Your support to any movement and general questions/reactions

1. How do you know the students/women/rape survivor/villagers/displaced people were right in their manner of protest? Why were they using sanitary pads to write their messages?
2. How do you know they are not wrong in raising the issue?
3. Why are they raising it NOW? Why are you supporting them NOW?
4. How do you know this is not political in nature? (I know it is. So? You lose your case. )
5. Have you heard the other side of the story?
6. Have you protested against all the bad things that are happening in all the other parts of the world? (I am sure you did not against the afforestation in Central Africa which is causing the current Ebola epidemic! What! you did not hear about that causing it? See. I told you!)
7. Did you stand up for that particular incident 10 or 20 years ago that happened in your college campus in the 1990s? You did not? You have no right to feel bad about anything that happened thereafter.
8. In such and such part of such and such country if women/students/sex-workers behaved like that (read, blocked roads, gheraoed officials) they would have been behind bars within few hours! (and that of course justifies your government's reaction too)
9. You support them! Do you know in such and such year in such and such event they behaved in such obnoxious manner? (the groups compared might be ISIS and Palestine children, students anywhere in India or the planet in any century)
10. It might be personal.

THE END!

Comments

Being a Mother and Not Going By the Conventional Wisdom!

It all started with a picture I posted with a glass of beer in front of me in Facebook. A childhood friend (male) felt inspired to call me up and give me some "good advice" on how I can delete the picture in order to be a good mother to my son. He added, "You anyway hold a full-time job and travel. Is that not bad enough for your son that you feel like posting these kind of pictures?! Always remember, now you are a mother first!" with extra emphasis on NOW! I think my son, Gogol (Agneebh) was about 11 years old then. We had a good laugh talking about that incident and the advice on hiding the fact that I drank occasionally, as he cleaned the fridge and I cleaned and deveined prawns while sharing space in the kitchen today. As we discussed more such examples and giggled some more, the late-teen boy felt I must write a blog-post around my tryst with such advices. So here you go! I became a mother as a 25 year old and was comfortable wearing my skirts and t-shirts....

Are We Even More Precious as Broken and Mended?

Are we? Am I? Are you? Are we even more precious because of the wounds, the cracks, the riffs we have in our hearts that we have worked on for years, much alike the ceramic pieces which have gone through Kintsugi ? Are we even more beautiful because we are broken and we did not divert ourselves away from those cracks through the most celebrated addiction of our times, "busy-ness"? Or for that matter dissociated to the extent that parts of us became unreachable along with those cracks? Can we claim higher value than a human who was never broken or for that matter never looked at their broken parts and worked on them? But even before we go there, do we, ourselves consider us exquisite pieces of higher value or are we constantly shaming ourselves about our brokenness and our healing journeys much like the pieces recreated through Kintsugi? It is popularly believed that Kintsugi or Kinsukuroi came into existence around the 15th Century when a Shogun (hereditary military leaders...

Are you sure?

I was thinking the other day about the lectures I get from time to time about how I should dress, what I should add to my get-up to give myself a more acceptable (according to patriarchal standards) and/or serious (read, older woman) look, how I should conduct myself, why I should not laugh out loud and the list just goes on! The list is so long that if I actually maintain it for a year, I may not find anything 'right' about me at all! And then there are always those doubts and disapproval about the "right". Was that the "right" place to be? the "right" time to be there? and the "right" reason? Too confusing? Allow me to explain. All my female readers might find it easier to understand. Please think of the last time you were harassed on the road. No! I am not talking about those every day incidents that we have all learnt so well to ignore, the same way we ignore barking street dogs! It is not about those. I am talking of the in...

Ladybug's field notes

Search This Blog