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...

"Your perception of me is a reflection of you; My reaction to you is an awareness of me." ~Bobbi Chegwyn Here are some friends who've taught me so much in the last few years I've known them... each of them are amazing, free-thinking, radical individuals who are out to change the world in their own strange, silly ways. And no, we didn't co-ordinate outfits 😁 your vibe attracts your tribe n all that cool shite happened. Here's to standing strong with each other, to keep pushing ourselves to be better, to laugh till our stomachs hurt, to being silly together, to working hard, with dedication, and compassion, to poetry and singing songs of freedom really, really loud, to lazy floor dancing, to multilingual jokes being lost in translation . . . Here's to the one who never says no,  and the one who taught me to be proud of what I believe in,  the one who taught me that i can be afraid and still so strong, the one who taught me 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...