Digging for Meaning

This was written about a month ago. it was a heavy evening with clouds that refused to rain.  ____ My room is a 12 by 12 feet fortress. Books and loud music keep the outside world where it belongs. Buena vista social club, Sigur Ros and Inti-Illimani create the different layers of the reality that I want to belong to. The alien language reinforces the knowledge that that world is indeed exotic, but not inaccessible. Buena Vista creates a world of siestas, gentle dance and happy café shop conversations; Sigur Ros’s pristine beautiful sounds fills me with contentment and calm happiness; and Inti-Illimani’s simple earthy songs of togetherness promises me a better future. And then ‘Duniya’ from the movie ‘Gulaal’ starts on the shuffle. All the carefully constructed peace is shattered and I return to the anger that I was trying to run away from. The duniya (world) I was avoiding all along comes in with all its virulent malevolence through those speakers; the duniya that makes decepti...

This post also features in my FutureChallenges blog with a few edits here .  _______ We are living in a fucked up world. For every incidence of sexual violence I get to know of experienced by my friends, a sickening feeling overcomes me & fills me with dread. dread for the many girls who will never tell their experience to anyone. dread for the unimaginably horrible world we live in. If very close friends too share such experiences only when they are sure that they won't be judged, I shudder to think of how many of the women I interact with everyday or pass by would have had to go through such ordeals as well. Is any woman/girl/child safe at all in this country? We might build walls. we might only travel in our own cars and never in the dead of the night. But is it any safer? How can it be any safer for women, if their world is built on the notions of shame, purity, 'decency' and so on? By defining our 'culture' squarely on the basis of men's rig...