A humming word

  They stifle us with sections of caste.  They tighten the noose with a glorious past.  Then they make a dish of your choice.  And slowly hush your voice.  They give us things we don't need.  When we get accustomed they remind us of our greed.  We are stifled by their demands.  We are haunted by their commands.  Loosen the tie.  Let us fly.  We will come back.  With wings in our bagpack.

An early morning discussion with my family and friends about how life was took me back to the memory lane when our weekends was about events and adding value to life by doing some meaningful work or at least, we thought we did . We did not know of terms like "community building" "branding" and "coaching" but we were doing that, anyway.  One idea at a time.  In this blogpost, I am going to write about Ignite Hyderabad . We had done five volumes of it in Hyderabad. At NIFT, Madhapur, ISB Hyderabad, State Art Gallery (two volumes), and the then-newly born Lamakaan, Road no 1, Banjara Hills.  What is Ignite Hyderabad though? It was night of presentations where the heroes were people amidst you and me: yes, ordinary citizens who did extraordinary work.  Ignite started in Seattle and Ravi, my classmate from Bhartiya Vidya Bhavans, formed a team to pursue a chapter in Hyderabad in 2010 . The organising team was a bunch of nine, including me; each, an emerging sp...

Bachieanna was the model child for all of us in the family: good at studies, intelligent, kind, fun to be around and most importantly, humble with a strong moral compass. As we grew up, I still remember getting irked when he was compared to the actor Abbas of Prema Desam. Bachieanna even knew the lyrics of the famed song: Mustafa Mustafa. Argh!  My aunts and mother would circle around him in my Ammamma's home and ask him to sing and applaud, leaving the rest of us red-faced. Bachieanna enjoyed this adulation as much as he enjoyed fighting over the last bite when Ammamma fed us sambar rice and beans. Normally, none of us would eat it but when Ammamma fed it, it became sumptuous. However, I remained the undisputed champion of the last bite!  Growing up, often, we gyrated to Hrithik's dance numbers. Bachieanna watched Kaho Na Pyar Hai seventeen times. Back then, it was a huge rage to watch it more than thrice. We extended our madness for dance to even participating in Boogie Woog...

An excolleague had once neatly explained to me, how we are taking feminism in the wrong sense and how it began for a focus on equality and basic rights and now has its own sects, which is fine. But with the remake of Pink as Vakeel Saab, there is choice to focus on entitled feminism. Why entitled? Take the premise. Three women who go out late at night.... The entire sentence reeks with entitlement. Many women are not even allowed to step out. There itself lies in the entitlement.  Pink is a beautiful movie. It was also great for the careers of the women and the man involved.  But what about movies like Parched which ask for basic rights to still be looked at? The film neatly portrays the camaraderie of three battered women who are victims of Khap Panchayat in Rajasthan. In one scene a young bride, abused by the father-in-law, is asked to return only because that is the law for a married women. There are several such scenes like these which question the purpose and existence of...