📣 For more lifestyle news, click here to join our WhatsApp Channel and also follow us on Instagram
© IE Online Media Services Pvt Ltd
Tags:
Journalism of Courage
On Pride Month, a look at the struggles and aspirations of the LGBTQIA+ community across small towns in India
Very early in life, Shashank knew he was different from the other boys in the remote Baijnath village in Himachal Pradesh. Not only did the 36-year-old refer to himself with she/her pronouns, but the favourite pastime of the otherwise lonely teenager happened to be dancing with his mother’s dupatta. However, that was a threat to his father’s masculinity and, somehow, most days ended with violence.
An idyllic hill station, a double murder and a retired cop — Stephen Alter’s Death in Shambles is noir most sordid
In Stephen Alter’s mystery novel Death in Shambles, the protagonist Lionel Carmichael, a retired police officer, goes to meet an old lady who might be a witness. Having told Carmichael what she knows, Gladys Ahluwalia says, “But of course, I’ve read all of my Agatha Christies and know how clues like this can help solve a case. You probably think her books are nonsense, but I’ve always loved a good whodunit and I prefer Miss Marple to that prig, Poirot.”
How small town India fails its queer citizens
R*, 45, lawyer, Shimla, Himachal Pradesh
I am married and have a teenage daughter. If you ask me why I am on Grindr, I wouldn’t have a definite answer. But desire is a strange thing. It shapes certain aspects of your life. Shimla is a small town; it doesn’t have the largesse of a city. Though I was always attracted to men, I always knew I wouldn’t be able to make life decisions on that part of my life. My family, people around me would not accept this part of my life. Little has changed now. So, I lived the life expected from me. I have no regrets. I love my wife and daughter. I am loyal to them. I have just learnt to segregate my life. As a legal professional, if you ask my opinion about the marriage equality debate, I have only one thing to say, once there is a legal sanction on something, society learns to accept it. Maybe, if same sex marriages are legalised, people would learn to respect such unions more. As a lawyer, I see enough marriages break apart in the courtroom to realise one crucial fact, love is the strongest cement. Though I am lucky to have found love in my marriage, I know there are many fractured marriages that probably didn’t need to exist, if same sex unions were accepted in India.
A commemorative volume documents the stellar work done by the Salaam Baalak Trust in rehabilitating street children
My Fancies are Fireflies, Specks of Living Light Twinkling in the Dark ‘My Fancies are Fireflies, Specks of Living Light Twinkling in the Dark’ is truly a heart-warming book of the Salaam Baalak Trust’s 35 years of work rescuing street children and runaway kids and rebuilding lives. Set up in 1988, following the release of Mira Nair’s award-winning film Salaam Bombay!, the work began with just three staff and 25 children on the balcony of the Ground Reserve Police at the New Delhi Railway Station. Today it supports 9000 children annually in Delhi and the National Capital Region through 17 centres and 270 staff.
‘Politics of Hate’ is a collection of essays that traces the rise and rise of communalism across four countries in the subcontinent
Last month, a film called The Kerala Story hit the big screens in India. Reviewers called it out for its fake claims on Islamist radicalisation in Kerala and for its attempt to stoke communal fires by othering Muslims. At an event organised by the RSS recently, a minister declared it was hard to find a “tolerant Muslim”, and even those who appear as such are putting on an act to become a governor or a vice-president.
Why the heart wants what it wants
As June comes and people brandish the rainbow flag, what comes to mind is that the journey of being gay, of accepting one’s homosexuality/queerness, is not an easy one. It comes with heartbreak, marginalisation, despair, bigotry, and all kinds of otherness that is destructive and, sometimes, self-destructive. In my own journey of acceptance, at the very beginning, I hated myself. I was different. I loved in a manner that I believed was an aberration.
Rajeev Bhargava’s Between Hope and Despair encourages readers to reflect on public and private morality
Rajeev Bhargava — a distinguished academic/political philosopher— is right in saying that “teachers often develop a pedagogic mode of communicating ideas even outside the classroom”.
Indeed, as I read this book, I realise that this great teacher’s essays or ethical reflections on contemporary India flow like a rhythmic river. As his prose is refreshingly free from the burden of academic narcissism, it invites every concerned citizen. You need not be a researcher or a professor — you can walk with him, and reflect on Constitutional ethic or other aspects of public and private morality. After all, as Bhargava reminds us, “a nation exists only as long as there is a conversation among its members about what it was, is, will and should be.”
