Dog Blogs Travel Trips

I’ve been following the global #MeToo Movement for a few years now, torn between celebrating the outpouring of sisterhood and solidarity for survivors of sexual harassment and appalled at the shame and ridicule they were being subjected to for speaking out. The #MeToo implosion in India followed a scarily similar turn of events, raging through in a brief, glorious burst of fierce feminist energy, only to wither away in legal imbroglio. The list of accused was vast and varied, from actors to artists, comedians and politicians, journalists and the judiciary, and of course, The Woke Bois [1] of the desi world. Every sector was riddled with salacious stories of the misdemeanors of men. The ones in the development sector were especially exhausting. The names of self proclaimed champions of the crusade against patriarchy cropped up repeatedly. @sanitarypanels The survivors, and their supporters, however, had a whole different drama to deal with. The initia...

Indian social media had a video go viral recently, made by some young women in Gurgaon. In the video, they’re following a middle-aged woman, demanding an apology. The older woman had earlier shamed one of them for wearing a short skirt. She then went on to tell some men in the restaurant that they should rape such women. The release of this video on social media led to all sorts of responses and raging debates, including whether the video ought to have been uploaded in the first place? Is public shaming an appropriate response when someone is misogynistic? Legal action is appropriate perhaps, and sometimes, maybe, deflecting the situation using conversation perhaps is appropriate. As per reports, the younger women did both. I remember when a random man once accosted me. This was in Calcutta, and I remember he was old, and out on his evening walk. He stopped me on the street because he wanted to inform me that it was wrong of me to smoke, because I’m a woman, and I w...

"Buddha doesn't refer to a person, but a state of mind which we all are innately equipped with. Buddha means awakening..." ~ Rinzin Dorjee , Writer & scholar, Dehradun. Vikalp Sangam is a platform for groups and individuals working on alternatives to the currently dominant model of development and governance, in various spheres of life. Its major activity is the convening of regional and thematic Confluences across India to facilitate networking of these groups. The briefing note on the ideologies of this Alternates Confluence read much like a theoretical module from my University degree! We were hosted at Prakriti Sadhana Kendra, Vidya Bhawan. Barely 15 km from the city, the Ashram is cocooned in the dry forests of the Aravallis. The crisp, cold air of Rajasthan was radically different from the lush, tropical Goa. Ninety or so social activists, healers, herbalists, teachers, trainers, farmers, khojis , feminists,...

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...

The latest word to be added to my vocabulary is the Arabic word for bougainvillea -  Majnuneh  – the feminine for crazy. I fell in love with the word as soon as I heard it. A massive chunk of my world can be associated with the word ‘crazy’. If not wanting to stuff myself into the tiny little boxes society likes to pigeon hole people into means I’m crazy, it’s alright, I don’t mind being crazy. I learnt a long time ago that ‘crazy’ is often used to dismiss people whose intelligence is assumed to be irrelevant. I’m fine with being irrelevant in an ignorant person’s world. And habibi , all these stereotypes about women and feminine and girls and boys and mardangi and so on and so forth have become old and boring. Majnuneh is my new stereotype - where one can be just whoever the hell they wanna be. (yeah, I got myself an Arab friend, and she teaches me the best words ever!) I must confess I’ve been guilty of indulging in stereotyping as well. I attributed the love f...

What happens when you bring together some activists, school girls, unemployed youth and poor farmers? A revolution. A rebellion against the rules . There is hope in this world yet. As the outside world is carried away by greed, jealousy, rage and power, I have been camping in Bagaicha, Ranchi with this group of people who have lost homes, families, land and identities and are struggling to bring together their communities in a new age rebellion against the consumer world that you and I are a part of. Over days of chatting with them and finally hounding them for follow ups it began to dawn on me who I was trying to understand, to connect with. These were the people our government forgot when they were making the rules, the laws that govern our nation. There were people desperately fighting for a chance of survival, fighting for their land, their forests, their culture…for their communities. Reaching Bagaicha on the 17 th , the first thing I did was make friends with Spotty aka ‘C...

The last few days had been surprisingly lonely. I found out that it’s kinda tough to be happy all the time! Gah! I’d imagined me-the-invincible could do it! It was made worse as some friends had been visiting from Delhi and after they left, I suddenly realised my life was completely wrapped up in office affairs. Not that I’m complaining, but I’d been going to work every day, hung out after work with colleagues, and then went to the house where I lived with colleagues. It began to feel like I had no life beyond Video Volunteers. I spent a few nights staring at the ‘starfield’ screensaver on my computer, listening to music, thinking of friends and family. I thought ‘profound’ thoughts about how each pinpoint of white in the screensaver is a dot of happiness in my horizon. I thought about rushing into the mad world without knowing what it has in store for me. Spending a few hours on the beach with Pinky-the-puppy strangely didn’t help much as I had to leave Pinky behind. Despite a liber...

Hello and welcome back to Dog Blogs and Random Trips ! I’m starting today’s doggie topic this way coz I got a grudge against a radio channel that I’m gonna vent about. A fellow dog lover in Bangalore (Michelle Stewart) wrote in about Radio Indigo who invited someone from Koramangala Citizen Cell. This is the Namma Bengaluru Program with HS Balram hosting aired on the 19 th of November, 2011. Anyway, like all good controversy seeking pseudo journalists, HS Balram asked their delightful dog hating guest about the “Great Stray Dog Menace”. As most of you know, the southern part of India has been going ballistic about these allegedly rabid dogs which are apparently on a baby eating spree. So the wonderful and esteemed BBMP and others (check Voice of Stray Dogs on FB for full updates) have decided that annihilating the dog population in India is the way to solve the world’s problems. One of these panchayats have even got this psycho dude named Moron-gun -- oops! sorry! Mu...