from Photographers Blog:
City of joy
By Rupak de Chowdhuri
It’s festive time in Kolkata, with the Durga festival celebrated across the city, before Diwali celebrations fill the city with light. Kolkata has been called the "City of Joy," a title which was immortalized in a book by Dominique Lapierre. It tells the story of the poorest of the poor who still somehow find hope and joy in life. Little did I know I was about to come face-to-face with such a story.
I hunt for pictures every day. One day, I was looking for pictures when an old friend told me to go to a place where I was guaranteed to find a good story. Because of my curious nature, I started to walk in search of the story I’d been told about in the middle of Kolkata. I started searching among the food stalls because I wouldn’t believe it until I saw them myself.
At last I found them. And I stood stunned, like other customers in front of the food stall. I watched for half an hour.
The next day I came back and started talking to other people at the food stall. The other workers said they were a happy family once. They lived nearby for forty years. A few years ago, they moved to a village about 45 minutes away by train. I went home but I couldn’t stop thinking about them. I didn’t sleep at all that night.
Congratulate Mahendra Singh Dhoni
Mahendra Singh Dhoni married Sakshi Rawat at a private ceremony in Dehradun on Sunday.
Join us in congratulating the Indian cricket captain.
Family cannot be used as an excuse. Please don’t defend Federer! As for Shoni, thank you for saving us the drama that accompanies marriages of sportspersons in our country… a la Sania Mirza wedding saga.
Women in technology – “unmarketable product in marriage market?”
I moderated a panel discussion for an in-house ‘Women in Technology’ event in Bangalore this month.
The three women on the panel were an impressive lot — a former defence scientist, a renowned mathematician currently on the Prime Minister’s panel and a former-CEO-turned-entrepreneur.
But there was one common thread that bound them together — their fight against society, among other odds, to gain their glories.
“When I told my family that I wanted to join IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) Kharagpur 40 years ago, my relatives said I will be ‘an unmarketable product in the marriage market,’” said Jharna Majumdar, a professor at a technology institute in Bangalore and the retired Head of Aerial Image Exploitation Division (AIED) at the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO).
She has done extensive research on (Sorry, but I just have to mention this acronym too) PPDIESAGRP or Parallel Processing and Development of Image Exploitation System on Aerial and Ground Based Reconnaissance Platforms. Phew! No offence meant but that may have some potential to scare off prospective grooms.
More than half of India’s billion population is below the age of 25, technologically savvy and gender unbiased. Or are they? As a journalism student some years ago, I was never the only girl in a class full of boys.
In fact, there are more girl students in Indian journalism schools than boys. So, what is it about technology and women that men find so intimidating?
Given that one third of the audience was male, I think that both men and women are looking for answers. Why do we have fewer women in technology. With all due respect to the speakers, I believe that to be successful in any career, technology or otherwise having a supportive family and or spouse is important. You may still succeed, its just that it gets harder to do so.
An easier end to unhappy marriages in India?
India’s cabinet this week cleared a proposal to amend the Hindu Marriage Act to allow “irretrievable breakdown of marriage” as a ground for divorce.
The amendment had been resisted earlier and been pending for nearly three decades now. Other grounds for divorce, which can take anywhere from six months to 20 years, include cruelty, desertion and adultery.
The amendment, if approved by parliament, will make divorce easier for estranged couples, experts say, particularly in cases where a partner is deliberately delaying proceedings. Even family courts are notoriously ineffective and insensitive when it comes to separation, with judges often admonishing the woman to be more “adjusting” or offering advice thinly disguised as rulings.
The proposed amendment gives women, who are sometimes forced into marriage, an easier way to end an unhappy marriage and provides some safeguards against harassment.
Some counsellors have warned against making divorce too easy, lest couples do not even attempt to reconcile differences.
But others say the recognition that the divorce process must be easier only reflects the present day reality: while the divorce rate in India, at about 1.1 percent, is among the lowest in the world, it is ticking up, particularly in cities, where women tend to be more financially independent and where divorce is seen as more acceptable in a country where there is still a big stigma attached to it.
Indian laws have often trailed reality; indeed, the courts have stepped in to resolve matters such as a higher marriage age, and more recently, legalising live-in relationships and homosexual relations.
The ammendment gurantees half of the assets of the husband for the wife regardless of her conduct. So tommorrow if the wife deserts the husband within 1-2 years , she still gets on the benifits.As the author rightly said the ammendment would be know to the upwardly mobile , economically independent women. So this means, there is clear scope for gross misuse here. While the traditional wife would not be evernaware , those unscruplous women who have no serious intention or respect for marriage would use it as a tool to earn quick and large amount of money by marrying, and causing a divorce within say 1-2 years.
What’s love got to do with caste, class or countries?
Love and marriage have always been subjected to societal norms in most communities and this is especially true in India with its myriad structures of caste, class and a historical rich-poor divide.
The recent media glare on honour killings in northern India put the spotlight on the traditional system of local “khap” councils, who do not allow persons from the same sub-caste or lineage to marry.
Sometimes even marriage between two consenting adults from different gotras (clan or lineage) is banned if they are from the same village, and the diktat of the khaps can lead to ostracism and banishment to even honour killings.
Proponents of the ancient tradition maintain the issue is not simply black and white as a lot of factors are in play including maintaining honour, a balanced social structure, brotherhood of gotras, apart from historical opposition to inter-caste and inter-religious unions.
But frequent reports related to the khaps in recent times could mean that more and more people are defying tradition to be with the ones they love, even at the cost of their lives.
This presents the dilemma of a large population of youth with global aspirations living in a country still deeply entrenched in tradition.
The government plans to toughen laws to punish errant khap members but rural panchayats say they will continue settling disputes in villages.
Keep stirring the pot and sooner or later this is likely to become a regime change job for the USA, or France. You know, as in bringing them Freedom©?
Tears dont help but did not realise that they flow sometimes unknowingly !