Namita Bhandare

Missing women in search of themselves

In Kiran Rao’s new film, Laapataa Ladies, the brides are making their own journeys, gradually spreading their wings and discovering parts of themselves they have never known The brides, veiled and dressed nearly identically in red, have been swapped. And what seems to be the starting premise of a wholesome comedy is actually a portrait

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India, we have a rape problem. What are we doing about it?

Fill in the blanks:
Why was she wearing ____ ?
Who told her to go to _____ ?
Wasn’t she being too adventurous in ____?

The latest horror story out of Jharkhand has inflamed social media—not so much because of the violence of the crime, but because the woman is a foreign national who has spoken about her ordeal on a now deleted Instagram post, her bruised and battered face for all the world to see.

Here’s what happened. On the night of March 1, the woman travelling on a Spanish passport along with her husband, was attacked in Dumka, Jharkhand. According to the first information report (FIR), the woman has said she was gang-raped by seven men (at the time of writing all seven have been arrested along with one more) and her partner was beaten, assaulted and robbed. They were found by a night police patrol and taken to a hospital where the woman told the doctors she had been raped.

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We, the elite of India, are to blame for the state of our cities

Just as surely as the seasons change, our angst at the state of our cities will pass. The capital’s toxic air will cede to other crises. Again.

In Chennai and Mumbai, the annual rite of monsoon flooding will hold sway, then the rains will cease and we’ll move on. Again.

Every season, we reignite the same debates, ask the same questions and read the same analyses.

Take the zeitgeist, air pollution and its unwavering script: Children and seniors advised to remain indoors; schools shut, construction stopped, traffic rationed. Relax, says our environment minister, this isn’t the Bhopal gas tragedy. How reassuring. When the weather changes, the haze will lift and all will be forgotten.

An article in The Washington Post notes that pollution levels are usually lower in (a) democracies, (b) rich and affluent areas and (c) countries in line with international agreements — as India is with the Paris Agreement.

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An increasing number of women don’t want kids. They shouldn’t have to face a backlash for what’s a personal decision

Picture credits: @yolandayoungesq/ The Guardian Early in February, Sidra Aziz tweeted: “I am 31 years old and over the last few years I have very consciously chosen not to have children ever. Marriage, maybe. Children, no.” It was an innocuous enough tweet but the 31-year-old data product manager was taken aback by the response. Within

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