Why I wear a Hijab
The last encounter in this search for hijabis was the stuff of journalistic cliché. The meeting with naqaab-clad Tabassum in a seedy Old Delhi teashop where we are the only women could be the opening chapter of a book called Lipstick Hijabi or some such easy juxtaposition. Tabassum is shopping for Eid gifts in the...
Bootstrap Astronauts
ANATOLE BROYARD, the New York Times’ legendary literary critic denied his black heritage almost to his deathbed. His is one of the most discussed and perhaps most successful efforts at ‘passing’. It inspired books, essays, even perhaps the germ of Philip Roth’s plot for The Human Stain. Broyard hinted at the pain of his double...
Civil but not Disobedient
A FEW MONTHS AGO, the Bengaluru Police drafted a set of regulations for holding public assemblies in the city. If the draft is pushed through the cabinet and gazetted, then you can conduct public assemblies of any sort (political or religious or miscellaneous) in Bengaluru only after applying for a license — seven working days...
Tender Glossy Care
A few weeks ago I had written a piece about the homogenisation of the Indian appearances in mainstream media. At the point I had written it I was not expecting to have a personal encounter with the cookie cutter machine. Around the time of the Pink Chaddi Campaign my friends and I gave a lot...
Spot The Indian!
IN DELHI, Anu Thomas (name changed), a mother of three children, was horrified when her five-year-old daughter, Meenal, came home from school one day and asked her, “When I grow up, will I have to be a maid?” Meenal’s largely upmarket north Indian classmates had told her that day that someone who was her colour...
On the road
I have always thanked the gods for the existence of cities and bright lights. A few days wandering around UP and Uttarakhand have made me particularly grateful for the wonderful highways to Punjab and Haryana, full of loo-stops and Vaishnav dhabas and over-fed children. At first when K, my photographer friend, and I got to...
The Great Diss
Every week while scrambling for material for my half-hearted gossip column, I wonder whether this would be the week that no celebrity has made an ass of himself/herself. Luckily for me, every week someone steps up. The pity is that column allows me to document my wide-eyed shock at the daft things people say, and...
Home Furnished
SIX-YEAR-OLD AVANIKA has no typical day. She has a fondness for cooking and cleaning house, a fondness that her parents encourage. Avanika’s grandmother died recently but while she was around Avanika had her share in caretaking. She reads, draws, hangs out with the adults and children who frequent her home and the NGO that her...
Fellowship of the ring
So for a couple of weeks my colleague Uzma Mohsin and I have been trailing after women boxers. We started in Kolkata and ended in Guwahati where 35 women were in the national camp before the Asian Women’s Championship. Uzma’s photos are quite extraordinary for which you really should get last week’s Tehelka but my...
Breaking the dress code
FASHION MAGAZINE Vogue India’s August issue had appeared and disappeared on the stands. It was not until the September issue was out and about that a wave of high-pitched outrage emerged from the Western world. Everyone from the New York Times to the Sydney Morning Herald has now condemned Vogue’s fashion spread for being insensitive...
