A warrior who never killed a fly!

White locks of hair pulled into a tiny bun, often covered with a pallu that is but a vague white extension of the once white but now faded 5 metres stretch of cotton, perhaps with a hole here and there over its entire stretch but carefully tugged inside to not be spotted – that is how Dida has looked ever since I can remember. Dida - the common grandmother – in our small but complete world of the neighbourhood, the place we were born and grown up at.

Fitness Choices

(This is a commercial post for "NESTLÉ a+ Slim")

A true blue Bong, “fitness” is not a word that could keep me away from the restaurant menu card or the glass showcase at the sweetmeat shop. Fitness could not contest fun and flavor. At least, for a long time. In a short term. We were younger and stronger. Fearless. Myopic.

I wish we could stay that way, always. Could not, but.

After a certain number of candles on your birthday cake, after a certain number of yet another person in friends and family struggling with high diabetes, cardiac emergencies, and worse, the ‘bad news’, it was time for reality check. It was then that it came afloat in front of eyes. That, it is not just about the common suspects – roadside fries or dollops of ghee. It is more inconspicuous than that. It is the “hidden fat” in more everyday food, the usual non-suspects, that make up for a large part of it.

Watch out is what I have started to tell myself, more recently. Watch out, we must. Because without a fit body, the machine simply will not run!

Twin Flames!!

Really...

let’s talk about unabashed, unapologetic romantic love.

Shall we?



“He's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.” used to be my 101 of love for a long time. Catherine had said this about Heathcliff, in Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. It was part of our course, and we were sold on it. Every girl from the classroom. We had assumed our life’s purpose to be a simple one, around that age and time. We needed to find our own Heathcliffs!

Book Journey - Broken Open (Elizabeth Lesser)

This was first published at Writersmelon

Spirituality sounds like a big word, especially when you are twenty-three, and haven’t had any real crisis in your world so far. That was when I had first come across this book. The name on the cover read – Broken Open. And then there was a line below it, which read – "How Difficult Times Can Help US Grow."  I was yet to know what that may mean. And yet, I had turned over its pages.

The Six Lessons - "Dear Zindagi" attempts it big!

This post was first published in Feministaa.

They say a film that is good is one that is honest. But no, not here. The beauty of Dear Zindagi is really in its pretense. For, it does a tight ropewalk between intellectual high tea of essential life lessons, and a soothing, upfront, breezy way of telling us an anyday story of an anyday girl. That is the only way to tell this story so that it can reach till us, so that it can do its work. So that it can make a difference, after all. Dear Zindagi is not an arty film, not at the least. And yet it is so pleasant and so ahead of its time that you feel almost grateful. Dear Zindagi is among the standing proofs of Indian cinema having come of age. It is a milestone, too, in a way.

Children Stories - fears and freedom!

This article was first published at Feministaa

How much can books make or break lives, I often wonder. What role do they play in shaping up who you are? Well if you ask me, I’d say quite a lot.

And yet, do we realize the power of printed words? Do we realize our restrictions with them, and our responsibilities? Do we realize what the bedtime stories cane do to our children, when we say them?

কে এই ভিকি রায়?

This post was first published in Rabibashoriyo, Anandabazar Patrika

২০০৮ সালে, গোটা বিশ্ব থেকে চার জন ফোটোগ্রাফারকে বাছা হয়েছিল, নিউ ইয়র্কে গিয়ে ওয়ার্ল্ড ট্রেড সেন্টারের পুনর্নির্মাণের ফোটো-ডকুমেন্টেশনের জন্য। নির্বাচিত চার জনের দুজন আমেরিকা থেকে, এক জন হংকংয়ের। আর চতুর্থ জন, ভারত থেকে। ভারত থেকে? কই, শুনিনি তো!

Off the focus, of the limelight!

This column was first published in Feministaa.

Taruna Ashwani was the next name in queue in the row of social (media) storms, and rightly so. For the uninitiated, THIS is what she did!!

Does India Know?

This column was first published in Our Front Cover.


In 2009, four people from across the globe were summoned to photo document the reconstruction of the world trade center in NYC. Two of them were from the United States of America, once from Hong Kong and the other, well, from India. Yes, from India.


The question is: Does India know?

Why it is not easy to take sides on the recent Supreme Court ruling!

(This article was first published in Feministaa)

It is tempting to have an opinion on everything, as it gets you facetime across the screen with several people from across the globe. They may like you or hate you, but ignore they cannot, for you have a valuable Facebook profile, a Twitter handle, and a whole series of I-know-better proclamations in place. Especially when you have an issue that is easy to stand by and take sides upon, it’s a cakewalk. You know what to say, and you know the predictable pat backs on the way all too well. I run a Facebook group around the theme of Equality, which really, in many frequent threads, stand to vouch more for the equation of gender equality than of other forms. So, it was easy for me to hit the share the scream and outcry of gross injustice and I’d know that I’d have unquestioned weight of support on my side. And yet, I found it not easy at all to reach my own conclusions on this subject.

It is on us, Parents. It is on us! - PART 2

This is in continuation to my previous article, which you can read HERE!

(This too was first published at Feministaa)

Talking of bodies and touches, as parents the other things we need to keep a watch on are these:

TONE!!

Something we need to keep in mind as we interact with our kids on these issues is that – we need to keep the conversation LIGHT AND EASY!

In search of Her identity...

This column was first published in Feministaa.

The social media has come to become a platform of endless provocations. Like the one that floated up on my newsfeed as I was hurriedly dressing up for the coveted Ashtami’s Pushpanjali this Durga Puja. A friend has started a question on his timeline, crafted cleverly to pinch and squeeze a few points out of people who’d stumble by it. It is a patriarchal conspiracy to pose Durga as The Mother, while really She is the Warrior - he stated. It is a patriarchal conspiracy and a trap, entrapped in the veil of religious piousness.

#RhymeIndia by Times Of India!!

Okay, so be it!!


The OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT is here, and I am so, so, so glad to have won this one! :)

:) :)

No! The power and the right. The answer. And, the questions!

This column has also been published at Readomania.


“Pink is not just a movie. It is a revolution,” team Pink has recently said. I wish. I wish to believe. I wish to believe in the strength it has just handed out to me. The strength of rights over the petty pity of sympathy. I am floored by the brave attempt by team pink. I have no words, but silent gratitude.

Think of it! Pink did not seek your sympathy of any kind. Exactly how it should be. We don't need your sympathy by being poor, by having carefully dressed up, by cracking a difficult admission test, by being the only daughter, by being the puny, fearing kind who doesn't dare give friendship a chance lest the friends prey on her. We don’t seek your sympathy by playing the game low key, by the rules of safety and pepper sprays. No.

And then, Pink didn’t play the cliché “us” and “them” too. It didn’t mark a gap between genders. It picked up the issue, instead. It pointed out the patriarch staleness in men and women alike, and the call of equality, in rights and respects, again in the both of them.

Pink started in each of us a thought process.

It is on us, Parents. It is on us! - PART 1

(First published in FEMINISTAA.)


That day, the morning unfolded with this piece of news:

It happens. We all knew that, didn't we? It happens all over, all the time - the records will confirm. But then, close home?

Pink! To Suzette Jordan. To us. And to you, Auntie.

This column was also published in Youth Ki Awaaz, The Speaking Tree, My City for Kids.

A courtroom scene that stormed the internet down; a question of virginity and its safekeeping, and of matters and discussions best kept under wraps. Of police diaries denied, of warrants backed with power and politics. Of alibi and reasoning, and of the usual versus the unusual. Of morality versus law, and of morality of yours versus mine. Or, of whose?


But really, what happened on that fateful night?

Swap their toys!

This post was first published at FEMINISTAA

Hello, reader! Thank you for reaching till here, and for reading this. But before that, I hope you’ve had a good day so far?

For me, well if you ask me… No, let me tell you anyway! Remember, what happens when it is a Saturday? Birthdays!! Here’s a simple maths for you… I have a 5 year old daughter. Now the thing is, she has 27 friends and enemies in her class, and another dozen or two more in our society, condominium, family friends. And then, of course you know, that there are just 52 Saturdays in a year. So you see, over the last couple of years in my life, Saturdays have become synonymous to birthdays! And so has it been today. It started the exact same way… with a family visit to a Gift shop in the morning! 

Of basic instincts and self-reflections!

This column has also been cross-published at YOUTH KI AWAAZ


“My pain may be the reason for somebody's laugh.
But my laugh must never be the reason for somebody's pain.”

Before I launch into why I am suddenly, dearly, desperately reminded of these simple yet immortal words of Mr. Chaplin with much more significance than I intended over the last seven days of my existence, let me begin with the backdrop first.

Why we owe Co-Education to our next?

This post was first posted in Feministaa.



Every morning we’re hard hit with headlines screeching gender crimes, and I won’t even go into statistical figures there. Every morning, we’re also served morning tea in bed by the mother, the bahu, or the dewrani. Point is, academicians in contextual gender fields have a point when they argue that the previous two sentences you just read are not really distinct, irrelevant and erratic – they actually form parts of the same spectrum. The spectrum that cries out to us right since we’re born, that we are different. Boys and girls, the “us” and the “them”!
Curious, right?

Father of the Nation!

This post has also been published at YouthKiAwaaz and The Speaking Tree.

Once upon a time, there was a man.