Yesterday, at the Scholastic Writing Awards ceremony in Delhi, I ran into the author Manjul Bajaj. We were only introduced to the each other just as we were leaving, but we had a nice walk down the stairs talking about a mutual writer friend, Monideepa Sahu. Anyway, I digress… Meeting Manjul reminded me of a […]
Social issues
Book review: Asmara’s Summer
Is there anything more important to a teenager than her street cred? No, at least not for Asmara. So when her Canada plans are cancelled and instead she has to spend a month with her grandparents in the conservative and definitely un-posh part of town, it is instant social disaster. So Asmara does the only […]
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Week #36: Stories from Okhla
What’s special about your home? That was the question that filmmaker and fellow writer Samina Mishra and her friend Sherna Dastur asked about two dozen children in Okhla, Delhi. In reply, they wrote and drew about their lives and their homes, about ‘the terraces, mosques and train tracks that lead to the villages that their […]
The auto-cracy strikes again
Turns out from 1 March onwards, (most) autos in Delhi are going to stay off the roads after 4 p.m., demanding a fare hike from the government. This is an indefinite partial strike and comes close on the heels of a 48-hour strike last month. But it also turns out that no one asked the […]
Can’t buy you love
Something strange happened today—I almost found myself in agreement with HT City. “Are we being conned?” screamed the headlines, asking if Valentine’s day was a gimmick thought up to line the pockets of sellers of pink and heart-shaped things. Unfortunately, a closer look revealed that the placement of the story was probably a gimmick itself. […]
A hairy story
Fact: women’s body hair is dirty. And how do I know this? Because I’ve always been told you’re cleaner if you shave your legs; and, stretching that logic, unhygienic if you happen to have armpit hair. And it’s on TV and in the newspapers, so it must be triply true. Heck, according to the media, […]
Auto-rickshaw adventure
So much of my life is spent in auto-rickshaws that I figure I must have some stories to tell. Of course, being more of a homebody, I don’t travel quite as much as most other people—such as people with full-time jobs—but yes, any trip outside the house usually ends up involving an auto. And yes, […]
All about puppies… well, sort of
Over the past couple of years, a number of people around me have had babies. Thus, not only have I had to adjust to new people in my life and a changed relationship to their parents (not necessarily a bad thing), I’ve also got a closer view of something I never wanted to come close […]
Grey’s Anatomy: Tackling the A-word
***SPOILERS AHEAD for Grey’s Anatomy, season 8*** Going where few women have gone before Abortion: the one subject prime time American TV serials seem to give a wide berth. Unless, of course, it is either an abortion born (pardon the pun) out of medical or financial necessity, in which case it is also portrayed as […]
Hollaback Mumbai
Women around the globe fight street sexual harassment from the moment they step outside. It is an insidious form of violence that is usually brushed off as insignificant, and in India trivialized as ‘eve-teasing’. The Hollaback! movement is an international e-activism network against street sexual harassment, and it has just sprouted its first branch in […]