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Showing posts from September, 2016

A World built on Good Wishes - Part II

The country is suffering, while the elite are engaged in Facebook wars. Nothing is going to change till each of us makes up his or her mind to fight patriarchy, caste, communalism and injustice. The working class continues to exist on a pittance, and the politicians continue to roll in rivers of money.  I was standing near a chai-paratha shop on the streets of Delhi when a luxury sedan pulled up. The obese man behind the wheel rolled his (illegally) tinted glass down, bellowing, ‘ abbe oye bhen-chod, paani laa .’ The little chai-shop boy complies, holding out the paani-bottle from a safe distance…I’m assuming that comes with the experience of being cuffed by the customers, and he says, ‘ ye lo ’ … (please note: no  bhaiyaa !) As the man stretches out for the bottle, he shouts,  ‘ Izzat se baat kar, chutiya …’ I struggle to keep the disgust from showing on my face as I wonder why anyone should respect this heaving, gasping, sweating blob of flesh with complete disre

Random Rants from Travel Trips - Part I

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“… cutting up women is a sport older than cricket but just as popular and equally full of obscure rituals and intricate rules that everyone seems to know...” ~ Mohammed Hanif , Our Lady of Alice Bhatti I'm reading Our Lady of Alice Bhatti as I travel trip my way across India, meeting women for our newest campaign - an ambitious one where we're hoping to dismantle patriarchy using videos and discussions. I'm looking for young women, who want to work with us as Correspondents, to document patriarchy preying on them in its own unique style in their areas. As I read about Alice, a fiercely independent former jailbird, from a poor, ‘low-caste’ Christian family in Pakistan, I am disgusted by how similar life for women in India is to the life of Alice. As I travel from Goa to Kerala, and move to Tamil Nadu, I met Nandhini, from a tiny village just outside Tiruppur town, in Tamil Nadu. She’s just opened a beauty salon, enrolled in English classes and is pretty pissed off wi