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Fairer than that Word
I am editing a book meant for west African school-going audiences. Amongst many other slightly-sermonising pieces, it has a parable about honesty, featuring the Aesopian woodcutter who drops his iron...
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Farewell to Pup
This post was due a week back, but it isn’t something I wanted to advertise to the world. Being a parent is hard, especially when you’re handicapped by language and species. We adored our second pup...
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An Illegal Citizen’s Letter to Her Teenage Self
I seldom read letters people write to their younger selves. Part of it is because they are something of a fad, and I have an innate aversion to faddish things. (I’m a secret stern-faced fuddy-duddy.)...
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World Cup 2014: Suarez Throws Uruguay Out
Or so he will, if clear video evidence of him head-butting and then biting Italy’s Chiellini emerges. Suarez has been banned before for biting – he’s something of a habitual biter, the little bastard...
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The Answers in the Catch
Having just found my father’s tattered copy of Catch 22 in our last unpacked box from home, I have been catching up on my Joseph Heller after years.It is wonderfully liberating to read a book from an...
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Jewish = Muslim
Indian hardliner ‘nationalists’ have plumbed solidly for Israel in the current conflict. Palestine deserves destruction, they say, because it has housed terrorists who have been annoying Israel for...
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Book Quotes: Push by Sapphire
After ages, I have discovered a cache of e-books that were stashed for a suitably rainy day in one corner of an old storage drive, and promptly forgotten. My memory can always be counted upon to keep...
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Same Old Spilled Blood
This morning, I woke up at 5:30 to be greeted by the news of brutal police assault on Jadavpur University students just three hours prior. One person is in coma, female students had their clothes torn...
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How to Manage the Media: A Guide for India
An interesting aspect of the police brutality at Jadavpur University today has been the response of West Bengal’s most powerful media house’s response to it. As my former classmate and friends SD and...
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Better Local Governance: Electing vs. Assigning
Much of the US was a structural shock to my system. When I first heard that such key offices as Commissioner of Police and district attorney was elected rather then appointed from a national, rotating...
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A Quick History of Prostitution in Bengal
From “Introducing Phulmoni and Her Sisters”, Dangerous Outcast, the Prostitute in Nineteenth Century Bengal,Sumanta Banerjee, Seagull Books, Calcutta: 2000. In his 4th century B.C. treatise on...
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Progressive India and Social Media
In 2005, when I was an undergrad atJUDE, our canny Registrar went on a holiday, and in the absence of his velvet-covered iron gloves, things fell apart spectacularly. What could have been a small...
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#JeSuisCharlie? Foutre le Camp!
I see on Facebook today that Charlie Hebdo is still trending, and an email informs me that the asinine hashtag #JeSuisCharlie, started soon after the Paris attack, is still raging on the interwebs....
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On Satire, by Joe Sacco
American cartoonist and journalist Joe Sacco has a thoughtful – and depressingly amusing – piece in the Guardian about the crazy attack on Charlie Hebdo’s office, the publication’s oeuvre, and the...
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From Fourteen Fasting Students Determined to Live
The students of Jadavpur University request humbly that you starve yourself for 24 hours. I pass on their request to you because I am heartened by your passionate outrage about global moral crises:...
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Victory, She Announced
Sourced from social media, for in many ways, this movement has been defined by its presence on social media. For that, as my friend Parichay pointed out, #hokkolorob probably owes a debt to journalist...
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Snapshots of a Small Revolution, 1
The #hokkolorob (‘Let there be clamour’, ‘let there be a confluence of voices’) movement based in Jadavpur University saw a great deal of support from the public, and some opposition from the state...
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Little Girl and the Wolf, James Thurber
NOTE: On the one hand, a tale of cynical ‘empowerment’. On the other, a possible advocacy for NSA’s ‘good guys with guns’ fallacy (or in this case, ‘smart kids with guns’ fallacy, recipe for an even...
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Little Red’s New Coat, Road Dahl
I was speaking to my mum on the phone today, when my dad came on the line specifically to tell me that he read my post reproducing James Thurber’s retelling of Little Red Riding Hood, and that he...
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Victimising the Good Men
There has been a lot of noise in India lately about the banning of BBC’s India’s Daughter, forcing the house to release it virtually on YouTube (which promptly blocked its viewing, at least in India)....
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