Issue 79: The Common Woman | In a land far away

This is Part 3 of an ongoing series on the common women touching our lives

N walks up to me one evening while we are dining at the restaurant. “Ma’am, you read a lot don’t you”. She knows the perfect opening to engage me in conversation.

I haven’t thumbed through the book in hand yet but I don’t let her in on that secret. She has seen me roaming around these parts with my e-reader in tow for some time now, apparently.

Book stalker. What better can one ask for while on holiday.

N is a trainee at the resort, currently assigned to table duties at its in-house cafe. A GenZ, she does 10-12 hour days, split up as 5 hours at breakfast and 7 hours at dinner, lunch being break time. At a stipend of around 14K, with food and stay offered by the resort, N’s daily life is confined within this place, a land that feels far from civilisation, though not physically far from the nearest airport.

But her phone has a life of its own.

After that initial opening, N wants to share her reading journey with me, a willing listener, goading her on. She whips out her phone and shows me her current reads on her Kindle app. Ikigai is done, How to make friends and influence people is in progress. “Only non-fiction?” I ask, trying hard to mask my disappointment, yet letting a tinge sliver through, subconsciously.

“Ma’am, my father would beat me if I tried reading fiction. He believes books should be for learning. So, that habit has set in. But I do love drama fiction.” I offer to give her recommendations and she comes back promptly at the end of our meal, notepad and pen in hand.

The hospitality and tourism sector contributes to 8-10% of all the jobs in India, with women taking up more than half these jobs. That’s a promising fact, isn’t it? Well, most of those jobs are at the entry level, and as with any other sector, women fall off fast and furious before getting into the General Managerial positions. More fast and more furious here than in other sectors because of the long hours and far flung locations, as society and families condition women to be the primary caregivers for children and seniors at home, rendering it impossible to make the long hours and far flung locations as much as married and child-bearing men do.

I don’t ask N about her career plans. My job here is to give her book recommendations, fiction / drama particularly. I do that and am on my way, hoping she finds a way to keep herself financially independent, here or elsewhere, in hospitality or otherwise, hoping she doesn’t succumb to her dad’s beatings in making life choices, like how she has made reading choices.

Click here to read Part One and Part Two in the Common Woman series.