GENRE: Features

Every day at the main city bus stand in Dimapur, just across the Nagaland State Transport office in the heart of the city, you’ll find a large number of people waiting for the city bus. As the bus arrives, people rush in, in hordes. One really needs to have the physical strength to be able to aggressively push his/her way inside. Although the city bus comes in at an interval of about 5-10 minutes, this is the scenario every time. It is not uncommon therefore to meet young working women like Chumbayala and Agnes, who have been waiting for quite…

His was the first play I performed in college when I foolishly forayed onto the stage. He was among the first writers I interviewed when I became a journalist. His was a regular face during theatre and cultural festivals, a tall dashing figure who walked the talk. I saw him many years later at the steel flyover satyagraha. His gait had slowed down a bit, but the nerve was as steely as as ever, even with that medical box strapped to him. And now he is gone. It is very ironic that in death, a wordsmith often leaves us speechless.…

C Akhila(name changed), a 12-year-old Muslim girl was forced into marriage by her family, six months ago. Her mother, who is going through a prolonged illness, persuaded her to get married to a 24-year-old man. The persuasion got violent when Akhila asked the groom to call off the wedding. “The girl threatened to complain to Childline if the wedding was not called off. Her family had hit her black and blue for doing so,” said Suganthi from Arunodhaya trust. If you think child marriages are confined to rural areas, Akhila’s incident that happened in Chennai proves you are wrong. Tales…

Unlike most people, I don’t think BBMP is an inefficient civic body. I feel they are very environmentally-aware and are always coming up with new ways to implement it. I know you might be thinking, “This is a crazy man? All our lakes are dying, and all the trees being cut down and all!” You have the right to your opinion, but hear me out. I was working on an article about a BBMP initiative called Roshini. With Roshini, BBMP schools across the city were going to get free Microsoft products. They were even giving free training to teachers. You…

Rusty swings and broken see-saws once ruled the playground in KSGMPS aka Immadihalli Government School in Whitefield, established during British rule. But since 2017, children are heading to the school playground earlier and leaving later, just so they can play with swings, caterpillars and twisters. Anthill Creations had set up these structures here using scrap tyres, a trademark of this Bengaluru-based non-profit. In another part of the city is Aralikatte Park, near National College in Basavanagudi, also set up by Anthill. The monkey bar-like structure here has colourful tyres overhead, instead of the usual metal bars. Children clamber through and hang…

The #MeToo movement in India gathered momentum in the south when playback singer Chinmayi Sripada exposed popular Tamil lyricist Vairamuthu for sexually harassing her during a show and threatened to end her career after she did not give in to his overtures. A dubbing artist too, Chinmayi was  expelled from South Indian Cine and Television Artistes and Dubbing Artistes Union following her allegations against Vairamuthu. She disclosed that she was slut shamed  and there was also a concerted effort to destroy her career in the film industry. More recently, the Justice S.A. Bobde in-house committee has given the Chief Justice…

A couple of weeks ago, Vandana Katoch’s post on social media went viral. This mother-of-two from Delhi was celebrating her son’s score of 60 percent in board exams. It made news because her son's score "wasn’t a 90%”. While we applauded and celebrated her sentiment, the question is how easy it is to be supportive of your child who has a normal score. I can tell you from personal experience that it is difficult to practise what you preach. My niece cleared her PUC exams this year as one of the top-scoring students from Mangaluru. But another niece has struggled…

Holidays and broke teenagers don’t quite fit together, more so during summer. With the scorching heat and sweat dripping down our faces, getting annoyed was pretty easy. Bengaluru certainly made living easier in some ways, but not if you weren’t ready to pay for it. Every time I wanted to catch a movie, I’d pay Rs 150 or 200 at a single-screen theatre because I couldn’t pay up for a multiplex. So was my story with Rex theatre in Brigade Road. 'Logan' had just come out, starring Hugh Jackman as Wolverine for the last time. Despite not having followed or…

The silly season is upon us. It is an endless cycle that repeats every few years. It is the season when we, the people of India, get breathless with excitement: “You must vote! It is the sacred duty of every citizen in a democracy to vote.” “If you don’t vote, then you are not a patriotic citizen, and you lose your right to have a public voice.” “Your vote is important. The person / party that you elect will frame policies that will determine the future of our country.” It is the season when we pull out from the dusty…

In 2009, Dr Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar came to power on a Trinamool Congress ticket from the Barasat Lok Sabha constituency near Kolkata. Since then the 60-year-old physician has retained her MP seat, winning by a margin of 1,73,141 votes in the 2014 General Elections. The incumbent MP is in the poll fray again from Barasat. Parliamentary constituency No. 17, Barasat, saw a change in its constituent assembly segments in the 2009 elections, following the orders of the Delimitation Commission; as per these orders, the satellite township of New Town, which has been developed as a special urban IT and corporate…