Stand Together

As a child I hated the 7PM news hour on DD National (DD1 back then) because I thought news was dreary and my parents were boring folks to show so much interest in it. As an adult, I am forever on a news website, app or a news channel, not because I find it interesting, but because of my inherent need of knowing what is going on in my country and how it may or may not affect me and my family. For the past few days everything I have been watching in the news is making me grow frustrated with my identity as an Indian. There are so many things I can complain about and a certain politician’s use of urine to irrigate his plants is the least of them. Was this even news worthy? I don’t care what made the man propagate this idea but I care why it featured in the national news. Why do news channels think I will be interested in this information or why on God’s holy Earth will this affect me? Also, how does a stupid CEO’s insulting letter to his board or his u-turn after that letter aff...

In December 2014 I was in Hyderabad and I was hounded about not having children even after two years of marriage. Four months later, I am greeted with the same intrusive questions. Fortunately, I am not the only recipient of this negative welcome. The real housewives of Hyderabad (yes I am talking of all those aunties in the neighborhood who could also be related to you) strangely have an agenda against young people these days. First they pick on you for not studying engineering, they then pick on you for marrying ‘late’ (ahem… 27 is not late), then they try to make you feel guilty about the sadness you are inflicting on your parents by not having children yourself. To all of you aunties, I am still living for myself and I like it that way. So dear aunties, do not pester me about not having children. Do not irritate me by asking ‘oh now you have bought a house in South Africa, so you are settling down there’ - well, what do you think? You do not need to be curious about h...

So the Indian Government has banned the BBC Four documentary ‘India’s Daughter’. The government highly underestimates those who have voted it into power. You ban it on TV, we will watch it on YouTube, and we will also download it because when you ban it on YouTube we will upload it again a million times for everyone to watch. We are Janata-Janardhan and we get what we want, we are smart like that. As shocking as the documentary is, the reaction of a lot of people is even more shocking. I openly supported BBC for broadcasting this documentary and chided those who indulged in abusive banter against the movie, against women and against democracy. There are people who have stated things such as “BBC is very much notorious for showing dark side of developing countries n always justifies its "white agent" role” (real quote from a highly educated and popular Telugu news reader on Facebook). For some people this whole episode went from a period of self-reflection to finding...

I am not African but sometimes the lack of respect shown towards Africa shakes me up. Boko Haram murdered 2000 people in a small town called Baga in Nigeria. ( Read here ) How do 2000 lives not matter? Why was this piece of important news relayed to the world after several days of its occurrence? The attack on Pakistani school children and Parisian journalists shook the world but how is it nearly possible that the death of 2000 people and the abduction of 300 school girls not matter (anymore)? Why is the world so ignorant about Africa? Africa is beautiful and it is not all about the forests and the animals. It is not about the rich natural resources that are still being exploited by the “civilised” world. It is as much about people and their cultures and their lives as it is about people, their lives and their cultures in the rest of the world. I’m not an African but I live in South Africa and I am constantly asked ignorant and annoying questions about the heat in the Sahara ...

I am an Indian woman. I am the obedient daughter, the dutiful sister, the loving wife, the caring mother and the doting grandmother. I am more than I was destined to be and I am proud of it. I am a strong woman. A woman who can fight, a woman who can support, a woman you can rely on and a woman who can cry with you. I am all this. I simply have no defects. As a child I obey my parents. I bring them unfathomable joy. But there are those who do not want me. They kill me before I am born. There are instances where I have survived and when I survive, I repay my salvation in full with interest. I am trained to be a good wife from a tender age. At an age where my brother gets to play cricket in the street, I am set a task of learning to cook. I finish my cooking course as though I am a prodigy with a brilliant performance; a performance that lasts as long as I live. By the time I am out of my teens, I have turned my childhood nemesis of cooking into a therapy session. That is my accomp...

Belonging to a minority community in India is difficult. Minorities are asked to prove our loyalties time and again though we all celebrate Diwali, play holi, watch Bollywood movies and do everything that a normal Indian does. But, we are n ot very welcome in India. I read and hear hateful speeches all that time and they have a devastating effect on me. Especially now since I won't comply or appreciate anyone who wants to vote for Modi. I really don't care who you vote for but I care whose side you will take if Gujarat riots occur again. I have had a 'facebook acquaintance', accuse me of selling India off to Pakistan, China and other countries. What more must I do to prove I am patriotic as well? I cry every time I hear Jana Gana Mana in the foreign land I live in. But again, when this is what so called educated people believe, why take the trouble of proving myself? This is a real "comment" made by the same person and it has left me shaken and chilled to the...

I come from India, the largest democracy in the world, and I live in South Africa, one of the newest democracies and it so happens that it is election year in both these countries. Election years bring out all the cruelty and ugliness of the ‘elected’ or those who ‘wish to be elected’ and this is the biggest common factor in both these countries. In India, my home state, Andhra Pradesh, is being bifurcated. Economic development is being sacrificed for vote bank politics. What will a political party, which only wants to stay in power and is headed by a non-Indian woman, know about this region and that their disastrous decision will only work towards the downhill growth of the new state? No, they know nothing and they really do not care. In South Africa, politics is still very race based. The President blamed Apartheid for the country’s slow growth in his State of the Nation address. Politicians are busy playing dirty to a level that they criticize the clothes their competitors...