THE UNIINTENDED CONSEQUENCES
A HEADY COCKTAIL OF YOUTHFUL ENERGY IN CHANDIGARH’S SERVICE SECTOR IS REDEFINING THE ETHOS OF THE CITY. BUT CUPID AND CUBICLE MAY NOT ALWAYS GET ALONG
No one belongs to this place, everyone is a migrant here. Chandigarh, with its straight lines and concrete, and people boxed in Soviet-style housing, designed by Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier in the 1950s as the first planned Indian city, is a buzzing, fast emerging metropolis forever seeking roots that don’t exist. It has become the hub of IT, telecom, call centre and hospitality industries, which draw young employees from across the country. A heady cocktail of youthful energy that works in Chandigarh’s service sector is redefining the ethos that was once overshadowed by the culture of the surrounding states, Punjab and Haryana.
The india today Sex Survey 2018 shows that 55 per cent of Chandigarh’s working population was fine with the idea of sex with colleagues and around 35 per cent believed that it was alright to have a sexual relationship with subordinates. “Most of the office staff generally knows if something is cooking between colleagues, or if a senior has a sexual relationship with a subordinate,” says the HR head of a major IT company. Adding that it would be a cliché to believe that a subordinate would get into such a relationship only for a promotion or better appraisal, she says, “Even smaller companies don’t run like shops where salary hikes or promotions are granted just on the basis of how much the boss likes a person. What is so abnormal about an office affair if work remains unaffected?”
Devika Vij (name changed on request), 32, a senior designer, who quit her job in a city advertising company last year, does not agree with the view. Vij, who had physical relations with her team head, says: “Most of my colleagues believed I was getting to work on top accounts only because my boss and I were physically intimate. Isn’t it surprising, considering I always had a reputation of being excellent at my job and was around even before he joined?” She quit a few months back to join a new company and has vowed to keep away from men senior to her in the office.
Dr Rajesh Gill, chairperson of the sociology department at Chandigarh’s Panjab University, explains, “Unlike other traditional cities, Chandigarh has a large proportion of its working population in live-in relationships, away from family barriers. The same makes it more futuristic in terms of sexual behaviour. Also, liberal indulgence in sex has almost become a norm though we tend not to acknowledge it. In the india today survey, women perhaps have not been as forthcoming as men.”
Several people approach Dr Simmi Waraich, a well-known psychiatrist in Chandigarh, with bruised endings to such relationships. After a messy divorce, a 29-year-old woman from Pune joined a multinational IT firm in Chandigarh and entered into a relationship with a senior, who was married. “The relationship continued for two years, but it was getting disastrous for her self-esteem as other colleagues were visibly jealous of the attention she was getting. After some help from me, she left the job along with the relationship,” says Dr Waraich.
The doctor adds that over the years, Chandigarh has become a teeming metropolis with youngsters from major cities and even small towns flocking here to work. “The anonymity provides many a chance to mingle with the opposite sex, unlike the narrow-mindedness of the small towns they belong to. Naturally, affairs happen at work too. Many treat the fling as just that—a fling. For others, it doesn’t work in their favour as it may socially isolate them among colleagues,” she says.