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BANGALORE, INDIA: Two suicides in a city within a span of 24 hours may not be a big news. But the news assumes significance because both the deceased are techies who earn a decent living, and an apparently happy life.
The latest case is the suicide of Abhaya Singh, a 25-year-old software engineer working with Satyam Software, who ended his life on Tuesday. The son of the SP of Jharkhand, Singh was staying as paying guest at Parappana Agrahara in the city.
It was on Monday that another techie named Vijay Babu, who was working with HP, ended his life by hanging from the ceiling fan at his residence in Madiwala. This indicates towards the darker side of the hi-flying life the techies are supposed to lead. And this cannot be treated as isolated incidents.
Hardly two weeks prior to this incident, a girl working with Nokia in the city had ended her life.
According to the suicide note of 26-year-old M J Soni, it was the harassment in the work place that forced her to take her life. In that note she had pointed fingers towards two of her senior colleagues, who allegedly put her to untold mental harassment.
National Crime Records Bureau says that, on an average 35 in every 100,000 people in Bangalore commit suicide. Experts say in most of the cases in is the stress that led the people to death.
In most of the hospitals, one could see the brains of the Silicon Valley seeking treatment for stress-related ailments. And there are many who embrace drugs and alcohol to cope with the pressure. And the tragedy is that majority of those who suffer from stress are from the IT and BPO industry.
There are many reasons contributing to their problem – long working hours, competition and the ambition to excel so that they would get a foreign trip or some extra perks. And in the prevailing scenario the feeling of insecurity adds to the worries.
Added to this is the marital discord, which is also an offshoot of the hi-fi lifestyle. The case of Bangalore-based software engineer Amit Budhiraja, who committed suicide after allegedly killing his wife, underscores this.
Amit feared that his wife Rinku Sachdeva, who was working in a leading bank, would ditch him for her lover and would also take legal action against him.
His suicide not read like this: "I loved her a lot even though she had an affair with her colleague. I overheard their conversation when she used to lock the door and talk in low voice. There were also discussions on divorce . I kept quite, fearing that she might file (dowry & 498A) harassment case against me though I had not accepted anything from her . So I killed her."
In last September, Namitha Palleyi a software engineer from Orissa, committed suicide by hanging herself with a dupatta at her house in K.R. Puram police station limits. She was employed as an engineer with Tata Consultancy Services. The cause of her decision to end life was depression.
This is not a comprehensive picture of the Bangalore techies taking their lives. There are many other instances. Nor is the trend of suicide among the techies of Bangalore only. From Delhi to Hyderabad to Pune the cloud of suicide is looming large over the techie horizons.
But there is no software solution to help one get out of stress. So the companies feign ignorance about it instead.
If the state machinery does not want to transform the Silicon Valley to the valley of death, some serious steps have to be taken in war footing.
Do you have a solution in mind to help those who romance suicide?
