At the heart of this controversy lies not so much the right of a woman to choose her religion and spouse, but society’s attitude to women. We should be grateful for small mercies. On International Women’s Day, a day when hashtags were declaring ‘Time’s Up’ and ‘My Body is Mine’, our highest court reaffirmed a […]
The lamentable humiliations of Hadiya Read More »
There’s a sickness infecting some of our boys caused by a toxic combination of over-indulgent parents, schools obsessed with ‘brand image’ and the normalising of sex and violence by mass media. On Instagram, the seventh-grader threatens to have his teacher and her daughter raped. The eighth-grader emails two of his ‘very hot’ teachers and invites
Over-indulgent parents and brand-conscious schools are failing our kids Read More »
Hillary Clinton concedes that her new book titled ‘What Happened’ isn’t a comprehensive account of the elections, admitting that, “I couldn’t get the job done, and I’ll have to live with that for the rest of my life.” I was on a flight out of Delhi when the results started coming in. But I wasn’t
What Happened: Hillary Rodham Clinton comes to the sisterhood party a little too late Read More »
Speaking up has consequences and, so, in the din of divisive discourse that makes way for majoritarian force, the solitary voice is now hard to hear. I don’t know if you ever read Roger Rosenblatt’s essay in Time magazine in the early eighties: the air-crash over Washington, the rescue helicopter picking up survivors and, in
In an age of beef killings and human shields, speaking up is an act of courage Read More »
We do the army no favours by placing it on a pedestal from where it cannot be asked legitimate questions. We do it no favours when we seek to draw it into an emotional public debate. Military action cannot be based on populist sentiment; wars are not fought and won in TV studios. A solution,
Hyper-nationalism does not help the cause of the Army Read More »
The price of annoying the establishment is steep, as Khan knows, it’s perhaps easier to compromise — a simple answer to the question of why we don’t have our Meryl Streep. A sure way of knowing when a superstar is about to release a film is by seeing how accessible he becomes. Voila, suddenly, there
Shah Rukh Khan, don’t blame the media if we don’t have an Indian Meryl Streep Read More »
It can help me cope with a changing, unpredictable world, enlarging a personal worldview to embrace those outside my own experiences and ideology. And before you know it, it’s here again. That time of year to make fresh resolutions, determined to wake up energized and renewed. Learn a foreign language; meet new people; read more
I have just one word on my new year’s resolution list: Empathy Read More »
All of us with smartphones are now publishers of our own stories on social media, consuming, sharing, forwarding often to groups that think and feel like us. The truth must be out there, somewhere. But when we have a yarn to spin, does it really matter? The great truth about social media, it used to
On social media, facts are less than sacred Read More »
Some call this an age of mass distraction. I pick up my phone to make a call and before I know it I’m swirling down the rabbit hole of pings and updates, phone call quickly forgotten only to be substituted by a hastily remembered text message much later. I struggle with information overload. That guy
We live disconnected lives as our connection to virtual world increases Read More »
In the narratives we weave, Kashmiri citizens must be blamed for their own swift repression. In the Kashmiri narrative, the crackdown is yet another instance of the mainland’s immoral suppression of the natural Kashmiri longing for azadi. Neither side is prepared to hear the other. At the time of writing, 37 people are dead in
We no longer hear the voices of our citizens in Kashmir Valley’s narrative Read More »
I have five questions in the wake of the national outrage following the death of Shaktiman the police horse: 1. Would we have given a damn had politicians not been involved? Forget for a second that last month’s protest near the Dehradun Assembly was led by BJP legislator Ganesh Joshi. What if it had been
Five questions after the death of Shaktiman Read More »
As social media emerges as a source of legitimate news and as Indian corporates muscle their way into media ownership, public trust in the fourth estate is only dwindling further. Shortly after taking over as Press Council chairman in 2011, Justice Markandey Katju made his views about journalists clear. Sensational, superstitious, anti-people and so on.
Public trust in fourth estate is dwindling Read More »