Shaheen Bagh protestors have shown the rest of the country how to protest peacefully, and be heard.

I have been thinking a lot about kindness lately, and I have begun to doubt our sincerity around what we say about being kind. We don’t have any celebrations focused on kindness, the way we celebrate love, romance, heroic deeds, bravery, beauty, wealth, and physical strength. Even when we venerate saints and prophets who are […]

Journeys Into The Mind – A panel discussion with this title has the widest canvas to work with – all of human life and its quirks are its mandate, because as Descartes said, “Cogito ergo sum, or, I think, therefore I am.” It is our mind that makes or unmakes the world to us, and […]

As March draws to a close, I think back on two key women and work-related hashtags that were dominant on my social media feed all month. There was IWD and there was this other rather viral campaign, which used the tags IAmWorking and GettingtoEqual. The latter had the theme of work at its core, and […]

“By God’s Grace, everything is good with us. Everything is fine, we are happy, and touchwood, no issues like that.” RK’s smile was bursting with pride and relief, and something else indefinable. She rubbed her hands. In glee, or relief, or was it thanksgiving? MV could not say. The impassioned comment was a response to […]

The world used to go on about ‘don’t ask a lady her age’ when I was growing up. These days, I hear this phrase far less. Does it mean that we are more easy with the idea of being/not being a certain age-bracket? Or have we eased up on hiding our age because we are […]

I have been running the writing support group Write & Beyond, for over four years now. People get together at our sessions to write and to share their writing and so much else. All that writing – powerful, intimate, vulnerable, and heartfelt – then vanishes into the void of cyberspace, for most participants. I wanted […]

If you are a woman, the propensity of facing barriers in carving out a career in any given field is high. The literary field is no different. Women writers are often dismissed as writing either ‘chicklit’ and ‘romance’ or being too sentimental and ‘feminine’ in their writing. In a world where mansplaining and male chauvinism […]