Book Review: Graffitti (Joanie Pariera)

A commissioned review:


Flipping the very first chapter of “Graffitti’ over to the second had promised one thing loud and clear: that, this was not going to be just another book I read.  The scene description was abstract and yet impeccable, and the set-up had set you up for a journey which was going to be wonderful, and at the same time, witty. On one there was a fatal accident and a lone survivor waiting to hit the psychiatrist’s chamber and on the very next, there a girl - dropped jaw - watching her ex in a lip-lock with his current ‘boyfriend’ to ‘show and tell’ how he has managed to come out of the closet. The stories indeed make for quite a ride.

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! 

Book Review: 03:02 by Mainak Dhar

(A commissioned review)

What would you do, if one fine time in the middle of the night, time stops still? What would you do if one day you're cut out on stock, of food, water, medicines. Electricity. What if at one moment, at one sudden moment, the life that you raced so far comes to a surprise halt? What would you do if a science fiction terror thriller suddenly becomes the world?

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.

Vipassana - The Art of Introspective Calm

Even though I've been out of Silence for a while now, I'm still not quite as out of it as I always was when I didn't know it exists and how. My self-exile was my best gift, and I still do not know who it was from; I don't care to know either.

Native Immigrants (Movie Review)

Okay, time for a commissioned movie-review! :)

But before that, first, the movie – NATIVE IMMIGRANTS

Review:

What if you get up one fine morning at your home, dress up and arrive at work, and you’re told to “GO HOME NOW”? Right! As much as is said about roots and identities, this becomes the stark reality for some unfortunate souls that we’d prefer not to much think about from our personal safe cocooned space of shelters we call our home. Unless.

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?