Hi. My name is Amit Kumar. I was a student at Indian Institute of Management Lucknow, until shameless professors at IIM Lucknow failed me under the influence of Dr Jamshed Jiji Irani and Tata Steel HR, and forced me to join back as a worker at the Jamshedpur steel plant of Tata Steel Limited.

The reality of IIM Lucknow beneath all the hype may startle many. I am doing my bit to expose the reality of the institute. I will try to substantiate my claims with evidence. Only if the judiciary in India could be free of corporate shackles, then I would have got justice long ago.

In the video below, I describe my situation.

It started when I was a factory worker at Tata Steel Limited, Jamshedpur Works. Owing to my humble background, my family was unable to bear the cost of my education after I passed my class 10 examination. So, I joined as a worker at Tata Steel’s factory in Jamshedpur and began funding my further education with my earnings. I finished my class 12 and graduation with a History Honours degree from a nearby college while simultaneously working at the factory to fund my education.

I was exceptionally good at my work at Tata Steel but I always kept my aspirations and higher education hidden because the management does not like the workers studying and leaving Tata Steel for better jobs or getting promoted. The management at Tata Steel only wants the workers to work, period. But with reduction of wages and deteriorating work conditions, I couldn’t bear seeing myself working at Tata Steel my whole life.

The following email will give you an idea of my work at Tata Steel approved by junior manager Mr Prashant Kumar Mohapatra, manager Mr Rajeev Ranjan and senior manager Mr Arvind Kumar. They were all part of my department at Tata Steel Limited.

So, I appeared for CAT 2014-15 and cleared the test with good marks. I got calls from various IIMs and private colleges. I chose IIM Rohtak and paid the advance amount to confirm my seat for the course on May 25, 2015.

On May 26, 2015, after confirming my seat for the course at IIM Rohtak, I applied for a study leave to HR Manager Mr Manish Kumar but the application was rejected by him. I requested for a written rejection which I got from Mr Manish Kumar. I talked with Senior Manager HRM Mr Rohan Kumar on phone. He too told me that I was ineligible for a study leave. The audio recording of the call is in my possession and the transcript has been attached. You may download the recorded call from here.

I was called to the department office by Head HRM Mr Vikas Kumar, where he, along with Head HRM Mrs Neena Bahadur, questioned me about my reasons for applying for study leave. I told them that I did not live with my parents, and therefore, I was facing difficulties in getting an education loan with my uncle as a guarantor. They further inquired about my responsibilities to my family and who else in my family was earning, etc.

Mr Sandip Dhir told me that the list was already prepared and he knew about it through his connections with the institute.

I was forced to write that I have got admission in IIM Lucknow by Sandeep Dhir in his office before him, even when I did not. I never made a request for study leave for IIM Lucknow. Also, please note that the list of selected candidates wherein I was selected for admission to IIM Lucknow was only announced on June 12, 2015, via email. I was forced to write on June 10, 2015, that I have got admission to IIM Lucknow, whereas I have attached the emails to prove that the fourth list was announced only on June 12, 2015, and I received the admission offer from IIM Lucknow on June 15, 2015. I have attached a copy of the letter with the reply Tata Steel management gave to Deputy Labour Commissioner, Jamshedpur on March 22, 2018.

 

The way the letter dated June 10, 2015, is written with futuristic claims inserted here and there, itself shows that I was forced to write under pressure by HR Manager Sandeep Dhir in his presence in his office. Also, it is not mentioned anywhere in the application that I requested a study leave for Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow, which the HR managers forced upon me in the form of study leave issued on June 12, 2015.

Please note that IIM Lucknow releases no waiting list or merit list that can be studied by a candidate to predict selection in the postgraduate programme. Being an industrial workman, I had no influence or means to predict my selection in IIM Lucknow. HR managers of Tata Steel, on the other hand, had connections and immeasurable influence in IIM Lucknow via the ex-managing director of Tata Steel and the then Chairman of Board of IIM Lucknow, Dr Jamshed Jiji Irani.

The same day I was also contacted by branch manager of Bistupur branch of Union Bank of India who told me that he was aware that I needed an education loan and was ready to sanction the loan if I get a study leave from Tata Steel Limited.

On June 12, 2015, I was again called by Mr Sandeep Dhir to his office. He gave me the documents for study leave. I told him that I am yet to receive the admission letter and the results are not yet declared for the fourth list. He told me that my name will surely be there in the fourth list.

On June 12, 2015, the results of the fourth list came out in the evening and I received an email from IIM Lucknow with an admission offer letter on June 15, 2015. I was happy to see that I had converted IIM Lucknow.

 

After admission, I was surprised at the discrimination inflicted upon me by all the teachers at the institute, especially by one Mr Abhijjit Bhattacharya, who straightaway gave me a zero in subject QAM-1. Other teachers too discriminated against me, gave me fewer marks and penalised me heavily in all the subjects. I was failed in multiple subjects and terminated from the course.

I rejoined the course at IIM Lucknow. But this time, the teachers were more aggressive. They deducted my marks even when I wrote correct answers. I confronted two such professors, namely professor Prakash Singh and professor D. Tripathi Rao with the answer sheets I received, and made them aware of my knowledge of their wrongdoing. They assured me that if I worked hard, I could do well. I decided to let it be and be more alert in the future.

Professor Abhijit Bhattacharya told me face-to-face that he would fail me again and I should get zero in his subject, in the first class of his course. Eventually, he gave me the lowest marks in QAM-2 even though all my answers were correct.

On February 22, 2017, I was again terminated from term-2 and could not apply for repeating, having failed twice. I confronted the PGP Chairman professor Sushil Kumar and requested him to get my answer sheets re-evaluated and to allow me to attend classes for the ongoing term for which I had already paid the fees, but he gave no reply. I wrote to him an email stating my request. He still did not reply. I forwarded the email to the Director Dr Ajit Prasad.

To my surprise, the PGP Chairman ordered that my institute email ID be immediately blocked and instructed me to vacate the hostel and leave the institute campus immediately. I got two copies of letters drafted by a court advocate at Lucknow and submitted one copy of the same via registered post to the Director of IIM Lucknow requesting for re-evaluation of my answer sheets and allowing me to attend the ongoing term for which I had already paid the fees. I also approached Dr Jamshed Jiji Irani for inquiry, but as he had himself planned the ploy, he was afraid to face me. So, he lied that he was no longer the Chairman of Board of Governors of IIM Lucknow. But records prove otherwise. The evidence is below.

 

I somehow managed to pack my belongings in haste and returned to my home in Jamshedpur. (All the emails are in my possession because I had copied all emails from Institute email id to various other personal email IDs).

I emailed the Chairman of Board of Governors of the Institute, Dr J. J. Irani, but as he was himself facilitating the whole scandal, he refused to interfere. When I later emailed him requesting for an appointment, he replied to me not to email him as he was no longer the Chairman of Board of Governors of IIM Lucknow

I also lodged a grievance with the MHRD on February 28, 2017, with registration number DSEHE/E/2017/0538. Soon after lodging the grievance, I received an email from the Student Council of IIM Lucknow that if I submit a handwritten application requesting for readmission, I will be allowed to repeat the course from the beginning. Whereas after my termination and before lodging the grievance, when I requested for such an accommodation, the PGP Chairman informed me that it was impossible under the rules of the institute. The rule was also stated in my termination letter that a student who has failed twice cannot apply for repeating the course.

So, I refused to repeat the course and requested in reply for allowing me admission to the second year of the course, but received no reply to my request. This has been the case up to date. After one month of lodging the grievance, I received a reply from the CAO Mr Vishwa Ranjan that my answer sheets will not be reevaluated as it was mentioned in the rules of the institute. I requested to all the officials at the MHRD to interfere in the matter, but no one replied to my emails. I requested to meet the officials at MHRD but have received no reply until date. The grievance was closed after two months.

The Central Universities Act, 2009 specifically lays down that rules must be made to increase transparency.

But the Institute made some new rules to reduce transparency. These rules were made only to hide the unfair evaluation, after I confronted the professors with their act of unfair evaluation and wrongdoing:

• Question papers will be only given during the examination and must be returned with the answer sheets at the end of examinations.
• Answer sheets will not be given to students. They will only be shown once on a time provided to the student via an email at a very short notice the same day.
• Students cannot approach Professors for discussing the answer sheets nor can they request a revaluation of answers.

On June 15, 2017, I received a reply from Mr Vishawa Ranjan, CAO, IIM Lucknow, who is the public information officer of Indian Institute of Management Lucknow, wherein he denied me information under the RTI Act for my filed RTI number IIMLK/R/2017/50306. I informed the Director Dr Ajit Prasad and CAO Mr Vishwa Ranjan regarding the denial of information and its consequences and warned him of consequences contending that the practice was in contempt of a 2011 judgment — CBSE & Anr. Vs. Aditya Bandopadhyay & Ors — of the Supreme Court, which held that an “answer sheet is an information under Section 2(f) of the RTI Act and therefore, examinees/students have a fundamental and legal right of having access to their answer sheets under RTI Act.”

I filed the first appeal to my RTI which was again denied and returned. It was clear that the authorities at Indian Institute of Management Lucknow were trying their best to conceal the facts of the matter to hide their corrupt and illegal practices. I have filed a second appeal and complaint to Central Information Commission for which I am still awaiting a reply. (Reply to RTI IIMLK/R/2017/50306 and consequent reply to first appeal in possession).

The institute even broke its own written rules so that Professor Abhijit Bhattacharya would be able to hide his shameless actions.

Rule: Midterm answer sheets must be given to students. But Professor Abhijit Bhattacharya insisted on keeping both the Midterm and Endterm answer sheets as can be seen from the email below.

The email specifically says, “Students are not allowed to take answer books out of the classroom.” This was done against written institute rules only so that the students were not able to compare the answers and the unfair evaluation done by Professor Abhijit Bhattacharya.

Even the Chief Administrative Officer of IIM Lucknow, Mr Vishwa Ranjan has cited the same rule in reply to my RTI query.

 

Please note that Chief Administrative Officer of IIM Lucknow Mr Vishwa Ranjan resigned from his post as soon as I filed a writ in High Court at Lucknow in August 2017 against his RTI reply for reasons known best to him. The writ is still pending court till date.

 

Meanwhile, the Senior Manager HRM Mr Vikas Kumar called me and told me that as I have failed in the course, I must rejoin the job at Tata Steel back as soon as possible or else I may lose the job too. I was shocked again. He knew about my termination even though I did not inform him of my termination from the Institute. But helpless, I told him that I would join on March 15, 2017. He asked me to write an email requesting for rejoining. When I sent the email, he asked to specifically write the reason accepting that I had failed due to my fault. I only bolded the sentence that I have been terminated due to poor academic performance. When I joined, he instructed me to write a handwritten letter requesting joining the job after termination from IIM Lucknow.

After some days of working at the job, he met me in my work area and told me how Tata Steel had planned my termination even before my admission. He also warned me that management of Tata Steel was very powerful and that if I did not stop complaining against the termination order, I would face severe consequences.

I asked the Managing Director of Tata Steel Mr TV Narendran for a meeting via email. He replied that he was travelling so I should meet the PEO Mr Avneesh Gupta. I insisted on meeting him but when I did not get an appointment with him, then I took another appointment and met the PEO Mr Avneesh Gupta and informed him of the whole situation on May 9, 2017. He told me that he would take proper action and find the truth. He also assured me that I will soon receive a response to my complaint.

But I was afraid to go to work at the factory because Mr Vikas Kumar had threatened to kill me and make it look like an accident as he had allegedly killed Mr RR Jha (an employee who was found burnt to death in the Coke plant under suspicious conditions) a few years back. I felt insecure after complaining to the PEO Mr Avneesh Gupta. It should be noted that there are fatalities happening all around the year in Jamshedpur Works of Tata Steel Limited. So, it is an easy task for the management to eliminate me and cover it up as an accident-on-job in any such incident. So fearing for my well being and life, I informed the MD and PEO of my fear and discontinued going to work after April 30, 2017 until the matter was resolved.

I was issued a charge sheet from Chief, Coke Plant, Tata Steel Limited for absence from the job. HR manager Vikas Kumar threatened to kill me and make it look like a plant accident if I did not resign. So, I had to resign under force from the job at Tata Steel Limited, issued legal notices to TV Narendran and Jamshed Jiji Irani and requested to settle my provident fund and other dues and inform me of anything required from my side for the process of resignation.

I served legal notices to Mr TV Narendran, Managing Director, Tata Steel Limited, Dr Jamshed J. Irani, Former Managing Director, Tata Steel Limited and Chairman of Board of Governors, IIM Lucknow and Dr Ajit Prasad, Director, IIM Lucknow to which I have received no reply until date.

On May 20, 2017, Mr Avneesh Gupta replied to my complaint via an email denying the allegations and advising me to rejoin the job at Tata Steel Limited immediately. On the same day, National Human Resource Commission (NHRC), where I had filed a complaint with case number 14056/24/48/2017 issued directions to MHRD for investigating the matter and providing details of the action taken within eight weeks. But I have received no details of action from MHRD or NHRC till date.

After multiple requests and complaints, only a sorry attempt was made from PMO to which the Managing Director of Tata Steel Mr TV. Narendran has not replied till date.

The criminal complaint case against the above stated still lies before the court of the Chief Judicial Magistrate. The court has been abstaining from even listening to my petition to date.

 

Frustrated with the inaction by the above-mentioned respondents and authorities, I am forced to expose the reality to all through social media. Meanwhile, authorities at IIM Lucknow and Tata Steel Limited may tamper with the evidence, and may kill me to shut my voice, framing it as an accident. So, timely action must be taken to save my career and life and expose the illegal privatisation of Indian Institute of Management Lucknow by the Tata management.

The post Deliberately Made To Fail, Given Death Threats: My Experience At IIM Lucknow & Tata Steel appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

The World Environment Day came and went by – and like many others around me, I thought it was time to start making a change in my life. I pledged to #unplastic. And then started the ordeal.

The first step was eliminating the need for and usage of single-use plastic. I had seen numerous posters about this – and they all talked about eliminating shopping bags, straws and water bottles. That couldn’t be hard, now could it?

First came the shopping bags. My parents had shifted to cloth/jute totes quite a while back – so this was just like picking up an old habit. I added thin fold-able cloth totes to my kitchen drawer and office bag (read unplanned grocery shopping trips).

Water bottles – this wasn’t difficult either. I already had steel bottles at home and office – I had to just make sure I carried a bottle every time I stepped out, even if it was to the mall or to the airport (Airport hack: Carry empty bottle across the security check and then fill it at the water dispensers).

Straws – eliminating these weren’t a problem at all, as I am not a soda person and straws ranked very low in my consumption pattern any way.

That is it, right? I was winning this war on plastic already.

Not quite. The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon be damned. For those who haven’t heard, it’s the phenomenon when a thing you just discovered suddenly seems to crop up everywhere. Yes, there is a word for that!

And though I hadn’t heard about plastic for the first time (duh), I started seeing plastic everywhere. It was as if my eyes had added a plastic scanner in the retina and I just could not escape them. Of course, we all know plastic is everywhere, but I was about to find out just how deeply they are embedded in our lives.

I decided to phase out all single-use/frequently-disposed plastics from my life. Sounds easy enough, right? At least, I thought so too.

The first thing that popped up for me, as a woman, was sanitary pads. This was actually the highest contributor of my plastic waste (even including the ‘holy grail’ of the three evils mentioned earlier). I knew what I had to do – shift to menstrual cups.

But for a girl who is not very comfortable using tampons (because they need to be inserted into the vagina), and had used sanitary pads for five days every month for the last 13 years, I knew this was going to be a mammoth task. Nonetheless I decided, gaining familiarity was not the biggest issue – it was just a matter of time.

It was the two other problems that struck me. One of them would turn out to be the biggest I was going to face in this entire process.

First – what would happen to the emergency pad I had stashed in every bag/purse/drawer? ‘Cloth pads’, I hear you say? Yeah, that is possibly the only option, unless I buy a set of like five cups and place them everywhere. Either way, sounds doable.

The second issue was one I will refer to, again and again. It is the most irksome hindrance of all. I couldn’t find the cup or the cloth pads at my neighbourhood store, and I searched on “apni dukaan” Amazon – and of course, I found exactly what I needed. Excited, I immediately added it to my cart. I was going to change my life, I was going to bring a revolution! That is when it struck me – packaging!

Have you seen the ridiculous amount of packaging e-commerce sites use to pack products for shipment? Those plastic covers, the air-filled plastic balloons, the excessive thermocol… sigh.

What could I do now? I could buy substitutes for plastics any time, but if they came wrapped in more single-use plastic, my purpose was entirely lost now, wasn’t it?

Feeling defeated, I stepped out of the house to buy myself some fresh vegetables and fruits. I had carried a tote with me – Me 1 Plastic 0. My neighbourhood supermarket always had fresh veggies in the mornings – and I was going to stock my kitchen for the week! I stepped in and as soon as I started picking apples from the shelf, I realised plastic had trumped me in this round too. There were rolls of plastic covers along the shelves in which I was supposed to fill my selects – and they couldn’t be avoided because the guy at the weighing counter had to weigh and bar-code them.

Oh, oh – this meant that I had to go the sabzi mandi a kilometer away and purchase my ration there. Yes, I know you will say that’s good because I was directly buying from the vendors. True… but a large dollop of realisation fell onto me, as I slowly made my way towards the mandi. I was going to have to give up a lot of conveniences for this.

What seemed like a simple-enough pledge a few days back had now turned into an ever-growing monster that was either going to push me to give up or turn my entire life upside down.

A few days went by, and I was actually liking a few parts of this journey. I couldn’t eat any packaged food. Earlier, to eliminate disposable boxes, spoons, forks and sporks, I had to dismiss all my cravings and eliminate any kind of food deliveries and takeaways. So, unbeknownst to itself, this pledge was helping me in my weight-loss game too. A double win!

But how could this plastic monster possibly see me happy? As my kitchen shelves ran out of staples, I realised this packaged-food ban extended to not just junk food but to all kinds of food.

I had to forego my favourite yoghurts (and if you know me even a little, you would know that I can kill for a cup of good berry yoghurt). I figured I would buy milk and curdle them the good old way at home – but how do I buy milk? Packets, tetra packs – all plastic. Some dairy shops offer milk by the tap, and it is cheaper too – but I did not find any in the vicinity of where I live. The only option was glass bottles, and reusable ones at that. Where do I get those now?

I guess it was so much better in the olden days when the milkman came to the door and poured milk out of his steel jug into your utensil.

Rice, wheat, lentils, frozen food, meat, fish – could I buy anything at all with plastic-free packaging? I could buy eggs – and condiments, possibly. Not a very healthy diet though, I suppose.

For meat, I found a shop nearby selling freshly-cut meat. So I could go and pick it up in my container. But fish markets were going to be impossible. Shoot.

Purely out of habit, I went back to e-commerce sites to find foods without plastic packaging. Some organic food companies offer foods in paper packaging, metal tins and glass containers too. But I reached the same impasse betweem e-commerce and plastic-free packaging.

And I haven’t even talked about how excessively expensive some of these things were!

Some of my food problems were solved when I found a gourmet organic-food supermarket in a neighbourhood nearby. Though it added to the travel time, cost and of course, the increased prices of the ‘gourmet’ foods, I could at least eat while keeping my pledge. For now.

Tired but glad that I had won a small battle with the monster, I went for my daily hot shower. Stepping into the bath, I had to laugh when I saw 10 plastic bottles of different shapes, sizes and colours staring back at me. Though these bottles were not really ‘everyday-throws’, I easily replaced them once a month or so. This monster was sneaky.

I made some customary changes the same day, changed my hand wash and shower gels to good-old soap bars. Thanks to the influx of handmade/organic soaps, I could find bars with paper/non-plastic packaging rather easily.

I didn’t want to eliminate liquid soaps in the beginning – but I thought that even if I bought those pretty, glass hand-wash bottles, I would need refill packs every month – and those were of course plastic. There go my dreams of a Pinterest-worthy bathroom.

The other things turned out to be harder to substitute. To substitute my trusted zigzag toothbrush, I found pretty bamboo brushes on (you guessed it!) Amazon. Toothpaste was even harder – there was no direct substitute at all. I had to move to tooth-powders, or as we call it dant-manjan! I still remember the red-and-white jar of the Colgate tooth-powder my grandfather used to use. Yes, yes – I know, that jar is plastic too, but there were a few organic tooth-powders available in glass jars with metal caps. It was funny how this plastic-free journey was also taking me towards fresher and cleaner foods/toiletries.

I used to have a toiletry travel bag with 8-9 essential bottles – a shampoo, a conditioner, shower gel, face wash, intimate wash, oil, moisturiser. And now, I had to shift to an organic soap bar, shampoo bar, hair masque, face-scrub powder, oil and body butter – all in glass bottles or metal tins.

My handbag essentials changed from hand sanitiser, mouthwash and lip chapstick, to soap strips, fresh mints (in a tin) and lip-butter.

But my ordeal was far from over. I had completely forgotten about cleaning products – utensil soaps, laundry detergents, toilet cleaners, floor cleaners. It was as if someone was systematically conspiring against me succeeding in this journey.

I switched the liquid utensil soap with a Vim bar (careful though, most of the bars are packed in plastic too). But I am still struggling with the others. The internet suggests home-made recipes to substitute detergents and cleaners. Is there really no other way?

I did not begin this journey with the thought that I would have to reconsider my consumption choices so deeply. I do not want to live a hermit life – I am a through-and-through metropolitan girl who enjoys her shopping. As I am writing this, I can think of so many things I haven’t even started thinking of substituting yet – from pens to toys to tiffin boxes and cosmetics. I did not realise that this pledge would need me to make so many lifestyle changes – no packaged foods, no food deliveries, no online shopping. This was ending my ‘convenience lifestyle’ piece by piece.

A simple trial to phase out one seemingly-inconspicuous material from my life is turning almost into an existential crisis. And this is when I have not even started looking at phasing out long-term plastics.

It was not long before I came to the realisation that it was foolish of me to think I can eliminate all the plastics from my lifestyle. But I could definitely try my best to reduce my plastic consumption.

Then came the second part of the ordeal – if I still had plastic waste, I had to look at disposing them responsibly. So I peered into my dustbin only to see a glistening black garbage bin liner. How in the world had I missed this?

There were going to be two parts to the disposal too.

One – the plastic liner itself. A simple substitute to this (but extremely hard to find, without e-commerce, that is) was biodegradable garbage-bin liners.

The other option was home-composting the wet waste and throwing the dry waste as it is. Wait, home-composting you say? Most composters in the market are plastic baskets to be filled with dry leaves and microbe powder. Not helpful. I found these beautiful terracotta composters by DailyDump, but they had to be placed in the ground because they used actual earthworms for the composting process. Two issues here – I am in office for an average of 11 hours a day, and I do not have the time to segregate and make compost! Plus, I live in an apartment on the sixth floor, there aren’t any earthworms here.

Coming to the second part of the disposal – it is obvious that segregation is essential to even come to this stage. So even if I did not compost, I figured I would need a 3-part dustbin – one for wet waste, one for biodegradable dry waste and the third for plastics.

But what after that? How do I make sure the plastics I have so carefully used and segregated will not be mixed and thrown into the same mounting landfills outside the city? Are there any plastic recyclers/collectors who can come by and pick up my plastic waste? I haven’t found anything yet to be done at an individual level. I hope I will eventually find a way out though.

This journey is going to be arduous, with some difficult choices to make – but I have started walking on this path. I hope I am able to keep going and not give in to this monster.

All of us know the ill effects of plastic on the environment around us, our fellow beings, the land and in the oceans. It is just that we have made it super-hard to stop using plastics, given our lifestyles. We are very good at shoving all the trash away from our sight – behind our beautiful roads and buildings.

But then again, isn’t that like the pigeon who closes her eyes to ignore the cat approaching her – thinking that if she can’t see it, it is not going to eat her up either? And we all know that is not how the story ends.

So, I urge you to take a look around you, in your lives, and lessen your use of plastic in the kitchen, bathrooms, and outside homes. Yes, it requires more effort and more conscious/less-convenient choices, but if enough of us do this, we can generate a demand for plastic-free products and packaging. And as capitalism would state, “Where there is demand, there shall be supply.” Let us try to shift our world towards a more sustainable economy, one plastic bag at a time.

The post Have We Made It Impossible To Get Rid Of Plastics? appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

By Shiny Hoque:

In my schooldays, I was a bookworm and wrote down the sentences I liked on the blank side of bus tickets, classroom benches and sometimes on the wall (apologies, if any teacher of mine is reading this!).

I even gifted small write-ups to my friends on their birthdays.

At age 19, I got my first mobile phone with internet connection. It marked the onset of my knowledge quest. I literally tortured the small phone, searching for writing competitions, famous poems, author interviews and much more. Gradually, I became conversant with using the right keywords in my Google search and the world of writing unfolded before me.

I got into the mailing lists of many writing-related websites and searched English newspapers for writing opportunities. Amidst all this, my diary continued to be my confiding space.

With time, I felt the need to connect with other aspiring writers like me. I wanted to share my ideas and yearned for feedback on my write-ups. Among the other things happening in my life, I was also facing some challenges on the personal front, one after the other.

I reached a point where I felt needed a space where I could share my experiences without being judged. It resulted in me searching for women-only websites.

After some rigorous search, I landed on SHEROES – an all women forum. The Love and Relationships community and Mala community for legal and counselling support, were my first acquaintances and I started posting little heartfelt write-ups about my real life experiences. A girl from the SHEROES team praised my writing and invited me to write regularly, but there wasn’t any community for writers.

“I thought of taking charge; I wanted to start a writing community.”

Clueless in my mission, a SHEROES mentor helped me get started. For the first time in my life, I created a powerpoint presentation depicting my community start-up ideas. Once that got approved I set out on my new journey.

On August 2, 2017 with the help of SHEROES team members, I started the Aspiring Writers’ Community. My past years of searching and browsing proved to be of great help and they were now my pillars of support in forming the community. Within two months, thousands of women joined the community and with each day, their number was increasing. Through the community, women with similar interests were coming together and sharing their journeys. I was getting close to the members on a personal level.

Testing Times

At the peak of things, I fell ill suddenly one night. By next month the doctors confirmed a malignancy. I was detected with a rare kind of cancer in my urinary bladder. My world suddenly stopped. To my limited knowledge cancer meant the end. My inward struggle began in accepting the bitter truth. I connected with old friends to say goodbye. Forgiving became easy and I forgave those who had hurt me in the past.

“In my illness, too, I continued writing, even if it was with a shaky mind.”

Personal emails poured in from compassionate Aspiring Writers community members.  They pumped in hope and assured me that all wasn’t over. Through the community members, I came to know about other cancer survivors.

For me, it was more than a community moderator’s job. It was a place where I derived strength and earned proof of my existence. Forgetting my illness, I restarted my life.

Today, I’ve come to terms with my illness and hope to get cancer-free within a year or two. I’ve grown with my community, and my struggles with cancer remind me that life is unplanned.

The Aspiring Writers community, my companion in worst days, proved what amazing transformations women can bring in each other’s lives. Maybe someday in future, published authors will look back at their old days in the Aspiring Writers community.

About Shiny Hoque:

I’m the Aspiring Writers’ Community Manager at SHEROES. I love to travel and connect with people. I’m an avid reader,  passionate writer and dream of having a small library of my own someday. I believe in the power of pen more than that of a sword and consider empathy powerful enough to bring change in this world.

The post I Started A Writers’ Community Not Knowing They Would Support Me In My Battle With Cancer appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

Some of the quips I hear when people crack jokes are: “take it lightly”, “it’s a joke” or “anybody’s not serious”. Really? How are these excuses even plausible? After all, it has been scientifically proven that jokes are also a part of our sub-conscious minds. Today, however, social media channels like WhatsApp are filled up with these kind of filthy remarks, excuses and comments.

Here, I would like to share some incidents from my life to show that these aren’t just my personal observations, but also the reality out there. I have more male colleagues than female. Predictably, they share jokes and sexist remarks about female behaviour, body language, intellect, capabilities and other different issues. Although all of them are from well educated and settled backgrounds, they can’t understand the reasons behind their insecurities against women.

They have generalised views about women, and laugh about these needlessly. A few days back, I was standing at a a bus stop. While waiting for a bus, I saw a girl who just fell off while running after getting tangled up in her saree. She fell on her knees – and immediately, the people, instead of picking her up or offering some water, started laughing. The women around felt embarrassed after seeing this reaction from the bystanders.

Here, I can recall another incident from my college days when low-waists were fashionable among youngsters. One of my friends (a Tibetan), who was wearing a very low waist jean, tried to catch a bus after running for some distance. He was able to do so after reaching up to the gate with a short but high jump. But while attempting this, his jeans slipped from his waist. He looked all around to check if anyone had noticed this embarrassing moment. But surprisingly, no one laughed. All the men in the bus reacted in a very normal way, as though nothing has happened.

This makes me wonder what was different in the incident I witnessed a few days earlier. How did that transform into a comedy circus for all?

I remember another incident during the arguments between my co-workers. One of my experienced colleague remarked and recalled Draupadi in one such conversation. Furthermore, every time a girl makes a decent point in the conversations between two boys, they mostly respond by saying that, “Yaad hai na dost, Mahabharat ki ladaai kiski wajah se hui thi (My friend, you do remember what led to Mahabharat war, right)?”

Is this really true? Have your heard the undertone of this comment?

Who doesn’t know that the evil intentions of the Kauravas led to the start of the war! Their greediness, the unsuccessful attempt to make out with their own sister-in-law and the insecurities about their own leadership qualities – there were many reasons for the war. Then, what is the need to target that single lady who supposedly suffered the most, each and every time?

People need to realise that targeting all the women in a derogatory way won’t make them better persons. Neither will it bring out their best in professional capacities.

Recently, we decided to bring a surprise cake for one of our teammates’ birthday. To this end, one of my female colleagues started collecting money from every member. But one of the men refused to contribute, because “ladkiyan paise lete huye achhi nahi lagti (It’s not decent for women to collect money).” This is how he taunted her while refusing to give his share. It was pathetic. I cannot relate to this kind of mentality at all. I feel disconnected in this setup, but what can I do?

Should I start speaking about the most-derogatory things my decent and understanding male team members have had to hear? What if I retort by speaking up in a similar manner? Will this help end these jokes and attitudes? I believe reverse sexism is a notion which tells you to retort to the people who ruthlessly criticise you, in exactly the same terms. It’s a ‘gender war’ kind of a thing. But do we really need this? No. We should just expect and seek some basic human values, unbiased against any gender. Dominant people can easily create their slang, jokes and values which they expect the other gender to follow. But my point is, what if I do not give-in to this?

In this case, I firmly but bluntly refused to interact with my so-called ‘funny’ team members. But how am I supposed to work then? I have restricted myself in my interactions, and I choose the people with whom I want to interact. But honestly, I don’t feel good this way. It is affecting my own sensibilities and thought processes. It felt like damaging your own self by keeping your mouth shut. Now, I am wondering if I have made the wrong point. How can the world be at so much peace with such perplexed people?

I am eagerly waiting to recollect myself creatively.

_

Featured image used for representative purposes only.

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I had always been interested in new technologies and aspired to become a perfect engineer. So, I googled a lot about the most recent in-demand technologies and got to know about the Internet of Things (IoT). At first, I thought of joining a coaching class, but I realised that I wouldn’t be able to travel and attend classes regularly after spending six hours in college and especially on Sundays – the only day I get to relax.

I came across an Internshala ad on Facebook soon after. I went through their website and was quite impressed. There was also an option of Online Winter Trainings. When I clicked on it, I was redirected to their ‘trainings’ page which had many online training programs including one on IoT. I saw the demo video, read all the training details and found it to be really interesting. I didn’t need to travel anywhere – and so, I decided to give it a try.

My kit-delivery was delayed a bit because of the courier services – and I informed them. Within 24 hours, I got a reply from the support team. They were very cooperative and extended my training programme. The training started soon. In the introductory video, everything about the program was explained – the structure, recommended time for modules, how I could download study material, give tests etc. I was very satisfied with the study material and the embedded videos – they explained the concepts clearly. Sometimes, when I was unable to study on a particular day, I used to study extra on the next day to cover it up, which is a major advantage of such online programs. There is no concept of missing important classes.

The entire training was divided into different modules. The mentors were really helpful, and whenever I had any doubt, it was cleared within the next 24 hours. There was also a Knowledge Forum where all the students taking the training would post their doubts and questions. The questions asked were very interesting and helped me in understanding some advanced concepts. Moreover, the training expert made sure that not a single question remained unanswered. Even I asked 4-5 questions – and all of them were explained really well.

The best part of the training is the short evaluation test at the end of every module. It’s designed to check your learning; without clearing it, you can’t move on to the next module. You can also compare it with the average marks, which are displayed to help you understand where you stand. In the end, there is a final exam which tests everything you have learned during the training course. There is also the option to display your score from the exam on the certificate which you receive after completing the program. If your score is good, then the certificate gives you a huge boost during the placements.

In a nutshell, I completed the program according to my convenience and learned a new skill without affecting my regular studies – that too, at such a cheap price! Now that my basics are strong, I’m able to learn advanced concepts pretty easily. I would recommend you to go for a training programme according to your interest as it’ll play an important role in shaping your career.

About the Author: Debadri Dutta is pursuing B.Tech in Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering from KIIT University, Bhubaneswar. He joined Internshala Trainings for Internet of Things and shares how he was finally able to learn IoT without compromising on his regular schedule. This article was first published on Internshala, an internship and training platform.

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I am on the brink of turning 29, a year closer to the dirty 30. Just when you think you’ve accomplished certain career goals in life and are looking forward to the next decade, the most dreaded question comes up, “When do you plan to settle down?”

If you belong to my generation, you know exactly what I’m speaking about. We may have become forward in the way we dress, speak or broadcast our lives on social media, but it all ends there. Ever since I turned 25, most people have been concerned about my ‘clicking biological clock’. What if I plan to freeze my eggs? You got a problem with that?

I do realise how awkward it gets when a nosy relative sets you up for an interrogation.

Here are certain situations you might have come across if you’ve been diagnosed with the almost-30 disorder, which I tackle with eye-rolling, a constipated expression, and sarcasm-loaded replies:

“If you don’t get married now, you will lose all the charm.”

A: Of course, Aunty. But I am sure if you stand here and annoy me any longer, I will certainly lose my mind.

“We’ve got a great match for you.”

A: Thanks for all the concern, but I’m not really interested in lighting up a fire. You see there’s a lot of global warming already!

Yes, I am almost 30 and single. Since most relationships these days are so cookie-cutter and snap within a few dates, I’d rather be dating myself. I am certainly not in the mood for a low-budget rom-com that features a weak script and will go off the theatres within a week of its release. Just because the world is chasing relationships does not mean you’ve got to impose timelines on yourself.

A few years ago, the idea of being ‘alone’ triggered many a panic attack. I couldn’t get myself to watch a movie or eat out by myself if a friend or a family member backed out. For some strange reason, it did matter what others thought of me. Today, the idea of marching into a hip restaurant and asking for a ‘table for one’ or giggling through a movie with a tub of popcorn in hand without a date in tow doesn’t depress me.

There exists a world beyond ‘being married’ or ‘single’. At 30, you begin living a life you’ve been waiting for. Your 20s are all about getting a hold over yourself and trying to smoothly transition from graduation to post-graduation and then struggling through your first few jobs.

When it comes to dating, you might have had a string of failed relationships in your 20s and learnt a lesson or two. At 30, getting into ‘serial dater’ mode for no reason seems pointless to me. It’s not always about seeking validation from another person. Don’t get me wrong here, I am certainly not anti-relationship. I’ve had my share of relationships, where I have loved intensely, but also realised it wasn’t the right match. Breakups do rip you apart, but they teach you some life lessons and for some, they even make you treasure singledom.

Time and again, there have been millions of words written about the wonders and pitfalls of single life, but there’s an apparent difference between being single and being lonely. When American singer and songwriter, Stevie Nicks, was asked about being on her own, she gave a great reply, “People say, ‘But you’re alone.’ But I don’t feel alone. I feel very un-alone. I feel very sparkly and excited about everything.” This is certainly something I go by.

Because it is when you are nearing 30 that you want to stop for a while and take a deep breath. You feel like you’ve finally arrived (or let’s just believe so!). You’ve moved past that age where you needlessly want to impress others. You’ve come past that age when other’s opinions matter more than they should. You’ve arrived at a point where you don’t mind discovering yourself and following what your heart says.

You can set out for that impromptu trip (there’s some money now!), you can get inked repeatedly, you can down a few glasses of wine and pass out without a care in the world. It’s all about what you want because finally, you’ve learnt to live for yourself.

As I wait at the neighbourhood café for my shot of caffeine, I know I am going to enjoy my cuppa without a bitter aftertaste of life. I am proud of being seated at this table for one. Maybe one day, it’ll be time to share this spot with someone else. Until then, I am happily single and looking forward to turning 30.

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If 2015 me could see the present me, he would be surprised. I am quite different from who I was back then. I am no longer that depressed, lost, over-anxious and confused soul who used to sit and overthink past mistakes. It is bizarre how my life has turned out to be.

I made a promise to myself that I would do whatever it took to make things go back on track, and that’s when I decided to join a yoga class. Over the past one-and-a-half year, I have discovered that the ultimate flick-switcher is exercise. In fact, I felt that going too hard more often than not, leads to a person feeling defeated, aimless, hurt and always blaming oneself. And that’s of absolutely no use to anyone.

I feel that mental well-being and physical health do have an impact on each other. Indeed, science tells us that our bodies produce endorphins when we exercise and this hormone triggers positive vibes in your mind. I would suggest that those who struggle with depression or other mental illness try taking up fitness seriously, it might help.

Much like depression and anxiety controlled my emotions and well being, getting my heart pumping helped me calm my mind, and sent me back to a time when I used to be happy.

Yoga, Zumba, Pilates or running, whichever you choose, it’s a way to contain yourself, to connect with breath and air. When you struggle with depression or anxiety, fitness becomes more than something you should do. It can quickly turn into something you need.

“Physical activity is an antidepressant, it’s an anti-anxiety. It serves to reduce anxiety, it increases self-esteem and is a major component of weight loss or weight loss management,” says Dr Kate Hays, a Canadian-based psychologist who specializes in sports psychology.

I had to struggle for two years to clear my degree and then another three years after post graduation to find a stable job. All these years when things went wrong, I felt like almost killing myself. I never actually wanted to die, I just wanted the suffering to end because I couldn’t see a way out. During college, going to the gym helped me feel better for some time but I never could get myself to stick to a routine. Inevitably, bad feelings surfaced, and I ended up spending a lot of time indulging in self-pity and sabotaging myself.

I used to drown myself in alcohol and weed to cope with these feelings. I would wallow for days in self-pity, indulging in self-destructive behaviour. Hurting myself took away the pain and frustration for some time, I felt I couldn’t do anything about my circumstances in life and just had to watch helplessly.

Later when I joined a yoga class, I believe it was the best thing I did for myself. I have now become obsessed with it, but in all the right ways and for all the right reasons. I stopped drinking because I had to get up at 5 am, this eventually created a sense of self-discipline in my life. Yes, I am obsessed with the fact that I know how to make myself feel better because I found the exercise that suits me — that’s the most important aspect.

With exercise, came a whole lot of gratitude for the smaller things in life. Like waking up with the energy and mindset to make the most of every day. Finding a break from your thoughts is tough when you’re going through depression. Of course, there is no easy way to do it, but personally, I have found my happiest place on a yoga mat.

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My sweet ever possessive fathers, over-concerned mothers and “fatherly” brothers,

You all have made my life very lucky in so many senses. Your love, care and the attention you show every moment makes me the luckiest girl in this world. I cherish each and every memory that I have shared with you till now. I am eagerly waiting for more such moments. I always wonder how can someone think day in day out about me and my happiness.

If I go back to my school entrance days, I still remember how mom and dad tightly clutched my hands while entering the school. Mom was in tears all the way long. Time has flown since then!

The short, intense fights I had with my brother since the childhood (which happen even today) haven’t changed even one bit. But I still remember how he has helped me to complete my assignments and projects and saved me from embarrassment.

I love you all, and will always love you. I know you all are there for me now and forever.

But, I stand here, a confused 23-year-old woman…

It’s been 23 years now, and we have also seen highs and lows in our relationship(s) which of course everyone sees. I don’t want to discuss those now. Instead, I would like to grab your attention towards a more vital issue.

I have grown up to be a young lady, ready to fly with wings spread!

Wait for a second! Wings? Shit, Do I even have them? I doubt. Do they really work? Something wrong with me? Am I overprotected and preserved?

I hope my family hasn’t lost to society’s harsh words and actions. Have they?

Am I acting too weird? But why then does the whole world talk about women empowerment? Too confused? I am also. Some things baffle me and leave me to think about myself. It took me some time to come up with a few answers.

Let’s start from the start

You taught me to help others and when I did, you judged me to be going out of my way.

You taught me to carefully pick and choose good souls as friends, and when I spend time with them you are quite uncomfortable.

You taught me that both men and women are equal, but then you draw boundaries when it comes to my life.

You taught me to love everyone with an open heart irrespective of their caste, religion or economic status, but when I do wish to get married to someone whom I love, that very thought burns you down.

You taught me all gods are one and that all religions preach the same, but try to make me in follow what you claim to be ours.

You taught me looks don’t matter and character does, but now attempt to alter my size.

You taught me there are no limits to one’s freedom, but mine comes with a ‘conditions apply’.

I’m not a little kid anymore!

The fact is that your little daughter/sister, your cutie-pie has grown up, and understands the realities of life. She is mature enough to handle her life as it comes and is fully empowered with doses of advice and stories of experience.

She is no more of her brother’s ‘touch-me-not’ doll.

She understands that princesses don’t exist in real life, but enjoys being her dad’s princess.

Being spiritual or seeking answers in an earnest way makes sense to her, rather than following the custom in filling in the column of ‘religion’.

Friends who are valued as the family play a prominent role in her life as they are part of her ups and downs, and it is her duty to be there for them.

More than just a tag of being ‘married’ (at the society’s decided right age), a lifelong commitment of companionship, love and togetherness is what she desires.

You have to come to terms with the fact that your little one is not too little to be caged now.

I understand the reality of a traditional society, but still…

Of course, I understand that society is not fair to women and that its actions hurt womanhood. I am not aiming to bring about a revolutionary change in the society with my actions. But I would at least like to experience it in my own life in the first place, and then be a ray of hope for the others. If within our small world (home) we welcome change, then I am sure it will spread to all homes (world) for the greater good.

Society has created this fear in all of you with unpleasant incidents and trouble, but we must, I believe, garner the courage and strength to strongly oppose and fight it. Creating pointless boundaries for women will not just inhibit our growth, but also deter the menfolk from having egalitarian thoughts.

I admit it is scary to step out into society but for this fear to end, our collective effort is needed. I do not wish for an unpleasant situation to exist for my child. And the same way would like to see you walk beside me in all my endeavours. With your everlasting warmth, love and care as a shield, with no family or society-imposed boundaries, I would like to accomplish my goals with my wings undoubtedly spread wide.

Your trust in me and your upbringing will always light my way forward, for I love all of you, and I know you love me. But I would love to explore the heights and depths of this world at my own pace, and I want to fly now, with my own wings, not with yours.

Yours lovingly,
A high-spirited 23-year-old, ready for flight!

The post To Possessive Fathers, Concerned Mothers and ‘Fatherly’ Brothers – From A 23-Year-Old appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

11:00 pm, January 27, 2014. The results of the interview for hiring “young professionals” were out and as expected, I got selected. My parents’ happiness knew no bounds as their child was going to join the Secretariat of the state and work under the direct supervision of administrative officers. That was precisely what the recruitment ad declared. “The persons will assist Secretaries/District Collectors in the planning and implementation of the flagship programmes of the Government.” It promised to develop the professional aptitude of the selected candidates through training and engaging them in relevant developmental projects. I eagerly waited for four months to get the offer letter.

On the joining day, I found that 15 of us were recruited in a very important department (in terms of revenue collection). And on that very day, we got a taste of how our lives are going to be. After joining, we were not even provided with a space to sit, leave alone the rest. For seven days we wandered around the corridors before a senior officer intervened and we were assigned a place to sit. Later, we were assigned to different sections of the department under the direct supervision of section officers (earlier known as the upper division clerks). Little did we realise that this was just the trailer.

Cooperation was a distant dream; we were clearly made to feel unwanted and alien at every step since then. On the first day in my section, my supervisor made me dust the old files and rearrange them in a chronological order. It was a clear shocker, and more due to the way he instructed me. On another instance, one fellow young professional was chastised openly by a clerk for merely standing in the way. She was asked to get out of the department if she cannot find a seat. She broke into tears instantly. You don’t expect this type of behaviour at your workplace, especially when you are in your late thirties. On the day we completed one year, the self-evaluation form of one of my friend was torn and thrown into the dustbin by her supervisor. These are just to mention a few incidents to give you an insight into the level of insensitivity we faced. No stone was left unturned to make us feel irrelevant.

The rules of assigning work to us were twisted and turned as per the whims of the section officers. Only a few of us were lucky to get some meaningful and productive work. More often than not, we were assigned the task of data entry. Many of us were not even provided with a proper place or computer. We had to take turns at a single computer to complete an assigned task. At times, there was no work at all and were made to sit idle for days together. The promise of proper training was never fulfilled. Even our appraisal process was never initiated voluntarily, as laid out in our agreement. We had to pursue senior officers for weeks before the file would be put up.

Amidst such circumstances, the expectation of professional (and in turn personal) development faded away with time, and we began our struggle for mere survival. The subtle mental torture we were subjected to is beyond quantification and no words can put it on paper accurately.  The situation was no different in other departments that had hired YPs (Young Professionals). And all this was being done only because our recruitment had not been done through the public service commission. Are we at fault for this in any possible way?

After three such years, the Government proposed to terminate all the YPs. And no prizes for guessing the justification provided for – “There is no productive or visible contribution from the YPs”. Instead, the government wants to hire retired clerks as ‘Officers on Special Duty’.

The post ‘My Supervisor Made Me Dust Old Files’: Experiences Of A Young Professional In A Govt. Job appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

Editor’s Note: One thing that the #MeToo movement made impossible to ignore is the fact that nearly every single woman has faced some form of sexual harassment in their lifetime. During her Netflix comedy special, Hannah Gadsby said, “I’m the only woman in a room full of men, I’m afraid. if you think that’s unusual you’re not speaking to the women in your life.” In India, there are currently 9,703,482 pending cases of crimes against women, and these are just the ones that were reported. And the conviction rate is a paltry 19%. Isn’t it time we started listening? It is. And this is the story of a young woman who will be heard.

Last night, I travelled from Allahabad to Delhi in an overnight train. When I entered the compartment and reached my berth (a lower berth), I realised that all the berths around me—above me, beside me, opposite me, diagonally opposite me—were filled with male passengers. This made me a little uncomfortable, as it always does, but I told myself that I shouldn’t let paranoia get the better of me. I soon fell asleep.

I woke up suddenly in the middle of the night. The passenger on the berth right above mine (perhaps in his early thirties, who had called me “gudiya” when I was setting up my bed) was sitting on my seat right next to my legs, and I could feel his hand right above my right knee. Though I was aware this was strange, my first instinct was still to try and justify this in favour of the man. “Maybe he needed support to sit up“, “Maybe kept his hand on my thigh by mistake“, “Maybe he has nodded off“. I opened my eyes slightly and saw that he was wide awake and was watching something on his phone. Just as I began to convince myself that it must have been a careless mistake, his hand began to slide up my thigh. There was no room for doubt. I immediately said “Aap kya kar rahe hain? (What are you doing?)” in a voice that carried both anger and shock. He said “Sorry, sorry” and left. I pondered over my next course of action for the next two hours. I thought about all the times I’ve been sexually harassed before, and all the times I’ve heard of the same happening to my friends. I thought about the regret I had each time that I didn’t call the harasser out or drag him to the police station.

I set out to look for the TT (the railway officer who checks passengers’ tickets). He listened to me patiently and asked me “Aapne tab hi kyu nahi bola? Aapne thappad kyun nahi mara? Ab kya ho sakta hai (Why didn’t you say anything when it happened? Why didn’t you slap him? What can I do about it now)?” A passenger sitting right there, who had overheard the entire conversation, said “Aap akeli travel kar rahi hain? Isliye (Are you travelling alone? That’s why this happened).” Thankfully, my dad had told me long back that a few police officers always travel on the train to take care of untoward incidents. I told the TT that I wanted the police to be called.

The police arrived soon and woke up this man. I told him to sit in front of me and tell me how his hand managed to reach my thigh in the middle of the night. His excuse was that he had fallen asleep while sitting on my seat (even though his entire berth was right there) and must have put it there by mistake. This obviously couldn’t be true, since I distinctly remembered that he was watching something on his phone. I told the police that I wanted to file a case. The man started apologising again and again and said stuff like “Main married hoon (I am married)”, “Meri wife ki photo mere phone pe hai (I have my wife’s photo in my phone)”, “Mere saath kabhi police ka koi chakkar nahi hua hai (I have never gotten in trouble with the police before)”, “Meri zindagi kharab ho jayegi (My life will be ruined).” I felt pity and confusion weaken my anger and resolve—the same feelings that have prevented me (and perhaps many other girls) from filing cases many times. I decided that no matter what, I have to see this through to the end. By this time, the other passengers had also started egging me on.

When we arrived at the New Delhi station, the police on the train escorted this man to the police station, and asked me to come along to register the FIR. The process took more than two hours. The police also dropped hints that it would be in my best interests to take the case back. Meanwhile, the man’s family came and started pressuring me to take the case back. They followed me till my car, and didn’t let me get inside. In the afternoon, I waited for an hour for the police to arrive with the FIR at Tis Hazari, and then we shuffled from courtroom to courtroom to record my Section 164 statement, which also took about two hours. I was, however, happy to hear the lady Magistrate firmly advise me to not come under pressure from the accused’s family.

This is for every single time that I, and so many of my friends, held our silence due to fear, underconfidence or even pity. This is the one time I didn’t freeze and I’m glad. I just want to say that we, as girls, have an equal right to travel by trains, whether they are overnight or not and whether we are travelling alone or not, and to feel safe while doing so. If such an incident happens, please do not let it go. Immediately approach the TT and ask him to call the police. There is ALWAYS police present on the trains. File a complaint and ask them to take the person in question off the train at the very next station. This shouldn’t be happening, and when it does, we must not let it slide by. #IWillNotLetItGo.

I’m overwhelmed by the support people have shown. I want to take this opportunity to encourage people to share instances where they stood up to their harassers in any way at all; or to recall their emotions during such instances which prevented them from standing up to their harasser, and tell me how they would act differently if the same thing happened again; or share stories of having watched someone get harassed and what they would do if they witnessed something like that again. We share and spread stories of harassment (as we should), but what about stories of courage? Let’s inspire each other to stand up to such behaviour.

Say #IWillNotLetItGo.

Originally published on Facebook.

The post A Man Dared To Put His Hand On My Thigh In A Dark Train And I Will Not Let It Go appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

The room was dark except the table lamp in front of me. My laptop was open and a cup of coffee was getting cold. I was sitting stiffly. Tears rolled down my cheek but I did not know why I was crying.

I was not jobless, the reason was not a broken relationship, I had a decent salary. I was earning respect but I was alone. Being alone has nothing to do with being single, neither does it have anything to do with staying alone. I was alone amid many people. I am alone with my parents when they visit me. I was alone with my ex-girlfriend, I am also alone when I am alone.

Now, I know it may be getting confusing for you because you might understand loneliness in a different way. It is not isolation, depression, solitude, mood-swing, bad phase, breakup, resignation, struggle and all other things. These are not even reasons for loneliness at times.

However, you will often find these situations when you are alone or loneliness might lead to these things. But, that’s not the story I am here to tell you. I come from a happy family with the usual ifs and buts. My hometown is in West Bengal and has a wonderful cultural history but a pathetic present of deteriorating academic opportunities. So, after completing my graduation, I had to leave my family to chase my dreams and my family was very supportive. With time, I achieved what I wanted to.

My loneliness has been very self-contradictory. At times, I feel jealous to see happy couples or a big group of friends but most of the time, I feel sleepy at the dates I have been to. I feel like leaving everything and going somewhere I can be alone but when I reach, I miss my friends. I wait to spend my weekends alone but at times I get very frustrated and look for people to at least talk to me. My parents are the only ones who wait to talk to me every day. I sometimes love to talk to them but some days I just get angry as soon as the conversation starts.

It feels like I have no one.

You can have sex with as many people but you don’t crave sex to be happy, you crave it to get out of the place you’ve been stuck in. You forget how to make love, you forget how to hold someone, you forget how to touch, you just know the exact spots which will help you to achieve what you want.

I used to cry sometimes because I had no one to talk to. I had no one to go out with on weekends. What was I looking for? You cannot answer this question all the time. But I know at the end of you do everything to make you happy.

Let me clarify one very basic thing, loneliness is not solitude. You should achieve solitude but loneliness is imposed. I still fight to come to terms with loneliness. Sometimes I win, sometimes I fail. But loneliness has taught me many things.

Firstly, I started accepting the fact that loneliness is something I must deal with. Yes, I never wanted to be lonely but now that I am, it’s better to accept it. When you start accepting the loneliness then you will start exploring things which make you feel less lonely. No, I won’t use the cliched ‘focus on your work’. It’s bullshit, trust me. If you always feel lonely you cannot even focus on your favourite chicken.

So I tried to explore spaces apart from my work. I started gymming and it’s a great thing to do. Then I started reading more.

A very important thing to learn if you are lonely is to balance your food. I was never hungry but would eat all the time. You should eat food for a need and not to make you feel better.

I started meeting people without the aim to date them. I started doing things I love to, like attending poetry sessions or storytelling sessions. I started meeting new people and for the first time, it also turned to some kind of dating.

Then I started attending sessions professionally and started not extending the meetings out of that venue. It helped me in meeting some great people.

With time, now I write more, I drink less, I smoke less, I spend on good things and I fight less. But it’s not that I am never lonely, it still happens to me but I am now more frank about my issue.

You can share your stories with me or reach out if you just want to talk. I know that conversation is very important when you are in such a phase. Trust me I am not an expert but a survivor hence I can listen. Reach me at work.sayantan@gmail.com or follow and DM @sayantan_gh.

The post Loneliness Almost Killed Me, But It Also Healed Me appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

Serendipity…funny word, isn’t it? I remember a 16-year-old me being introduced to this word on a wintery November morning. The beauty of this word is not just in its meaning, but also in its eligibility of practical application. Serendipity that is, finding good without consciously looking for it is pretty much how I have chosen to look at the last 22 years of my life. It has been a serendipitous roller coaster, in trials and triumphs alike. I, however, do not intend to romanticise my life experiences, neither do I wish to consider it in terms of relativity.

Stories have been a rather crucial part of my world. As I child I grew up with stories being narrated to me, and subsequently got into the world of reading. I believed (and continue to believe) not just in the power of the words, but also in the abilities of stories to be a mirror unto what we seek and what we choose to reflect. So what happens when I map out my life experiences in the form of a story? I realise how serendipity has been the core undercurrent of everything and everyone that came my way!

If I had to describe the one force that drives me, it has to be passion. Nothing done half-heartedly has ever had the mettle to keep me glued to it, and neither has it been in my system to continue with things that I do not resonate with. Apart from a few opportunities in my life, my life choices have largely revolved around things that keep me passionate, and drive me to be a better version of myself every single day. While this may sound a rather dramatic approach to life, I have had the good fortune of this belief getting reinforced by watching people around me follow things that they truly believe in.

I grew up in a house that always upheld the importance of education: not just literacy, but education. Understanding cultures and diversity (and disparity) was inculcated as a core value in my life, and that is where my love for the Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts began. My courtship with Humanities went further ahead as my exposure to culture took an international turn, with my mother’s posting to the Embassy of India School, Moscow.

It was there that I became closer to my culture, and became sensitised to different standpoints and approaches that people came with. The level of national integration there was immense, and it taught me valuable lessons on the true spirit of unity. You see, you may read a lot on all of this, but the real deal is when you get to experience it first hand.

While these may seem big words for a then 10-year-old to comprehend: that’s what growth is, and better realised in hindsight. My scope of understanding cultural heterogeneities reached a high as fifth grader, when I got to work on a project called ‘Religious Harmony and World Peace’ under Oracle. It allowed me to foster interactions with children and educationists from the US, UK, France, Indonesia and Germany; apart from Indian educationists and children. It is imperative to talk about this experience mainly because of the indelible mark it left on my thinking. While all of us may have come from different processes of socialisation, the core undercurrent of emotion running within all of us is essentially the same – that is what makes us all human. Furthermore, the richness of Russian culture and heritage; and constant interactions with the natives ignited the latent love for exploring historical heritage.

Coming back to India after a three-year stint in Moscow was ironically tough. As someone who had been sensitised in terms of interactions with people from across the country there, I felt that my idea of looking at culture as a seventh grader was not in sync with the majority. It was demoralising, yes, but also it gave me enough grit to gradually identify and tap on my passion for working in the social sciences. So while most eighth/ninth grade students are caught in the doldrums of choosing career streams for their 11th and 12th grade, I had complete clarity of thought about the line that I wanted to pursue. My parents played a pivotal role in keeping me insulated from the clichéd questions: “Oh, you scored above 90%, why are you not taking Science?” or “Why are you taking Humanities? Do you want to be an IAS Officer?”

Limelight is rather overwhelming, flattering at times, but not when you become the talk of the town for choosing an academic stream that is ‘unworthy’ of your potential. It gradually dawned on me that in spite of being immersed in social structures and constructs, everyone is running away from it – not ready to look within the structures that are so deeply entrenched in our upbringing and collective consciousness that we refuse to review them or reflect on them. Grades 11 and 12 were all about burning the midnight oil to make sure that I do the best in the subjects I vouch so strongly for. My quest for understanding people and cultures saw an all-new high again in 12th grade when I lived the life of a cultural exchange student in Japan. It opened my eyes to how blinding westernisation is, and how the McDonaldisation of the world had made us so unaware about anything that was not European or American. The warmth of the people was endearing, and I realised that the philosophy of ‘Atithi devo bhava’ could very well be projected to the Japanese way of hospitality. At the same time, their town planning, civic sense and emphasis on discipline and cleanliness was mightily impressive – also because it was a non-negotiable way of life. Japan is a beautiful blend of the old and the new, and how to take everyone along together.

The idea of studying History, Economics and Political Science further on in graduation had completely concretised from an idea to a plan, and I was looking out for options that allow me to study ‘Social Sciences’, and not just one aspect of it. Serendipity struck once again when I got to know that the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, the premier institute for someone like me who call themselves a Social Sciences enthusiast, had happened to finally venture into not just post-graduate and doctoral studies but had also introduced a multidisciplinary undergraduate course by the name ‘Bachelors in Social Sciences’.

As already mentioned, the running theme of this story is serendipity, so it should not be difficult to guess what the next plot point in this story is.

I joined the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Hyderabad, for a three-year course in Social Sciences, and as the rhetoric goes – my life changed. The process was of massive adjustment – an 18-year-old living 2000 odd kilometres away from home, for the first time and studying a course of her passion. The partial adult life was a handful, but the experience of being in a conducive academic environment with some of the brightest minds in academia was a sheer blessing. The nuances and depths of Social Sciences were introduced to me during this time, and it widened my horizon in ways that were immensely humbling. I fostered friendships with people, transcending all kinds of boundaries that may otherwise segregate us. I learnt to be thankful for all of life’s privileges, learnt to question all the constructs that I had unquestioningly imbibed, learnt to confront my personal biases before confronting anyone else about theirs, and realised that we are all entrenched in ideas that needed to be considered for serious revision.

At TISS, the focus was on understanding everything that we see every day but do not question, and everything that we choose not to see. The beauty of TISS is not just in the beautiful concoction of diversity that it is, but also in how everyone blends so well in it that there is no judgement. We were taught to fearlessly talk about everything that our society cannot talk about; to give a name to everything that the society considered ‘that-which-not-be-named’ (As is now evident, Harry Potter has continued to influence my childhood as well as my adulthood. There could be a separate anecdote on that).

Another important facet to my life at TISS was that I could talk about social issues and nuances in not just an academic way, but also in a way that would be understood by people out of the realm of the academics of the Social Sciences. I learnt to co-exist and blend in with different life experiences, which could sometimes be contrasting or conflicting. I knew that my love for my subjects was now a commitment. I also knew that I wanted to work in areas that required a much greater intervention by Social Sciences.

The ethos of TISS and the cultural wealth of Hyderabad brought me closer to my passion for Humanities and heritage, and to the realisation that this is where I’d flourish the best.

By the time graduation was drawing to a close, the serendipitous life of a 21-year-old me declared innings number two at Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai – as a Master’s student in Human Resources Management and Labour Relations. While the radius of the challenge may have increased, I am hopeful of the simultaneous increment of serendipities in the circle too.

The beauty of studying Human Resources Management as a student of Social Sciences is that it allows me to understand not just the management side of the story, but also understand the pulse of the ‘labour’ involved – and to understand their pulse in ways that the social sciences have equipped me with. As I have been hearing in the last one month at TISS Mumbai, we are the ‘human’ in the Human Resources.

Given that I have been getting pleasant surprises as I tread the road I chose to travel, there is not so much of a conclusion to give to this little compilation of anecdotes. The journey has only begun, and it is now getting interesting. At such a point, all that I can do is to soak myself up in all that life’s had to offer, and exude it back to those around me – that is what seems to me, the best way to making good use of everything that I resonate with. As for the end of this story, who knows, you might just find a season two ready to realise somewhere in due time?

The post From Russia, Japan To India: How Social Sciences Has Helped Me Understand The World appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

Coming from a small town, I always had high aspirations. I always dreamt of getting a higher education, settling in a big city, earning a good salary which will help me afford a lavish lifestyle. Being good in studies, my parents always motivated me to achieve my dreams and work towards having a brilliant career.

Initially, life went on as I had wished. There were small hurdles, but I overcame them with ease. I met a guy in college who shared the same aspirations as me. Together we hoped to sail through life and conquer our hardships together, no matter what. We completed our MBA, got married, had a cute little daughter and started leading a life that we had dreamt of. Both of us were successful in our own fields and were earning pretty well. We believed that there was no looking back. We believed in our love and our hard work.

But something somewhere went wrong…

Our daughter was only eight months old when my husband got a work opportunity abroad. He had always dreamt of working outside India and this was his golden chance. Though he was not willing to leave us alone and go I insisted that he follows his dream. I was not ready to move because our daughter was very young and I was excelling in my career in India. I didn’t want to leave everything behind and just take off. So, I stayed back knowing full well that my life could change any day.

Living without him was extremely hard. Though I had a house help and my parents were also with me, but managing a child and office, was becoming a herculean task. At the same time, my company began facing a financial crunch and tough times started. We started to face salary delays. I got totally frustrated and decided to quit and join my husband abroad.

After almost two years, our family was together. It took some time for both me and my daughter to settle down, but immediately after that, I started looking for jobs. My husband and I were confident that I would get a job soon, but to our surprise, it turned out to be a nightmare. Wherever I went for interviews, I was either offered a very low salary or a lower designation. I was rejected on the basis of the fact that I was new to Dubai and hence was not well versed with the laws over there. I longed to see my five figure salary in my account. I started regretting the decision of leaving my job and coming to Dubai. It was becoming difficult for me to be without a job, so I decided to move back to India.

My husband has always supported me in my decisions and this time also he did not force me to stay back. He had to stay put as he had a contract with his workplace. I came back and started applying for jobs again, but my career gap became a big issue. When the employers got to know that I stay alone with my daughter, they had questions such as ‘who will look after your daughter?’ ‘how will you manage?’ ‘how can we offer you a senior position since you had a career gap?’. I was shocked to hear such regressive questions. Does being a mother or having a career gap in any way hamper the productivity of a woman? I think not.

Being posed with such questions for the first time in my 12-year long career, I became very upset and my self-confidence also took a toll. Since my daughter was very young and my parents were facing some health issues, I tried to look for work from home jobs. I was confident that I would get one very easily, but that was not the case. I scanned the whole internet but I wasn’t offered a single job that matched my profile. With every passing day, my career gap was also increasing.

I started getting frustrated and depressed. I started scolding my daughter for no reason. Some times, I even felt like ending my life. But then, I realised that if I had decided to bring a child into this world, she was my responsibility.

Eventually, I deleted all my social media accounts, including LinkedIn. I couldn’t bear the idea of my colleagues thinking of me like a loser. I even stopped talking to my husband properly, sometimes just WhatsApp messages had to suffice. I knew that even his hands were tied.

It is only when my daughter started going to school and I started dropping her off and picking her up, that I started feeling a semblance of purpose in my life. At an event in her school, I discovered my love for writing. And then there was no looking back. I started writing about parenting because, in previous years of struggles, it was my daughter who kept me going.

My writing connected me to the virtual world of moms and I got to know that I wasn’t the only one, there are so many moms going through the same situation. Writing helped me come out of my depression. I was back on social media and started connecting with my friends again. I was happy that I finally had something useful to do with my time. My change in attitude also made my husband feel happy and relaxed.

And I didn’t stop at writing. Having visited a few fairs in Kolkata, I fell in love with the art of the place and decided to start a business selling tribal art from interior parts of West Bengal. My dad helped me get my business registered and although I have started small, I am working on taking it to a bigger scale.

Although I didn’t believe in destiny, I am grateful for this second chance at rediscovering myself and my passions.

The post When No Company Was Willing To Hire Me, Motherhood Helped Me Realise My True Calling appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

मैं बी.सी.ए. डिग्री के साथ ग्रैजुएट हुआ व मेरे पास कार्यानुभव भी था मगर यह अनुभव मुझे एक अच्छी कंपनी में प्लेसमेंट दिलाने के लिए पर्याप्त नहीं था। अतः मैं कौशल और प्रैक्टिकल अनुभव प्राप्त करने के लिए इंटर्नशिप ढूंढने लगा, किन्तु इसमें भी एक बाधा थी। मैं श्रीनगर में रहता था जहां एक मामूली नौकरी मिलने की सम्भावना भी बहुत कम थी तो फिर इंटर्नशिप मिलना तो और भी मुश्किल था।

इसलिए मैंने वर्चुअल इंटर्नशिप करने का निर्णय लिया और इंटर्नशाला पर इंटर्नशिप्स के लिए आवेदन करने लगा। यह मेरे लिए एक महत्त्वपूर्ण मोड़ साबित हुआ।

मुझे उम्मीद नहीं थी कि मुझे कोई इंटर्नशिप मिलेगी लेकिन फिर जल्दी ही मैं एक ‘वेब डेवलपमेंट’ इंटर्नशिप के लिए शॉर्टलिस्ट किया गया। Noora International कंपनी से एक मैनेजर ने मुझे टेलीफोनिक इंटरव्यू के लिए कॉल किया। इंटरव्यू मेरे परिचय और अकादमिक प्रदर्शन पर बातचीत के साथ शुरू हुआ। फिर मेरे कौशल पर चर्चा शुरू हुई और मैंने उन्हें बताया कि मुझे PHP का पर्याप्त ज्ञान है।

उन्होंने पूछा यदि मैंने पहले किसी CMS(Content Management System) पर काम किया है; तो मैंने उन्हें बताया कि मैंने Joomla और WordPress पर काम किया है। उसके बाद उन्होंने मेरी उपलब्धि के बारे में पूछा और यह भी पूछा कि मैं काम को कितना समय दे पाउंगा। मुझसे यह भी पूछा गया कि क्या मैं कंटेंट डेवेलपमेंट टीम के साथ काम कर वेबसाइट की तकनीकी पहलुओं को मैनेज कर सकता हूं? और यदि मैं क्रिएटिव टीम के कार्य में कुछ सहायता कर सकता हूं, जिसका उत्तर मैंने ‘हां’ में दिया। उसके बाद उन्होंने मुझसे पूछा यदि मुझे WooCommerce और SEO मैनेजमेंट की जानकारी है, जिसका मैंने नकारात्मक उत्तर दिया।

फिर उन्होंने मुझे कार्य सम्बंधित सारी ज़िम्मेदारियां समझायीं और एक असाइनमेंट दिया जिसके अंतर्गत मुझे उनके ऑनलाइन शॉपिंग वेबसाइट के लिए एक ऐसा पेमेंट गेटवे बनाना था जिसमें Paytm, डेबिट व क्रेडिट कार्ड, और कैश ऑन डिलीवरी के विकल्प जुड़े हों। मैंने निर्धारित समय में असाइनमेंट पूरा कर दिया और मुझे इंटर्नशिप के लिए चुन लिया गया।

एक वेब डेवेलपमेंट इंटर्न के रूप में मैंने एक कंटेंट डेवेलपर्स प्रोडक्ट डिज़ाइनर्स की टीम के साथ वेबसाइट डिज़ाइन और डेवलपमेंट का काम किया। मैंने व्यूपोर्ट को रूपांतरित किया, मेन्यू को एडजस्ट किया, वेबसाइट को रिस्पॉन्सिव बनाया, और वेबसाइट में कस्टम बटन और अन्य कार्यक्षमताएं प्रदान करने के साथ-साथ विभिन्न डिवाइसों के लिए स्लाइडर को भी मैनेज किया। इंटर्नशिप के दौरान मेरे मैनेजर की समझ और सहायक प्रवृत्ति के कारण ही मैं सफलतापूर्वक कार्य कर पाया। इस वेबसाइट पर मैंने प्रतिदिन तीन घंटे काम किया और इंटर्नशिप कार्यकाल के समाप्त होने से पहले उस वेबसाइट को लाइव भी कर दिया।

Noora International में इंटर्नशिप करके मैंने वेबसाइट डिज़ाइनिंग के विभिन्न पहलुओं पर प्रैक्टिकल ज्ञान प्राप्त किया। इस इंटर्नशिप से प्राप्त किये कार्यानुभव और अनुशंसा पत्र के कारण बाद में मुझे Rooman Technologies कंपनी में एक वेब डेवलपर के रूप में नौकरी मिल गयी।

वर्तमान समय में मैं कम्पनी की “उड़ान परियोजना” पर काम कर रहा हूं, जहां मैं कम्पनी के सॉफ्टवेयर बैच को HTML, CSS, AngularJS, Bootstrap, jQuery, इत्यादि सिखाता हूं। इससे पहले, मैं कंपनी की ई.आर.पी. वेबसाइट को मेन्टेन करता था जिसके माध्यम से शिक्षक, विद्यार्थी, और कंपनी के कर्मचारी पाठ्यक्रम और परीक्षा मटीरियल पा सकते थे।

लेखक के बारे में: ज़ैनुल अबिदीन, गांदरबल के गवर्नमेंट डिग्री कॉलेज का एक छात्र है। इस लेख में वह बता रहा है कि कैसे एक वर्चुअल इंटर्नशिप के ज़रिये उसने प्रैक्टिकल ज्ञान और कार्यानुभव प्राप्त किया, जो कि बाद में उसके लिए नौकरी पाने में भी अत्यंत सहायक रहा। यह लेख पहले इंटर्नशाला पर प्रकाशित हुआ है। इंटर्नशाला एक इंटर्नशिप और ट्रेनिंग प्लैटफॉर्म है।

The post “सिर्फ डिग्री पर नौकरी नहीं मिली लेकिन एक इंटर्नशिप ने मेरा करियर बदल दिया” appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

Almost every household has those steel “paan ka dabba” which is only accessible to the shining wrinkled hands of grandmom or granddad. This paan ka dabba is tiny but holds a special memory for kids who hang around and play with granny to get sweets, to get away from parents yelling about homework and to have just a little bit of betel leaf from that steel box.

My grandmother’s betel box travelled quite a lot and it holds a memory which brings back to life a story from Bangladesh to India. It holds a memoir of Bangladeshi culture and those big farmhouses she had once lived in, and of Kolkata’s narrow streets and a new house with a different Bengali accent and food culture. Everything was left behind in one foreign country divided by a single wire but that steel betel box was packed in her handbag. From crossing a country, becoming a refugee and then settling down in a proper mannered Bengali middle-class family, that betel box saw everything.

After having a grand luncheon, what a happiness it was to see granny opening the dabba, making a role of that leaf with meethi supaari (sweet betel nut) and cherry and then slowly munching it. This scene used to bring a glimmer to my eyes. Till the age of 10, no one was to use that box except for granny. After that, I started to grow up and so did my naughty brain. I used to play doctor-doctor with my brother, and to make medicines, those betel leaves came to work, since they have a bitter taste. I used to tip-toe to my granny’s room and steal one leaf from that box. But of course, this would come to an end when I’d get caught and get a good beating from my mother. One day, my brother ate that leaf and started vomiting. Well, after that my doctor-doctor game came to an end forever.

By the time I entered adulthood, the betel box was placed in my hand and I was given the responsibility of handing it over to granny after the grand luncheon. I enjoyed that phase because after a hectic schedule, seeing a paan made by granny and receiving a small pep talk from her became a habit for me.

Whenever I sit with my close friends and start talking about granny, the betel box always comes up in conversation and refreshes those memories with mixed emotions. Every person in our life leaves an impression in our mind and leaves behind some token of love, which in my grandmother’s case, was her betel box.

The post Granny’s Paan Ka Dabba appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

Hello, world. I believe it is important to know someone’s entire story before you label them as ‘mentally disturbed’, ‘mad’ or ‘retarded’. So, here is my story.

Growing up as a child with dyslexia, I was made to believe that I was not normal. Throughout all parent-teacher meetings, my mother was told to send me to a ‘special’ school. People said I should be sent to a counsellor so that I can be ‘cured’ of my mental illness. Growing up, I fought my way up. Everyone told me that I wouldn’t be able to study beyond class 10. Today, I am working as a research assistant in a top non-governmental organisation in Kolkata.

However, the struggle is not over yet. Unfortunately, we live in a world where being emotional is seen as being mentally disturbed, curiosity is seen as attention seeking, being straightforward is seen as a threat.

All my life, I have faced the same problem. My ambition to be someone in life and my willingness to study and learn new things has made my professors label me as a trouble-maker. Male professors especially call me an attention seeker. My willingness to work for people who are deprived of the basic necessities of life has made me a ‘desperate person waiting to get recognition’. The mere will to fight up against everything I find wrong has cost me a lot in my career and relationships.

Being a loner during childhood, I would get emotionally attached to people easily and believed them when they promised to stay with me through thick and thin. I was unable to believe it when they left and would always assume that there must be something wrong with me. Mild anxiety issues have made me a ‘mentally disturbed’ person who does not belong in this world. I regret giving people the benefit of the doubt when they clearly don’t deserve it.

All my life, I fought with the society but now I ask myself as to whether people were right when they said I was not normal. Clearly, I don’t belong in a world where we don’t expect people but robots and everyone is willing to be like someone else.

The post ‘I Don’t Belong Here’: Confessions Of A ‘Mentally Disturbed’ Person appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

From designing homes to becoming a household name, I have come a long way! This is the story of love, perseverance and the will to face adversity. An unfortunate incident had dramatically changed the narrative of my otherwise normal and exciting married life, but we faced the hardships together and managed to thrive despite the odds. My husband Shishir and I had met with an incident, and he was rendered quadriplegic with this body becoming completely paralysed below the neck. Shishir’s job as a Merchant Navy officer had us travelling half the year around the world on ships and the rest we spent travelling around local cities and meeting friends, relatives and in short, we were living a dream life.

It’s been more than seven years and nine months since the incident! For me, it feels as if time has passed in the blink of an eye. A lot has happened during these years, and yet it just feels like a dream now. When I think of it, I see how life has turned upside down for us. By accepting the unexpected and still believing that we shall overcome because our love, persists and keeps us going.

Shishir and I had met in Delhi through family friends. He had qualified as a Master Mariner and was ready to get hitched. For him, it was love at first sight. “I fell in love with you, the moment I laid eyes on you, Nishi,” were his words as we had instantly hit it off. Though he tried hard to make me understand the hardships of being the partner of a Merchant Navy officer, that did not stop me from taking the leap either. Finally, we got hitched in October 2009.

Life was beautiful and blossomed as we wanted it to be… until tragedy struck!

We had flown to Goa along with our family for Shishir’s cousin’s wedding. We had left immediately for the venue as coincidentally, it was our second wedding anniversary too, and a surprise cake cutting ceremony was planned for us. The party was by the poolside, and a few of the guests had already jumped into the pool. During the celebrations, Shishir accidentally fell into the pool as there was no safety rope or rails placed around it. His head hit the pool floor and ended up fracturing multiple vertebrae in his neck and damaged his spinal cord.

He was immediately rushed to a hospital, but by then his body had become paralysed below the neck as he was unable to move his arms or legs. “I thought I would drown and no one would notice it. Luckily, Nishi saw me and asked my uncle who was in the pool with us to turn me over thereby allowing me to breathe. He pulled me out of the pool and rushed me to a nearby hospital. All this while, I couldn’t feel my body but my eyes were wide open, and I could see and hear what was happening around me,” he recalls. With an unfortunate twist of fate, Shishir was rendered quadriplegic; with no sensation below his neck. His entire life had changed in that one instant. Two weeks after being operated upon, a titanium plate was placed on his neck. He was flown to Delhi in an air ambulance to begin his rehabilitation program.

The post In The Face Of A Sudden Adversity, I Discovered My True Calling appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

People talk so much about relationships, friendships etc. A friendship is supposed to be one of the strongest healing factors in one’s life.

I beg to differ since my journey through all these years has been a strange roller coaster ride. The people who could supposedly hold and support me, let me fall and stumble, time and again and the bad experiences have been just unstoppable. Hey! But I have killed them now. (I am only kidding)

I am not a perfect human being, but I am a perfect introvert who has lived her life with umpteen restrictions, constraints and protective walls. Carrying forward with all my positives and negatives in life there have been a handful of friends (I can count them on my fingers) whom I have trusted in spite of distances, circumstances and so on.

I soon realised that the place where I went looking for some peace and comfort wasn’t where I would actually find it. It takes me a lot of time to trust people with my emotions, secrets and hidden desires. Yet, my friends never accepted me for who I am. And now, I don’t want to live in a bubble of illusion which makes me see my friends in an optimistic light.

Was I ever at fault? If I was, then my friends never spoke to me about. I was always too small, too weak, not fashionable enough to fit into their lives.

I now realise how wrong it was to see myself in such a light. Today, I thank my friends for helping me discover who I truly am. I am my own best friend and spending time with myself gives me immense pleasure. Wink wink!

Life’s lessons are the same for everyone, the way they come to you might be slightly different. I am taking a break from friendships, in your case, it could be a relationship or a marriage. I have no regrets about letting some people leave my life. They came for a reason, made me a better and wiser person and then moved on to the next part of their life’s journey. As I have done with my own life.

My advice would also be to make the strongest connection with yourself. I am still getting to know myself. Stop being a victim of dysfunctional relationships. Sometimes, the one to hold you is you.

Learn. Live. Laugh. Love. And magic shall continue to happen.

The post I Am My Own Best Friend. Here’s Why appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

I was born in a conservative society, which was immersed in its values and traditions. Since our childhood, we were inculcated with discipline and qualities that a girl should always have. A girl was supposed to be an excellent cook and an expert in homemaking. It was accepted for a girl to have male friends but communicating at odd hours raised many an eyebrow.

I was brought up in a house where the girl is considered the honour of the family. We never got permission for night outs or long drives. Not that I regret or complain about it. But that was the way of life for us then, and if we violated any rule, we were immediately considered a disgrace.

The story of my life in a typical middle-class family closely mirrors the story of ‘a frog in the well’ I read in childhood. Until the frog was in a small well, he felt that it was his world. But when he came out of it, he understood that his home is the best, but the world is just so much bigger.

Somewhere people with less exposure feel the same.

While education was considered very important in my family, doing a corporate job was frowned at. I was still expected to be a housewife one day and take care of my household. This formed a major bone of contention between our elders and us, kids of the house.

I always wanted to be a dancer. A dancer with whom Bollywood directors aspire to work with, one who would make stars sway on her fingertips. I wished to be a choreographer. My family loved seeing me dance. But they only encouraged it as a hobby. I never had the guts to communicate my real dreams to them.

I completed my education, did an MBA, learned housework while climbing the ropes of a corporate job. And then, I was finally married.

They say that marriage changes a woman’s life. And apart from the people and the house, it changes her image in the society. Something similar happened to me. I moved to a different city and started living with new people in a new surrounding. My in-law’s house lacked the warmth and care that I enjoyed in my home. The love and respect I got from my family was nowhere to be found. Yes, I was a ‘bahu’. That was to be my only identity for the rest of my life.

The first few days after marriage were all good. I was pampered a lot and got a lot of attention. But it fades away with time, and I was not ignorant of this fact. But what happened in the next three months would come as a surprise to me.

Gradually, I realised that my in-laws treated me differently. I knew how to cook, but my dishes could never satisfy them. Long story short, I became a punching bag for all their resentment. My husband was no exception. I had always heard that everything is good if your husband supports you. I grew up with that feeling of contentment that come what may; I will always have my husband in my team. Unfortunately, even on this front, I failed miserably.

I was ignored, disrespected and insulted by my husband and consequently by his family members. And soon enough, I was in an abusive marriage. I could still not accept that this was happening to me. I had married into a good family through an arranged setup, wasn’t my life supposed to be a fairy tale?

I realised it was not. I changed my ways, controlled my anger and several times put myself down to make things work. I was wrong at numerous occasions they said, and I did try to rectify my mistakes. But I guess they never wanted me to correct myself. They just needed a reason to get rid of me.

After a lot of deliberations, confusions, discussions and arguments, I finally decided to move on. I decided I won’t let anyone attack my self-respect and get away with it so conveniently. I decided I will no longer satisfy his ego and pride at the cost of my self-esteem.

This was a big blow to my family, we were never in such a situation earlier. In a marriage, couples are supposed to tolerate and endure and of course, compromise as much as we can. We could not just walk out of it like this. So, they tried to hush up the situation as much as they could. I was devastated, but I soon realised that this was the time to pursue my long forgotten dream. It was finally time for me to find my calling as a dancer.

You face struggles in every phase of your life. Naturally, I was not spared. I had only passed the first obstacle of the long race that I had decided to win. I had a hard time convincing my family to let me move to Mumbai to pursue my dreams. They were quite reluctant, but eventually, they agreed.

I faced a bout of asthma for the first time since my childhood. I got an attack every time I cried over what had happened to me. I never knew I could cry so much. But those tears made me stronger, more determined to forge ahead and fulfil my dream.

Few months went by in trying to manage myself in this huge city. To come out of depression and to finally get comfortable in my own skin. Which I was never was. I became a new person every day.

Eventually, I picked up the broken pieces and tried to start life afresh. Now, I could stay out till late at night enjoying the breeze on the sea front. Or I could travel alone to another corner of the city. I could stay awake, and binge watch my favourite web series. I could do all those things which I thought was not ‘right’. I learnt the new definition of being right and wrong.

I could buy things for myself, without thinking if my in-laws would like or not. I could eat an ice-cream even if it made me fat. I realised that now I could LIVE. No permission needed and no confinement imposed. No walls and no handcuffs, I could fly like a free bird.

My marriage taught me many life lessons, and it gave me the freedom I always wished for.

Author’s note: This is the story of Laxmi, who is currently working as a choreographer for a TV show by Bajali Telefilms, which is to be aired soon. I met her during a train ride and realized that this is the story of empowerment the world needs to know. She demanded her rights and emerging out of darkness; she is now living a life she never dreamt she could.

She is empowered, not victimised, or oppressed. Living alone has some disadvantages, but Laxmi is living her dreams in the best way possible.

The post How An Abusive Marriage Gave Me Freedom appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

पिछले सप्ताह एक टीचर्स ट्रेनिंग कॉलेज में शिक्षकों से सुप्रीम कोर्ट में चल रहे समान काम-समान वेतन वाले केस के संबंध में चर्चा हो रही थी। उसी वक्त बातों ही बातों में सुप्रीम कोर्ट में चल रहे एक अन्य केस जो समलैंगिकता से संबंधित है उसकी चर्चा हुई। तो हमारे एक बहुत ही करीबी साथी हैं उन्होंने कहा कि इतने गैरज़रूरी और बेकार मसलों पर सुप्रीम कोर्ट को इतनी गहरी सुनवाई करने की क्या ज़रूरत है। इतनी बड़ी बेंच लगाकर के गैरज़रूरी बेमतलब सुनवाई करने का कोई औचित्य नहीं है।

मुझे याद है कि ठीक उसी प्रकार आज से लगभग 2 साल पहले मैंने समलैंगिकता को लेकर एक छोटी सी कहानी लिखी थी। उसको लेकर बहुत सारे शिक्षकों ने आपत्ति दर्ज की थी। हमारे अभिन्न मित्र हैं बेगूसराय के सोनू देव जी। उन्होंने तो मेरा स्क्रीनशॉट लेकर बहुत सारे ग्रुप में पोस्ट करके, अपने वॉल से पोस्ट करके व अपने विभिन्न ID से पोस्ट करके मेरा काफी मज़ाक उड़ाया था और इसको लेकर मेरी बहुत आलोचना की थी। शिक्षकों से मिलने जाता था तो वहां पर भी मेरी उस पोस्ट का उल्लेख करके कहते थे कि सर आपको  समलैंगिकता जैसे मुद्दों पर नहीं लिखना चाहिए इससे लोगों की आम भावना को ठेस पहुंचता है। उस वक्त मुझे दुख पहुंचा था कि शिक्षक होकर भी हम इतने संवेदनशील विषय पर बात करने और उसे समझने का प्रयास करने के बजाय उसको मज़ाक का विषय बना रहे हैं।

मुझे इस बात से बहुत निराशा होती है। बहुत सारे सामाजिक विषयों पर हम शिक्षक उतनी संवेदनशीलता नहीं दिखा पाते हैं जितनी हमेशा दिखानी चाहिए। समलैंगिकता के विषय में सामान्यतः हमारे शिक्षक साथी ना तो बात करना चाहते हैं ना ही इस विषय पर शायद गहरी समझ रखते हैं। अधिकांश लोग इसे मानसिक विकृति या अप्राकृतिक यौनाचार समझते है। लेकिन वर्तमान में बहुत सारे शोध हुए हैं इस विषय पर, बहुत सारे लोगों ने इस विषय पर बहुत काम किया है और निष्कर्ष यह निकला है कि समलैंगिकता कोई अप्राकृतिक यौनाचार या मानसिक विकृति नहीं है। बल्कि एक मानसिक रूप से स्वस्थ व्यक्ति इस तरह के यौनाचार में रुचि रख सकता है। यह न ही किसी प्रकार से अप्राकृतिक है और ना ही कोई एक मानसिक विकृति है।

वर्तमान में सुप्रीम कोर्ट में संवैधानिक पीठ के समक्ष इस केस की जो सुनवाई चली वह सीधे-सीधे एक मनुष्य के राइट टू लिबर्टी और राइट टू इक्वॉलिटी से संबंधित केस है। भारतीय संविधान की धारा 377 समलैंगिक संबंधों को अप्राकृतिक यौनाचार और मानसिक विकृति बताते हुए गैरकानूनी ठहराती और इसके लिए दोषियों को सज़ा का भी प्रावधान है। जबकि वर्तमान में अनेकों देशों ने समलैंगिकता को अपराध के दायरे से बाहर कर रखा है। मेरा निजी मत है कि एक व्यक्ति को ये अधिकार है कि वह अपनी सेक्शुएलिटी को अपने तरीके से चुन सके और समानता के साथ उसे अपना सके। मूल बात सेक्शुएलिटी को लेकर नहीं है बल्कि यह केस समानता को लेकर है। एक व्यक्ति की सेक्शुएलिटी उससे समानता का अधिकार नहीं छीन सकती है। हमें यह कोई अधिकार नहीं है कि व्यक्ति की सेक्शुएलिटी क्या है इस आधार पर हम उससे कोई भेदभाव करें।

होमोसेक्शुअल होना, बाइसेक्शुअल होना एक व्यक्ति का निजी अधिकार है। इससे कोई फर्क नहीं पड़ना चाहिए हमारे मन में किस प्रकार के भाव आते हैं। हमें उनका मज़ाक नहीं उड़ाना चाहिए और ना ही उन्हें हीनता के साथ देखना चाहिए। यह बिल्कुल अमानवीय है कि किसी व्यक्ति के निजी पसंद नापसंद निजी रुचि अभिरुचि के कारण हम उसका मज़ाक उड़ाया उसे दीन भाव से देखें। हां, जहां तक कानून की बात है तो मुझे पूर्ण विश्वास है कि आज नहीं तो कल माननीय सुप्रीम कोर्ट समलैंगिकों के अधिकारों को संवैधानिक संरक्षण प्रदान करेगी। उन्हें भी समाज में खुलकर आज़ादी से जीने का अधिकार प्रदान करेगी।

नैतिकता के आयाम बदलते रहते हैं। आज से 200 वर्ष पूर्व विधवा विवाह को समाज किस नज़र से देखता था ये किसी से छुपी नहीं। विवाह के वक्त स्त्री को डोली में जाने और अर्थी में आने की हिदायत दी जाती थी। और वो अर्थी पति के अकाल मृत्यु के कारण सती के रूप में होती थी। समाज ने उस वक्त विधवाओं से विवाह करने वाले व्यक्तियों को जाति-बदर किया, तरह-तरह की यातनाएं और उलाहने भी दिए। लेकिन साहसी व्यक्तियों ने रूढिवादिता से जंग जारी रखी और उसका परिणाम आज ये है कि विधवाओं की विवाह आम बात है। गांव में लुका-छिपा कर विधवाओं का विवाह होता है तो शहरों में धूमधाम से, लेकिन अब हो रहा है। नैतिकता कहीं आड़े नहीं रही, मानवीय मूल्य सर्वोपरी है।

ठीक उसी प्रकार आज समाज में समलैंगिक संबंधों को लेकर स्थिति है। अगर इसे विस्तरित रूप से देखा जाए तो LGBTQ के अधिकारों और उनकी स्वीकार्यता को लेकर भारतीय समाज ऊहापोह की स्थिति में है। भारतीय शहरी मध्य वर्ग जहां एक ओर LGBTQ को लेकर मुखर है और विशेषकर युवा वर्ग उन्हें गले लगाने को आतुर है। वहीं दूसरी ओर जो टियर टू शहर हैं वहां इन मामलों में अभी तक नकारात्मक विचार ज़्यादा हैं और इन मसलों पर अभी भी समाज में रूढिवादी विचार हावी हैं। कहीं न कहीं यौन संबंधों को केवल प्रजनन का माध्यम समझना और व्यक्ति की निजता का सम्मान न करना इस मानसिकता के प्रमुख कारण हैं। पटना जैसे शहर में भी आम तौर पर इन मसलों पर कोई बात नहीं करना चाहता।

मैं अपने शिक्षक समाज में भी देखता हूं कि इन मसलों पर रूढिवादी विचार ही हावी हैं। आम तौर पर जब समलैंगिकता पर बात होती है तो व्यक्ति अपने आप को ऐसे संबंधों से जोड़ कर देखता है तो उसे ये बिल्कुल अप्राकृतिक और मानसिक विकृति लगता है। कल तो एक साथी ने मुझे समलैंगिक ना बनने की सलाह भी दे डाली। उन्होंने मुझसे इस बात पर बहस भी करनी चाही लेकिन मैंने साफ मना कर दिया। कारण ये है जिस व्यक्ति ने ना तो कभी मनोविज्ञान पढ़ा हो और ना ही कानून की समझ हो उस से ऐसे मसलों पर बात करना मुश्किल है। मैं अक्सर कहता हूं और इस बात में यकीन भी करता हूं कि किसी भी मसले पर बहस या परिचर्चा करने से पहले उस मुद्दे पर गहन अध्ययन करना जरूरी है। लेकिन लोगों की ज़िद है कि वो पढ़ेंगे नहीं सिर्फ बहस करेंगे।

ऐसे में स्वस्थ परिचर्चा असम्भव है। आप अपनी मनोदशा से तुलना कर के दूसरों की मनोदशा नहीं समझ सकते। आपके अनुसार दूसरों की यौनिकता मानसिक विकृति हो सकती है। लेकिन उनके लिए विकृति नहीं अपितु पसंद की बात है। और किसी की पसंद-नापसंद, रुचि-अरुचि के आधार पर भेदभाव करना अमानवीय है। नैतिकता के पैमाने पर आज जो गलत दिख रहा है कल वो नैतिक आधार पर स्वीकार्य होगा। हमें एक व्यापक प्रगतिशील सोच के साथ समाज में आ रहे बदलावों को स्वीकार करना चाहिए ना कि नैतिकता और रूढिवादिता के आधार पर उसे अप्राकृतिक या मानसिक विकृति करार देना चाहिए।

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