In the last fortnight there have been four deaths in the software hubs of Bangalore and Hyderabad. In Bangalore, on March 23, Infosys employee Amit Budhiraja smothered his wife, Rinku Sachdeva, using a pillow and then killed himself by hanging. OnApril 3, in Hyderabad, P Ramakrishna, who was between jobs and was to soon join Satyam Computers, drank pesticide after presumably serving it to hiswife. Both left lengthy suicide notes and while Amit accused his wife of having an 'extra-martial affair' and also claimed to have 'conclusive' proof, Ramakrishnasimply said he did not want to trouble his parents with his festering marital problems.
The death of the Bangalore couple was sensationalised as it contained the overtones of a Shakespearean tragedy,but news about the Hyderabad couple was buried in the inside pages. Perhaps the media would have taken fancy to the death of the Hyderabad couple too, had they not resorted to extinguishing their lives like poor farmers in a debt-trap. I am not too keen to either discuss the private details of the case orto look for a pattern that may be emerging in 'hitech' cities, butthere are two things that bother me. One is the stereotype that exists about the lives that techie men and women live.And the other is the man-machine, man-money relationship about which again there are commonly held views.
Whenever a crime is reported from the techie quarters, irrespective of whether it is a sex-crime or not, the first thing that is commented upon is the 'licentious' lives that thisGen-Next gang leads. And how their long work hours push them to seek instant companionship among their colleagues although'technically' married to someone else. Or how toilets in software companies have condom-vending machinesand how drains are clogged with used condoms. Such were the whispers andspeculation when Pratibha Murthy, an employee of Hewlett Packard, was brutally murdered allegedly by a cab driver in 2005 andagain in 2006 when Giriraj Kishore murdered Tanya (both were BPO employees) because he found her affections 'drifting.'
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In all these cases the character of the girls came under an unfair scanner and the ugly stains of public perceptionstill linger on. In Amit's case why did nobody ask if he was mentally ill or pathologicallysuspicious? The clues he left behind on his laptop, such as meticulously noting downhis wife's call details, and also the suicide note offered itself to such an interpretation. The versions thathis colleagues narrated in the press about his snooping on what his neighbours surfed would have supported such an interpretation, but no such luck for Rinku. The dominant stereotype would never allow the world to sympathise with her. Her family has to now unsuccessfully battle the stain of her having been an 'adulteress,' because the media will never come back to clarify thefacts.
Next, let's take the man-machine relationship about which interesting urban folklore exists. There surely were similar tales about the 'mechanisation of the mind' when the world was getting industrialised in the early part of the 20th century and we watched sublime and satirical representations of them in a couple of Charles Chaplin moviessuch as The Modern Times. At the centre of this folklore is the beliefthat the machine redefines man and gradually disfigures him beyond recognition. It is the extension of the mythological imagination where the demon you have created ends up consuming you. The computer isnow beginning to be thought of as bringing all human relationships to an end,reminiscent of the fear that existed when computers were being introduced--'no no, they will take away all jobs'.
One curious myth that I often hear and recently read in a Kannada tabloid is that computersmake a man 'impotent.' In this tabloid, it was part of an 'analysis' on what could have possibly gone wrong between Amit and Rinku. It was perhaps a crude way of saying that the cyber world is so intensely addictive that you forget your normal human emotions and extensions.The same tabloid also went on to state that most software engineers are slowly becoming 'nut cases'. In that report, everything about the software industry was amoral. Even as these tabloids and myth factories celebrate the slow dementiaand impotence of the software professionals, they also, in a schizophrenic contradiction,bemoan the 'promiscuity' exhibited by the very same group The truth is laid bare by this contradiction.
Since so much is spoken about tonnes and tonnes of money that software professionals earn, the man-money relationship also gets an extreme spin. It is presumed thatall software professionals and BPO employees change their cellphone every month.That they blow up all their money in pubs and bars. That they keep the shopping malls going,that they are the 'spendarati', and so on. The subtext is that the softwareprofessionals seem to be putting money on par with happiness and living.
It is needless to counter these stereotypes, because they spring from a hyperbolic angst of a society that is trying to make sense of the enormous speed of change taking place around it. It is trying to grapple with a new work ethic that is getting established. We should be aware that the cases that often lead to such stereotyping are more exceptions than the rule.Forget the tabloids, they are known perpetrators of these myths and stereotypes, but a few days backeven a national magazine published a story saying that a survey conducted by NIMHANS and four other medical outfits had declared that 36 per cent of Bangalore's techies surveyed were probable psychiatric cases; that one among 20 employeesconsiders suicide; 28 per cent were constantly under strain; 22 per cent were unable to enjoy daily activities and a fifth admitted to being edgy and bad-tempered. However, this report in its two-pages did not indicate what the sample size of the surveywas. So, how does one get a fair approximation of the truth?
Interestingly, a sociological study conducted by the National Institute of Advanced Studies in Bangalore in 2006 countered manysuch myths that were prevalent about the IT industry. Among other things, the study said that Indian IT workers had preserved the conservative institution of endogamous marriage. About their spending traitsit said while the ability to buy and invest marked this generation off from the previous one, the traditional middle class goals had not changed-- to own a house, plan for security, invest in upward mobility such as children's education etc. Normally we extend the individualisation of IT professionals to their personal lives and assume that they are strong adherents of a nuclear family system. But on the contrary the report tracked a resurgence of the joint family. If one put the earlier survey and this one side by side, it is clear that not everything about the IT world is dark and repugnant. That they too care to live their lives as 'meaningfully' as possible and their 'value-system' has not entirely eroded.
Even as I strive to get closer to the truth about the world of IT professionals, I have a few 'wonder why' and 'wonder what' questions even without subscribing to any of the myths and stereotypes discussed above: I wonder why engineering courses in this country do not have social science and literaturecomponents. I wonder why we care so less about humanising our environments that are so stuffed withtechnology. I wonder how much of the problem that we perceive exists as a result of rootlessness and humanmigration. I wonder if all that we are speaking about now is the same old idea of 'alienation' discussed brilliantly by Europeanmasters. I wonder if the IT professional who stares into the computer has a simple 'field of vision'problem. That is, assuming that looking into the screen creates a blinkered view, what does one have to do to restore the 180-degree forward-facing field view that humans have?
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And, finally, why am I reminded about RichardCory when I hear tales about our IT guys? (There is also a Simon& Garfunkel song inspired by the Edwin Arlington Robinson poem)
I pray a bit of the mystery gets unlocked in my dream tonight.
