of him.

I wish I had written more mails to him.

I wish I had not kept any mails unanswered from him.

Because, now even if I wish with all my heart I can not hear from him. His mail address, his facebook profile will be there but he won’t be there any more.

My Dear friend, I am truely, deeply sorry for those lost moments. This is to let you know that I have always cherished our friendship and I shall always do so. I mightn’t have said so when you were around or perhaps my actions didn’t said so. But after you are gone I have realised what I have missed. Thank you for making me realise that how uncertain our lives are and how important it is to let your near and dear ones know that you love them. That small glitches in relationships don’t really matter. So thank you again.

May your soul rest in peace……

Surya is an energetic and bubbling and youthful Chennaitie who just turned 20. Cheerful and kind, she is a student of a renowned engineering college. Strangely, she has very few friends among boys as well as girls in her college.

What could be the reason? What prevents her collegemates, especially boys, from befriending a young girl?

The reason might be shocking. It is that, unlike many other girls in the college and in society, Surya does not take lying down the cheap, vulgar comments made against her. She gives either a stare or a slap to her “so-called” friends, depending upon the intensity of the comments.

Now, hold on for a minute. First, I bet that most of us are unaware of the fact that cheap comments are passed not only on women wandering with a low-hip jeans and tight fitting T-shirt. Almost all young girls are prone to the attack, especially in colleges. The offenders are none other than their collegemates, who might have had a discussion about the class test or lab experiment with the girls earlier. If asked for the reason, the guy would give a nonchalant reply: “C’mon, it’s just for fun.”

Where are our youngsters headed for? And, the worst part is that the general trend among the guys (not only these goons) is that they could not tolerate a girl questioning them or having the guts to raise her voice against their wishes.

For the same reason, Surya was tortured in indirect ways. Naturally, her behaviour does not gain her respect among other women too. And to those who proudly raise their collars saying that the urban women have attained equal rights, what answer do they have for this kind of behaviour?

A very interesting read on the type of  demands that “friendship” makes from a girl! Isn’t it?

Today’s Hindu brought out a article – Three pogroms held together by a common thread by Vidya Subrahmaniam. A few excerpts from the article -

“Kanaka Rekha Nayak, from village Budedipada, spoke of her husband, Parikhita, being beaten up, murdered and quartered as her family helplessly watched (FIR no: 58 U/S 147/148/436/302/201/149 IPC, dated August 28 2008). Today, Kanaka is in hiding with her two minor children.

Priyatama Nayak, from village Barpalli, said her husband, Abhimanyu, was tied to a tree and burnt alive in her presence. Amidst religious chants the mob looted her house and destroyed it. Priyatama’s young son went to the local police station and begged for help. The police reached the village 10 days later by which time dogs had preyed on Abhimanyu’s body. (FIR no 90 u/s 147/148/436/506/302/149, dated August 31, 2008). And though Priyatama named her husband’s killers in the FIR, the police made no arrests. In March 2009, following unceasing threats from those named in the FIR, Priyatama, who had also petitioned the Chief Minister and the Governor, took her case to the Orissa Human Rights Commission, which ordered the Kandhamal District Magistrate and the Superintendent of Police to hold an inquiry into the case and take action against the errant policemen.

Twenty-four-year-old Narsingho Digal from Dudukagaon testified that a 600-strong armed gang looted and destroyed his house. His mother was gang-raped and his parents were dragged into the forests and murdered. Narasingho, who — like many other Kandhamal Christians — faces a social boycott, said the rioters had made his conversion back to Hinduism a condition for his being allowed to return to his village.”

Please visit the link above to read the full article.



The brief meeting with monsoon rains have cleared away some of Delhi’s dust. The trees are looking greener, the buldings brighter and the roads darker. But the hearts that have been choked since long are yet to be clean.

I joined one of the biggest Indian software companies straight out of my college. This company makes many other things apart from software. The founder of the company is often in the list of richest people in the world. But the salary this company pays to the freshers is pathetic. On top of that we had to sign a bond of Rs 75,000 which meant that if we left the company within 1.5 years of our joining then we had to pay the full amount. They justified it with the reason that they were spending quite a lot on our training program. Hence the need to take security deposit from freshers who didn’t even start earning. They made arrangement with one of the leading banks. In short, even before joining any job we were under the debt of Rs 75000 from the bank. That was the first price we had to pay to work in the company. As I realised later we had to pay even more – not monetarily but in other ways.

After the training period we joined various teams within the company. We had to be physically present in the office for minimum 9.5 hours. The work was boring. Freshers were given mainly testing and documenting work. Most of the good works were done by the senior people. I stayed in that company for 9 months. I was so pissed off with the work, work culture and my salary, I paid the bond amount out of my own pocket and joined another company.

Let me share an experience that one of my friends had in another such company. They have to clock 10 hours in their office. My friend wanted to make quick progress. He used to spend around 13/14 hours in the office. His boss got impressed. At the end of the year, he got good review in the appraisal meeting. As  result he got some tiny increment and lots of promises if he continues his good work. Another year passed by. And he continued to work in the same way – 13/14 hours a day. This time his boss didn’t give him a spectacular review like he had done in the last year. My friend was clearly disappointed. He asked his boss why this was so. His boss told him flatly that he hadn’t improve much in the past one year. In short his performance stagnated. He was shocked! He spent most of his waking hours in his office. In the process his health suffered. He couldn’t spend much time with his family. He couldn’t do many of the other things which he loved to do. And all for what? How on earth can a man work more than this? Well, it made perfect sense to me – how on earth can a man continue working like this. But sadly that’s the way these companies exploit their workers.

When I was working, 3 factors were very important for me to be happy with my work life – quality of work, salary and the work environment. The salary is invariably poor in most of the big  Indian IT companies. I have heard that they pay their managers well. I am not sure. But in the freshers level the pay looks very bad compared to many other companies. Now coming to the quality of the work, if someone is lucky, which is very rare, he/she can get some work which is not testing or documenting. There’s hardly any chance to grow one’s expertise in any field. All these big IT players in India are service based companies. The hardly do any R&D on their own. They provide service in various domains – banking, telecom, embedded etc according to the client’s wish. And they shift the employees in projects as per the requirements. So one employee can be working in Java for one year, next year he might have to move to something else and so on. If he doesn’t want to do that then he might have to sit on bench – which means no project work for him, he is not a billable resource for the company and this might give the company a nice excuse to either lay him off or reduce his salary. Besides, every day going to office and not doing any work for 9.5 hours is a torture in my opinion. For me those 9 months were totally wasted in my professional career as I didn’t learnt anything during that time. The people in the office were nice. But spending more than 9:30 hours in office regularly was unacceptable to me and still it is. In the later companies I sometimes did have to spend more than 10 hours in office. But that was not a regular habit. It was either due to some urgent work or due to my lethargy to finish the work within time.

During those 9 months, I was completely disappointed with my work, frustrated with my pay and demotivated to spend 9:30hrs in office. In short I was quite unproductive. In my later companies I had flexible timing, better pay and better work. And I was more productive than what I was in my first company. I am glad that I escaped from that torture. I have seen many people who stick to these companies. If they are happy doing so, there’s no problem. But many do so due to lack of exposure or knowledge about other companies where this is not a norm. They accept their situation which I think is very unhealthy for them.

If these big companies become a bit more employee friendly then I guess they do not have to device such schemes as taking security deposits etc to retain their employees. The software engineers do not come under labour law. There’s no union either for the software engineers. And this gives a good opportunity to the software companies to exploit the IT workers. Many of the IT workers do not like to think themselves as labour since it’s not quite fashionable or glamourous to think so of oneself. But the fact is they are. Whether white collar or blue collar – they are wage labours. Yes, they are well paid compared to the labours in other sectors. But the fact that their health, family life is suffering – is largely neglected. The companies make such rules which are hamful for the workers. They can lay him off anytime they want. Fortunately some of the IT workers realised this hard fact in the recent recession when companies laid many of them off just like that – without any notice period, without any severence package (Only exception I have heard is Sun which gave good severance package). Now there are some minor efforts here and there to organise themselves. But at the same time they should also learn from the flaws of existing trade unions because in many of the cases the unions are held to be responsible for low productivity. Hope these efforts succeed and it results in better work culture, better work satisfaction and better productivity.