The new calendar: looking back at International Women's Day

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Day after, the many declarations and the many speeches, the many self-congratulatory concessions and earnest prayers of hope, the pink balloons, pink t-shirts and pink ribbons. It's the day after the many rolls of films and wads of paper and a bulk of thought were poured at the altar of equality. Day after we were sisters, mothers, wives and daughters to be congratulated for being a woman first, at birth, by our organs, for society. Day after, we were told of our indomitable spirit and undying courage and all things human in hyperbole. We were told how we have been wronged, subjugated and humbled by the penetrating powers of patriarchy that dominates us through force, through sex and through language. It's the day after the invented time and the convenient calendar created for the exonerating bubble of the deeply gendered hierarchies of government, politics, business and media....

Out of the ash, I rise with my red hair and I eat men like air

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(Event: Take Back the Night, Location: Southern Avenue, Kolkata) There's something astir. The leaves crackle like stones under our heels. The sky has been silenced by the ground beneath. Their hair aflame, their tongues giddy, their eyes slice through the winds. They are women reclaiming the night I am taking what's mine. The city, its air, its streets. Men don't stare, you know me as I know you. My comrade, my friend, my equal- I am a woman ....

Where is my freedom?

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No it's not the usual self-gratifying introspection about where my country is headed, not a futile fury over my prime minister's I- day speech which could comatose the country and its youth for the next two years, not a self-defeating rile over the rancour by third/fourth/nth Anna camp which can spoil anyone's eggs in the morning... No this is not about the leaders at the altars of power but a farmer A farmer, a vote that all parties covet with sops, with money, with liquor, and often with boots. A farmer, the aam admi of congress, the mool of Trinamool, the quintessential common man of India who brings votes for our netas and zing to their speeches. Everyone bleeds for the farmer , their plight, their land, their debt , their suicides. The incredible farmers of our incredible India. Today when my country completes 65 years of its....

No country for women?

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Rape has ceased to shock me, molestation is just a word. Newspapers, television headlines, blogs, twitter feeds, even Facebook posts don't contain enough outrage to shake me from the insensate stupor my humanity has submitted itself to. First came Pinki Pramanik. Some screamed rape, some screamed no rape, some sniggered oh but she can't because she is not a man after all!! Leaving the facts for the police to uncover and the public to judge what troubled me as a woman is the baffling logic that only a man can rape. Well our laws say so for now, so I better shut up. Laws which only permit a hetero-normative definition of rape where the violence of force is replaced by the violence of laws leaving nothing queer to chance let alone reality. Then came images that bombarded our living rooms for days to come as we all became....

A little ray of light in the dark saga of sanitation in India

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53.1 per cent of Indians don't have toilets. It's not just data. It's a fact, a fact that threw me off when I was doing my research on this story. More than half the population of my country don't have toilets! How can that be? I asked myself. I checked and cross-checked shuddering how naïve I have been or should I say self-absorbed with not an iota of self-reproach, not a whiff of willingness to know beyond my clean, urban haven. You can watch/read the full story here. I knew open defecation is wildly common, as a young girl I have giggled many a times my train would cross rows of men and women defecating near the tracks as I would force myself to stay up to see the sunrise glistening through my window. Now, I am too tired, so the shutters go....

A disease lurks Byangoland

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It's a terrible disease and it's spreading very fast. The symptoms are pronounced. It is known to make humans contort their faces, sometimes even expose their teeth. Bodies shake violently with strange sounds coming from the lips. It has been there since the time of plague but no one noticed it till it claimed its first victim in several years in the Eastern state of Byangoland last week. According to records, the victim was a 50-year-old chemistry professor. First, the local quacks tried to beat the virus out of the body but nothing worked. The doctors had to intervene. They took him and his 74-year-old neighbour to the local hospital to surgically remove a bone which causes and spread this dangerous malaise. The operation lasted several hours through the night. They were released the next day but there are apprehensions that they haven't been fully cured and might....

When the tigress left the jungle...

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She called her a 'tigress'. The 37-year-old Park street rape victim was grateful to one woman who believed in her and her account when no one else dared. Eyes darting across the room at the two armed guards standing at the door, holding her two daughters tight, I met her scared and confused. She asked me why she needed to prove her rape over and over again in a bizarre spectacle that her life had become. The only thing that kept her going was the pain that she went through and the justice that she sought. Only one woman understood that perhaps. Damayanti Sen, 'the tigress', who did the unthinkable - proved her innocence and tried to nail the culprits. When the police commissioner of the city held a press conference elaborating on the 'discrepancies' in her account, when the chief minister of the state called....

A rape of the senses in Kolkata

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'How can a mother of two leave behind her children and go to a bar to drink?' 'She is a divorcee, she drinks beer, she goes to bars, makes eye-contacts with strangers and gets into their cars' ' Why should police be blamed? Why did she take two days to file a complaint?' 'What was she doing in the middle of the night at Park Street?' 'It's an attempt to malign the government. Truth will come out.' 'How is it possible in a moving car? Which position was he in?' They ask in whispers. They demand answers. They make pronouncements. They insinuate, they doubt. From the common man on the road, to the woman at the helm, to the men in uniform, to the netas in the studios, everyone has a question, an opinion and an idea. They ask who,....

AMRI fire: That Friday morning

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It was a little before 6 am. I got a call. There was a fire at AMRI. My mother woke up next to me asking me what happened. Normally early morning calls always brought bad news. I switched on the TV, threw some clothes on and ran. Next five minutes were frantic - calls were made to find out information, calls were made to office to give information, calls were made to figure out the logistics and a thought that rankled the most was that my mother was admitted at the ICU of that hospital not too long ago which I was trying to brush aside. AMRI is a hospital close home. I have been there numerous times when I sprained my ankle, when I had a bad cold, when my mother had to be rushed to the emergency and now today a hospital where a fire is smoldering somewhere....