“It is our fault.” I have simply lost count of people telling this to me, in the context of the second wave of the Covid 19 pandemic ravaging the country. “We let our guards down.” If you have also been doing that, let me break the news to you: You have been gaslit. You have…
Read more Ignorance is bliss, not positivity. Be ‘negative’, ask questions.
The only person who was happy when my Italy trip got cancelled was the French banker whose memoir I was ghostwriting. He was in a hurry to see his book published. And I was looking forward to a two-week break in Italy. The flight tickets were done and I was already in Calcutta to apply…
Originally posted on Anuradha Sharma:
A tin can tied to a dog’s tail. An overwhelmed Rabindranath Tagore thus described the euphoria surrounding his Nobel Prize in Literature 103 years ago. “The perfect whirlwind of public excitement it has given rise to is frightful,” he wrote in a letter to close friend William Rothenstein, the English…
She hurtles down the empty road clutching the lifeless body of her three-year-old son, howling. Her husband walks after her, their other child in his arms. A man, an onlooker, with a cell phone is filming them while walking with them. At some point she sits on the road, rending the air with her wails,…
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s admirers are always quick to point out his humble origins to justify their unquestioning love for him. “He has made it in spite of being a chaiwala in the past. He made it on his own merit (as opposed to you-know-who, the dynast),” is something I keep hearing. Modi’s PR machinery…
If you ask me, the single biggest contributor to the mess that India is in now is our media. Any problem–be it economy or the endangering of civil rights–would not have come to this pass if media had done its job. Just its job of reporting facts–nothing more, nothing less. But, Indian media–most of it–works…
Network for Women in Media in India is one of the best things to happen to me, not exaggerating. Coming in contact with other women journalists from different parts of India, and getting to know of their experiences and exchanging thoughts with them, has helped me put things in perspective, understand the workings of patriarchy…
Recently, I made my debut at the Index on Censorship magazine. Founded in 1972 to “tell the stories of dissidents behind the Iron Curtain”, the magazine has seen the bylines of some of the greatest names in literature such as Nadine Gordimer, Mario Vargas Llosa, Samuel Beckett, Kurt Vonnegut and our very own Amartya Sen. Needless…
I have always been totally in awe, and even jealous, of people who manage to stay level-headed at all times, never uttering an out-of-place remark; those who can remain calm and composed in spite of all the excitement or provocation. Today, it was Swapna Burman who totally swept me off my feet. The 21-year-old Indian…
Last month, I visited Margaret’s Hope tea estate. It was in this tea garden, home to some of the world’s finest teas, that workers created history of sorts when six of them got killed in police firing on June 25, 1955. They were part of a protest demonstration, fighting for their labour rights. The incident…
Anuradha Sharma 