Seeing Things

1) Feminists hate men Feminism is not the exact-opposite of what male-chauvinism is. It is not a system that pits womankind against mankind. Although it does question why people as a whole are referred to as 'mankind'. But please mind that the point of raising the question is not to change the term to something neutral but just to make a point that history has second-graded women in general. Feminism is about acknowledging this truth and endeavoring to be fair going forward. Feminists do not deny that men and women are made different. A woman has the gift of childbirth, for example. A man is gifted with greater muscular strength than the average woman. Sure. But, the mind, the personality, and the emotions of people are not gender dependent, never mind the stereotypes. There are men who make great mothers. There are women who make great car drivers. There are men who like to shop, preen and gossip and no they need not be gay. There are women who dislike shopping and birthday p...

The pursuit of happiness has many forms. Today I got a call from Teekamgarh. Teekamgarh is a village in Madhya Pradesh. A village I visited a few days ago. A village I would ordinarily have no reason to visit ever in my life. Neither do I have anything personal to do with the village nor is it a tourist hot spot. But, I visited Teekamgarh a few days ago and got irrevocably connected to it. I realised today that, when I placed that little bit of paper with my phone number in Sankhy's tiny hand, I had also placed a little piece of my heart there. 12 yr old Shikha and 10 yr old Sankhy were the younger sisters of 19yr old Anju didi, who became a Jain saadhvi(nun) on the 14th of October. That means that on that date, Anju didi sacrificed everything - wealth, beauty, relationships, temptation, her budding youth and even her name, 'Anju' to take up a frugal life of meditation and prayer to propagate Jainism. In the pursuit of Moksha - eternal happiness, she would disown he...

I want to quit my job and spend my days listening to jazz, painting, writing, reading and acting. How hard can that be?  This desire reminds me of a famous line by celebrated Urdu poet, Mirza Ghalib, 'hazaaron khwahishein aisi, ki har khwahish pe dam nikle'. (Bad translation: 1000s of desires like these, each worth dying for)

Aaj najane kyun ek lambe arse ke baad Kuch likne ka jee kiya Aur najaane kyun hamesha ki tarah Kuch likhne ko nahin mila

I visited Calcutta again two days ago. This was the third time. The first time, I was yet to be born. My mother was carrying me when she visited the city. The second time was in 2009. So, charmed was I that I burst into a blog post titled "falling in love". After that trip I got a chance to go there for a single day, two days ago. It was a work trip. I wondered if I would still love it as much as I did the last time. I considered the fact that perhaps I was predisposed to a romantic state of mind last time and that this time, I may not experience the same vibe. I thought wrong. Like a long lost lover, Calcutta rekindled those familiar feelings. The gentle trickle of bengali all around me started at the Mumbai airport itself, which I soaked in silently. I did not mean to eavesdrop. It was just to listen to the language. The language that first touched my ears when I watched Ray's pather panchali several years ago. In Calcutta, when I sat in the car booked for me ...

Many people including myself did recognise that there is something awfully faulty in the social conditioning with which men and women are raised in this country especially when it comes to attitudes towards the opposite sex. It is only now that people are also seeing that things are not merely faulty, they are outright dangerous. it is a possible factor behind the free flowing news items about rape in this country.  When I was 13 years old, I was in Delhi. I studied in Kendriya Vidyalaya, Janakpuri. Once, during a fancy-dress competition, I saw this boy dressed as "bharat mata"(Mother India) on the stage. In his clumsily draped saree and shaaby long-hair wig, he was funny and a sport. He was bound in chains that were tagged as "corruption", "poverty", "illiteracy" and "communal disharmony". Mother India was sad and pleaded to be freed from these chains. I immediately had a crush on him, although I couldn't even see his face...

Rape is a reflection of an attitude. An attitude that stems from a belief system that puts women in second place simply because they are the physically weaker sex. It is this attitude that ensures that many men, even in equal societies, always remember deep down that the "fragile-sex" is all independent and free-spirited BECAUSE men are allowing it. It is this belief system that makes people uneasy about seeing women actually equal (or overtake) men in thought, independence, and action. It is none other than this familiar attitude that magnifies itself in some men to feel no shame about using something as lame as brute force to break a woman's spirit. The root cause of rape is an attitude. The attitude needs to change. How? I don't know.