Dog Blogs Travel Trips

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 ...

“… 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...

I write this today with a deep sense of sadness, anger and helplessness. Animals in India have lost a warrior, who, by his actions, has cheated them of a chance for survival. Yes, I say cheated Sanjay, because I'm very very pissed off.  In 2011 I was living in Delhi, training to be fund raiser for an animal shelter. Part of my job entailed having a good idea of existing infrastructure, so I requested that I be allowed to visit their permanent shelter in the outskirts of Gurgaon. Permission was granted and I found myself bouncing along a dusty road to a tiny village far far away from suave, slick Delhi.  Large iron gates welcomed me, and I say welcomed, because they sure were friendlier than the rest of the staff there! I was shown around the enclosures for the domestic animals rather grudgingly and finally, unsatisfactory tour over, I was asked in a rather 'please-say-no' tone, "Would you want to see the wildlife section?" Intrigued, I agreed, and tr...

I am standing on the brink of a new day and I sense this strange excitement curling around my guts, gripping tighter and tighter as it closes in on my heart. “I Feel Luv.” This love is for this fantastic adventure called life… like they say, life is what happens to you when you are busy making other plans!! I had imagined a year or two in Delhi , and before I knew it... I was off on a new adventure. (I am very grateful to the kindness of friends and family who gave me an opportunity to sneak a peek into their lives and be a part of their happiness.) I grew up reading Enid Blyton, and just like George and Julian or the six cousins about to embark on a new hair raising un-put-downable tale, I began to sense a buzz in me. It flared the first time when I was boarding the train to Mumbai a few days ago. I was off to join a challenging new job on the western coast. As the weather grew warmer I felt a familiar tug of memories flooding my head. Finally, Maharashtra ! I’ve had a long love affa...

Once you know something is coming to an end, you tend to look back and think of the good times. Right now it’s time for me to move out of Delhi so here’s the stuff I did during my short stay here. Visit the animal farm . What did you expect I’d start MY list with? Of course the animal farm!! Friendicoes has a fabulous animal sanctuary outside Delhi (in Gurgaon actually). It houses over 600 dogs, as many as 100 cats. They even have horses, cows and donkeys. All the animals are rescued and cannot be rehabilitated. I stayed away from the cattle section because I have a weird fear of big animals with hooves and huge teeth. Ok, stop laughing already! The unique thing about the sanctuary is the love and care with which it is maintained. The dogs are segregated by personality! Yes! Who does that right? The staff identified the rowdy dogs, the timid ones, the fighters and the introverts and have kept the dogs apart in a way that they ca...

I enjoyed being a kid. If you got hurt, you could cry and then someone would show you an ice cream and you’d forget. Digging a pond in your grandparents’ garden was the achievement of the day. Scrubbing out dirt from your fingernails afterwards was a huge success. Life was about basketball, chocolates, being late for breakfast or that twist of ‘black salt’ from the guy in front of the forbidden boy’s school. Small things meant such a big deal. Like swallowing an orange pip had me freaking out for days about whether or not I had an orange tree in my stomach. Or whether I should have eaten that minuscule chatar matar off the field (“God said never to waste”) or not. We played in the flooded school ground with no worries about mud stains and spent hours in a soap fight when washing out the very same mud. The sand pit was cool coz we made funny sand cakes and plastered the wall. The slide hurt our butts and skinned our knees and we jumped in piles of freshly mown grass. Growing up was full...

On a tourist-ty trip the other day I landed up at Indira Gandhi memorial. It’s a beautiful old, white building, with sprawling green lawns, a winding path, with a ‘crystal river’ on one end. The ‘crystal river’. It’s like a photograph in my brain, since I last came here 10 years ago. Every time anyone mentioned Indira Gandhi (for whatever random reason!!) a picture of the crystal river at the memorial popped up in my head. For some half baked reason my confused conclusions about Indira Gandhi could be best described as “pretty cool you know…”… to elaborate further… school textbook stuff, how she had a strong personality, I knew the family history thanks to the newspapers and I knew she had been assassinated. Sometimes Sanjay’s controversial decisions came up, and I knew enough about Maneka Gandhi because of animal welfare work. More ideas were formed post the first visit – Indira Gandhi was a very strong willed person who was crucial for India’s growth, declared emergency, almo...