Dog Blogs Travel Trips

I’ve been talking to a lot of people lately, and I cannot get over how damnably selfish human beings are. We lie, cheat, steal, rob, kill and hurt, just to improve our lives, our finances, our relationships. We love to beg. We beg for pity, compassion, clemency, empathy, sympathy, food, money, better jobs, good clothing, a good bargain, better food, name it, we beg for it. We twist our faces into pitiable expressions, contort our bodies to seem smaller, and try to whine our ways into people’s sympathies. It’s sickening – people beg especially when they know they do not deserve what they beg for. We’ve lost the ability to fight for what is rightfully ours. Because we sit back and expect it to land in our laps. Easy peasy. I received a sad little letter about how “I am ‘akeli aurat’” and by default, you must feel pity for me and give me what I want. What about a dignified letter about how capable I am? Is this how equality works? Big deal if your husband left you. He seems to be...

One of the best parts of my job is that I get to travel for recruitments. Recruitment is a crucial process at my organization, because not only do we have to identify people who meet our criteria for selection but we also need to get a sense of how committed they are to their community. They are then trained to produce local news for their communities, about their people. I’d spent weeks researching Chhattisgarh, trying to understand the people, the culture, the politics, talking with everyone I could connect with - activists, NGO-wallahs, representatives of people’s movements – all in the search of the right candidates for our India Unheard program. This was to be achieved by setting up meeting with different people across the state of Chhattisgarh. This meant extensive travel across the state, covering as many as 23 districts out of a total of 27, sometimes travelling over 14 back breaking hours non stop. Raipur, Chhattisgarh looks like any other city – the usual dirt & sq...