People criminally neglected by their community and forced to eke out an animal-like living at the fringes of society are threatened with death for betraying the religion whose social structure does not consider them worthy of human dignity. If Christ gives me a school, a community, a shelter why must I not love him? Children [...]
Author Archive for aishwarya
Faith and the Village Pond
Published by October 20th, 2008 in Adivasi, Caste, Religion and Society. 1 CommentThe chipko movement, genre and decolonising the mind
Published by October 7th, 2008 in Books, Feminism, India and Society. 3 CommentsI’m a big fan of Vandana Singh, and I’m pleased that she’s currently blogging at Jeff Vandermeer’s Ecstatic Days. In this post, she discusses how a trek she went on in her teens was her first intimation that
a) feminism was not an exclusively Western phenomenon, and b) people, however poor and illiterate, could lift themselves [...]
Gouri takes issue with the media’s treatment of Shabana Azmi’s remarks about discrimination against Muslims.
If you were journalists/reporters in any real sense of the term, you would have taken this to the Building Society level, and seen how blatantly and clearly many societies simply will not give an NOC to the seller who has a [...]
After a recent trip to Istanbul, Szerelem writes about the city and its music.
Music is heard not only late at night, at the tiny bars which take over the streets in summer and the meyhanes, but at all times of the day, especially on the weekends. One of my favourite films, Fatih Ak?n’s ?stanbul Hat?ras?: [...]
Those who are interested in the Science Fiction and Fantasy blogosphere can hardly have escaped the debates on race and gender that have been occurring regularly within the field in recent years. Ashok Banker, author of the Ramayana series takes a look at the discussion here.
Then again, to ask for American SFF to do away [...]
Tired of being underpaid in his challenging regular job, Vinod has decided to write a bestselling novel.
Chapter Fifteen
“IT’S FINALLY HERE!!!” I yelled, “The part we’ve all been waiting for!! WOO HOO!!”
“You mean the part YOU have been waiting for?” said Jimmy, frowning at me with hatred, “We’re going to be stuck in our rooms, mugging [...]
Chandrahas of The Middle Stage has an interesting post on Mukul Kesavan’s The Ugliness of the Indian Male and other propositions.
Even if, in the beginning, the Congress’s pluralist definition of nationalism was strategic, designed to bring the largest number on board in a Noah’s Ark kind of way, over the sixty years of the independence [...]
41 year old American swimmer Dara Torres qualified for the Olympic team last week. Vidya Pradhan is unimpressed with an article in the San Jose Mercuty News which relies on innuendo to suggest that Ms Torres has taken performance enhancing drugs.
Why would a respected journalist put out a piece that is pure smear? Two explanations [...]
Rabbi Shergill’s second album Avengi Ja Nahin is finally out. Amardeep Singh shares his thoughts on the album.
I’m particularly impressed that Rabbi has taken on some political causes, including a very angry Hindi-language song about communalism, called “Bilquis”…
Also named in the song are Satyendra Dubey, a highway inspector who was killed after he tried to [...]
Alok reads Michael Cunningham’s book The Hours, having seen its 2002 film adaptation.
There is also one more serious problem which is there in both the book and film. Cunningham is obviously trying to impersonate Virginia Woolf and write his own “Mrs Dalloway” but his novel is not a work of “woman’s fiction” at all, not [...]
Jabberwock reacts to the controversy in Kerala over a textbook accused of “injecting atheist values” into the unsullied minds of school children.
The idea might instinctively make many people uncomfortable, but think about this: though most of us associate the term “child abuse” with sexual abuse or violence, it basically applies to any situation where [...]
Germany have made it through to the Euro 2008 finals, and will be playing Spain in a couple of days. Dushyant Wadivkar is lucky enough to actually be in Germany in the middle of all this excitement, and believes that watching the national team in the company of Germans is an experience not to be [...]
Mumbaigirl is not impressed by news of a group of Brahmins who wish to set up a modern Agraharam.
I don’t know why I was even shocked or outraged. In Bombay housing societies don’t let you in if you’re of the wrong religion or caste. Landlords and landladies in India don’t rent to you because of [...]
Loneraven writes on white privilege from the perspective of an Indian woman living in the UK.
These are small things. They’re nicely highlighed in Peggy McIntosh’s Invisible Knapsack framework; white privilege, she writes, is not just contained in single incidents, but “invisible systems conferring dominance on [one] group.” This doesn’t mean, of course, that these aren’t [...]
There’s something Zen and ironical about this whole process – that the growth of your personal hoard depends entirely on your level of commitment (mania), the discardatory whims of other people, and the element of pure chance of the book being there when you visit, and not having being bought by somebody else before. You [...]
Thalassa_Mikra describes a conversation with a fellow traveller on a train to Belgium.
I answered them and found out that my companion (let’s call him Hasan, I’m so ashamed I forgot his real name) was originally from Algeria, but worked as a musician in Switzerland. He was traveling to Belgium to see his mother who lived [...]
Reacting to model Ali Michael’s speaking publically about her eating disorder, Blue Floppy Hat writes about the bizarre standards for skinniness in the fashion industry and reminds us that three models have died due to eating disorders over the past two years.
I mean, I get it- models need to be skinny to look good in [...]
British Airways will no longer be serving beef as a part of its meals in economy class. Sepia Mutiny’s Abhi takes exception to the airline’s framing this policy in terms of sensitivity to Hindus, when it is clearly a purely economic decision.
For British Airways it is easier to “blame” the loss of beef on Hindus [...]
Indiequill analyses the “mother-daughter test”, in which one is supposed to
take a given set of circumstances and try to imagine someone dear to you in that scenario to check whether you’d be inclined to let it stand. It’s been applied to everything from MF Hussain’s paintings to IPL cheerleaders – as in, would you be [...]
The city was in an uproar. Everywhere little booklet biographies of Pele were published, sold and bought in droves. [Abhijit still has one of them], Calcutta having always been a literary city, and the merchandising juggernaut as yet a glint in the eye of international football [one assumes]. The game was to be played at [...]
Amrita learns that there really is no such thing as a free lunch.
Free food is the blessing and the bane of penniless grad students. Add to that the fact that I am Indian. In my first month at Stanford, my social life revolved completely around the availability of free food. I have masqueraded as a [...]
Tharini is wary of TV, and this is why:
This continued for a good 2 years. We got so involved in it that we would get agitated if Winkie didn’t go to bed quickly, making us miss all the action happening downstairs. We took to recording the episodes and catching up with all that we missed. We [...]
A women’s day news report about Renuka Chowdhury’s “empowerment bangles” has Rimi B Chatterjee musing on bangles and their cultural significance.
If women are socialised to see certain kinds of jewelry in certain ways, so are men. Indian dance and drama have turned the business of a woman putting on her jewelry into an art form: shringar. Men [...]
Mumbaiwallah draws attention to a campaign towards a park in Panjim.
Goans have long cherished their green heritage. But with the way things are going, it won’t be long before the hills are covered with buildings, open spaces turn into corporate parks, old houses are demolished to make way for a multi-storeyed car park. What will [...]
Did you know that in 1877 the British colonial government had passed an “Anti-Charitable Contributions Act”? I did not. Bala posts about this absurd piece of history that led to ten million deaths.
He has also unearthed large portions of the original text of the act. My favourite part, from Chapter IV which deals with examples of offences under [...]
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