Mahadevi Akka was a fool,Who thought she could flyWhen she took off her clothesIn a declaration of her freedom.She wandered the streetsIn her birthday suitSinging praises of Chenna Mallikarjuna,Her divine Loverbecause the local boysJust didn't measure up.The joke's on her though.The local boys offended by her naked body,Covered her in clothesAnd stuck her into a [...]
Unbearable
Pic: Internet I love Rebel Wilson. Who doesn't, you may well ask. But I LOVE her. For my family, who are massive fans of the Pitch Perfect series, she’s something of a hero. I imagine they wrote her in as a token diversity character of a fat friend, the comic relief. But such is the [...]
℅ Kancharapalem, a review.
As usual I’m a little late entering the reviewing game. I find it difficult to do anything, see anything that comes with a tag of majoritarian approval: send your kid to school, everyone has done it since time immemorial, watch Prem Ratan Dhan Paayo, it's a huge hit; 48% of the country voted for Modi, [...]
The Periwinkle
I found you one noon,Just behind the septic tankYour roots wedged Into a crackat the confluence of Two corroded pipesCarrying rivulets ofmineral rich shitFrom the toilets of menWho distinguish themselvesBy walls and caste and religion.You winked at me, all pretty in your pink,“I couldn’t tell whose is which,Shit’s just shit”."But, but", I stammer,"Why did you [...]
Men Are Boys
"Like a compass needle that always points north, a man’s accusing finger always finds a woman. Always." –A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini. A 34-year-old male actor recently died by suicide and everywhere I see, grownass men and women are addressing him as that 'poor boy'. The 'boy' was highly educated, by some reports even [...]
G I Jane, Gunjan Saxena And Other Feminist Musings.
The Ridley Scott directed G I Jane (1997) is one of my guilty pleasures. Watching the elfin Demi Moore transform into a buff, tough-as-nails Navy Seal, cigars, buzz cut, moonlit one-armed push ups and all was thrilling for the 24-year-old me, nearly a quarter century ago. With no one else to share my nascent feminist [...]
Grief is the price of love
Pic courtesy: Dodoardo My mother died of cancer close to 20 years ago. We saw her dying, bit by painful bit, in the last year of her life and we shifted consciously from praying for her recovery to praying for her death when her suffering and pain became too much. Nobody ever tells you that [...]
Mismatch
It all began with my love for the song Aji akdo na humse piya (don’t act snooty with me, my love) Ke hamne bhi ba paas kiya (I too have a BA degree) https://youtu.be/KYW9on_otz8 I hadn’t ever heard the song in entirety before. But it struck me as cute that a woman was asserting herself [...]
One Day
All of a sudden, what happened, they asked?They didn't remember the things they had said,Red lipstick makes you look like a Grant Road prostitute.Your hair is the only beautiful thing about you.Why don't you colour your hair? You'll look so good.White makes you look darker than you already are.Where's the bindi? What are you, a [...]
Write an essay on: My Pet Peeve
Seminal, Adjectivesem·i·nal | \ ˈse-mə-nᵊl \Definition of seminal1: of, relating to, or consisting of seed or semenseminal discharge2: containing or contributing the seeds of later development : CREATIVE, ORIGINALEg. A seminal book The egg that made me was in my mother's ovaries when she was a 7 month old foetus in my grandmother's womb. Yes. [...]
