The Media’s “little” mess up.

I played obsessively with Barbie when I was a child.  However growing up took me away from the dollhouses and I encountered Barbie yesterday again, nearly ten years since I last played. However, our reunion was anything but pleasant as I read about the new Barbie in fishnet stockings. Disbelieving, I decided to check it [...]

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The Pin-up Girl

My mother picks The WEEK (Sept 7th, 2008) from the magazine rack at home and settles down on the couch. I peer over her shoulder at the face of ‘The New Raunch- Culture’ -a woman in black striking a ‘sexy’ pose. The title reads “Who is afraid of Sex?” and a small tag below says [...]

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‘TO MARRY OR NOT TO MARRY?’ THAT IS THE QUESTION!

This article was written by Aparnaa V. for Sa. It is published under the name of Shweta Krishnan as the author is currently not a member of Sa. Life is like a stream of music formed by the amalgamated strains of experiences that reaches a simultaneous crescendo and culmination in death. We are not disjointed [...]

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The Cage – part four

 In part three She went back to Narayani for a while. She was sleeping. So she went back to the kitchen. It reminded her of him. Why had he been staring at her like that? What had he asked her? Why did he want to know who she was? And why was she feeling so [...]

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The gendered face of disaster

           “Kosi’s distressed daughters” proclaimed a headline in the New Indian Express on the 17th of September. I was curious. The article that followed was brilliantly written and spoke about a little-known aspect of natural disasters: that though nature is not sexist, her disasters usually leave women more vulnerable than men. [...]

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The Cage – part three

In part two She did not want to go back to her room. It had been her prison, the last time she had seen a boy. And that too, because she had stood watching him as he had carried the large vessel of milk to the kitchen. She had hardly thought that he would want [...]

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What Bhairavi unknowingly did

It was an eventful night. Bhairavi became a bride. Along with her, her weight in gold crossed the threshold of her in-laws’ home. Everyone smiled. She was a chubby girl. A few houses away, Kalpana, locked in her room without food could hear the disharmonious orchestra. A sour reminder of how little she had brought [...]

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Labours of Love

One of my professors introduced my class to the idea of unpaid work with a story. Imagine a young man, she said, who works all day in a high-profile city job. His parents live in a different town and he lives by himself in his apartment. He can’t cope with all the household chores and [...]

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The Fairer Sex

The heavily made up former Miss World plays “girl-next-door” and makes Bambi just-dumped eyes at her boyfriend who sails past her nonchalantly on the arm of a fair-skinned woman. The camera pans to her now-empty world. Empty? Not if Ponds White Beauty can help it. Two weeks of skin-lightening later, Lover Boy is back. The [...]

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The Cage – part two.

In part one Did you see the paintings in the corridor on your way here?’ she asked. The old Thamburati sat again on that armchair, fanning herself. He noticed she filled it quite completely. Her head looked small on her obese body. Her hair was thin and white. It was pulled back into a knot [...]

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