Arbitrary Obsessions. Cities. History. Music. Feminism. Maami-isms. Patterns. Halwa. Identities. Free Verse. The Internets.

On Pressure Cookers and Prestigious Institutions

1Whenever somebody uses the word prestigious, I immediately have images of that heavy pressure cooker. I am serious. To me the word Prestige is irreversibly tied to a cooker. So when someone says they went to a prestigious institution, I have the image of a person being surrounded by a million pressure cookers.
When we [...]

Global Gender Gap: India at 98 out of 115

The World Economic Forum’s Gender Gap Report 2006 makes for interesting reading. As always one can always contest the weight for certain data, source for the data and the merit in ranking countries without recognizing contextual differences. While it may lack merit by itself, truth is that popular and accessible reports often determine the course [...]

Fiction Fragment 2: How Vishalakshi robbed the little one of laughter

She is not really a moody person. If by moody you mean someone whose moods change without one’s own volition, no, that’s not her then. But if observe very closely, you’ll notice that when she’s laughing very hard, to the point when there is a little wetness in the eye, she suddenly shuts up. Her [...]

Links for 2006-11-23

Portraits of Displacement – Photograph of a mother running on a street in Sri Lanka
“This womens 15yr old son was abducted by the LTTE. She was desperately trying to run after the truck in which her son together with another 15yr. boy were taken away. Abducted children end up being soldiers. “
(tags: photography humanrights [...]

You gave him ‘Dating Allowance’?!?

I have been laughing uncontrollably ever since I read this –
A court in Kanpur has issued a notice to Wipro chairman Azim Premji after the wife of one of the company’s employees alleged her husband had left her because the firm paid him a ‘dating allowance.’

Advocate Nandlal Jaiswal, who represented Tripti, said she filed [...]

Poem: Form filling in a dead city

The Historian sits at the foot of
a staircase. On the form where
his name must fit into very small,
impossible little boxes, in block
letters – his pencil draws little
earthen lamps.
In the event of the return, he
must brace himself for the
death of his city. Rocks, eaten
walls, dogs sit quiet with that
which remains – the memory of
a memory.

Look Nervous – otherwise you are guilty

Am I alone in being confused by this? Aishwariya Rai apparently received some parcel with some money. She says it isn’t hers. Goes to the custom office. Fine till here. She is to meet a certain Mr Prasad of Additional Commissioner of Customs, Special Investigation and Intelligence Branch (SIIB). Which also sounds reasonable. But what [...]