Mallika Writes: Just Speaking
For the few years that I didn’t write a column, many people wrote to me asking why not. So here it is, appearing in DNA, Ahmedabad every Sunday. For me Just Speaking is not only just speaking, but speaking justly.
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Dying to Give Birth
In this cynical age, with photographs and figures of horrors committed by us on ourselves, by nature on us, accidents and war, what figure of deaths would jolt us out of boredom? Fifty thousand? Hundred thousand? Five hundred thousand – that is half a million? And what about figures of those maimed or injured for life?
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June 6, 2010
One of the questions that plagues me from time to time is the one about happiness and prosperity, wealth and peace of mind, richness and being comfortable and ok in one’s skin.
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May 30, 2010
The West coast of Canada is breathtaking. I am on Vancouver island, home to many indigenous communities and their art and culture, to ancient forests and groves, to lakes, mountains and the Pacific ocean..
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Here it is again
Where would you say a green outlook on life crosses over with rage? My answer would have been, “It doesn’t” for one is all about held back aggression and the other about being in touch with and in harmony with nature. But the great city of New York is turning that assumption on its head.
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Finding New Solutions That Work
Nisha was three when her grandfather first felt her up. She didn’t know this then. He came to bathe her. Her mother had several other children to look after her and was happily surprised at his offer to help bathe and dress her. Nisha came to think it odd and feel strange only when she was ten or eleven. She overheard another friend talk of how an uncle had sat her down on his lap and she had felt something growing under her and how she threw up. Then Nisha began to think of what used to happen every few days.
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25th April
How distant is your Civics class from you today? And in any case, when you were in school, did the Constitution make much sense, especially in the lousy way your teacher probably handled it? And of course, if you are the normal educated Indian you have had neither the time nor the inclination to read it since.
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The Other Masters
Showcasing India to the Orientalists
It is exactly twenty five years since the first ever India Festival was launched in Paris, with great excitement and high profile guests including President Mitterand and the enthusiastic and voluble Minister of Culture Jack Lang. Peter Brook’s Mahabharata was the Piece de Resistance and went on to make theater history. As part of the production, I watched with amusement as Indian officials, who had nothing to do with the play or the funding of it, appropriated it as part of the Festival
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Linking the Dots
any years ago I was in an anti-smoking, anti-tobacco rally with the then State Minister for Health and the lovely Dr.Pankaj Shah, head of the Oncology Department of the Cancer Hospital. They were speaking of the cost to the State per person suffering from cancer, and how, with the State spending RS 1 lakh per person, and as many cases of cancer as there were in Gujarat, this came to a staggering figure.
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My dear Mr. Modi
Last Monday you called me the Taliban. No, not by name, but by suggesting that anyone who questioned your decision to make Mr Bachchan Gujarat’s brand ambassador is the Taliban.. I am the first, and in this State the only one, to have publicly questioned this move. Bingo. I become your Taliban agent no.1.
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Narmade Sarvade
Gujarat rightly prides itself in its business acumen and entrepreneurial spirit. So what would a Gujarati businessperson or entrepreneur say to a business model where close to 53% of all monies spent over the last five years have gone as interest to bond holders? To 37% of the total project cost going towards debt servicing? What would the same person with business acumen do to his/her contractor if the quality of building was so poor that the building couldn’t function for the purpose for which it was constructed and, in fact, the purpose of the project had to be put on hold? And what would s/he do if s/he found that the manager was diverting products meant for the public good to a few wealthy buddies?
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What Ails Us?
Early in the last century an intrepid group of doctors from the ‘developed’ world decided to go and understand the food, living and illnesses of the less developed countries. They set off in different directions; some to far flung villages in Africa, some to rural India and Asia, others to exotic Papua New Guinea.
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Our Real Ambassadors
The famous Gujarati poet Narmad in a poem asks “ Who is the real Gujarati? The one who is a Brahmin? The one who prays at Somnath? The one who is a Vania?” And he goes on with the questions only to end saying, “The one in whose heart rests Gujarat, that is a Gujarati”.
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Greetings from a Gujarati.
You are indeed a fine actor. You are an intelligent man and a shrewd businessman. But should I believe in your endorsements?
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The Davos Report
I have just spent an exhilarating two hours as one of 8 discussion leaders in a session titled The Girl Effect: Taking It Forward to chart out the barriers and solutions to issues facing girls children across the developing world.
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Hooliganism as Piousness
This was not the first time we had been in this part of Chota Udepur. In fact, over the years, sometimes working with the Bhasha Institute in Tejgarh and sometimes on our own, Darpana for Development, Darpana’s development communications wing, had worked extensively in the tribal villages.
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The Sex Worker Debate
Last night I was in a televised debate about the recent Supreme Court recommendation to the government about legalizing the sex trade.
Contrary to most people’s understanding the sex trade is not banned in India.
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Epic Questions
Have you ever wondered why the Ramayana became a religious text and the Mahabharata remained an epic? Why Sita became Sitama and Rama became Sri Rama, and Arjuna or Yudhishthira or Draupadi didn’t become gods or goddesses?
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Encouraging the Violent Turn
Babri Masjid and the horrors that followed are much in the minds of people – the BJP is up in arms about the Lieberhans Commission – not about the fact that it indicts all the top brass, Mr Vajpayee included, but that someone leaked it to the press. But the anniversary also comes up on the 6th, and for many of us that act and that day started a chapter in history that we still can not live down.
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City of Gold
In 1971 it was a dry and dusty bowl of sand and sand dunes people by the Bedouins, travellers and wonderers of the deserts. With the vision of a Sheikh it became the Mecca of commercialism, of buying power, of opulence and of dreams. People came from around the poor countries of the world to toil and build their own dreams. The rich made it their playground, the ultimate in lotus eating.
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Self Gagged
When the young Afghan threw the shoe at then President Bush, the world erupted in mirth and for weeks afterwards cartoons lampooning him filled the pages of newspapers, magazines and the internet. Satirists on US TV and stand up comics made hay..
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Towards a Knowledge Society
Ever since 2007, when I toured India’s schools and colleges performing UNSUNI, a performance to sensitize youth towards the real India and to start a volunteer movement, I have been sensing a change in the air. And it is not only in India.
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Who Am I?
As a young woman, reading the Upanishads, I used to be fascinated by the dilemma in determining who the “I” is in our understanding of “Who Am I”.
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Asotoma Sat Gamaya
How often we rattle off these lines and how facilely. And how we follow them only in the breach.
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Mirage Housing
The Indian Constitution, through an interpretation of Article 21, gives us each the right to life – shelter, food, water, education, a means of livelihood. In a landmark judgement in 1997 in the Nawabkhan case (originally filed twenty one years earlier) the Supreme Court ruled that notice has to be given before slums are evicted, and alternate accommodation has to be provided.
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A Wise Decision?
was asked a question today that I know must be in the hearts of many. Looking back at the election, do I not regret accepting the Congress party’s offer that I fight the election in Gandhinagar under their banner? “What is it that you really want to do? Go to the Lok Sabha? Be in power? Make a point?” I am asked.
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What Price Atrocities?
Friday morning’s papers brought the news of yet another village boycotting its’
Dalits near Viramgam. I decided to see for myself what the story was.
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Patan Verdict and More
With the Supreme Court calling the Tamil Nadu lawyers a bunch of hooligans, Judges all over the country facing charges of corruption or political manipulating, it is wonderful to have a court, especially one in Gujarat, rule for truth and not for political pressure or other inducements.
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Hooligans One and All
Over the years, as many systems in this country have failed her people, including politicians and babus, the police and other intelligence agencies, the one gleaming hope has been our higher courts.
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How Indian is Indian Culture?
Davos is somewhat like a white man’s club with a lot of brown men pretending to be white. Even the brown wives are dressed in the de rigeur black trousers and shirts, sweaters or whatever.
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Gendered Davos
Davos is somewhat like a white man’s club with a lot of brown men pretending to be white. Even the brown wives are dressed in the de rigeur black trousers and shirts, sweaters or whatever.
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WEF
Imagine being stuck in a traffic jam made up of five cars for a good fifteen minutes. Coming from India the thought itself seems absurd, right? Well in Davos it has been happening regularly.
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Aktors' Woes
Next month Natarani and Aktors Theater, a group of youngsters, mostly graduates or students of Gujarat College’s drama programme, will present a festival of plays by young artists from the State, an attempt at encouraging serious theatre where it is abysmally absent – in the recently concluded National Drama Festival of the National School of Drama there were 130 entries for Bengali drama, none for Gujarati.
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Gramswaraj 2009
This is a feel very good story. It is a modern story. And it is a story of the victory of values, ethics and humane, inclusive growth.
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Vibrant Hunger
Its final. There are two Gujarats just as there are two India’s. Except, for the two Indias, there are two names – India and Bharat. And all of us know which is which. One is the one that got caught at the Taj and the Oberoi ( the author included); the other got mowed down at Victoria Station (oops, Chatrapati Shivaji Terminal I mean, and that belongs to another India all together – but that story on another day!) So what shall we call the two Gujarats? Gujarat and Andhirat? Gujarat and Bhukhirat.
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On Paper Only
I have been travelling in the little Rann of Kutchch this weekend. Wild asses. Flamingos. A beautiful hotel. No winter chills. And some curious discoveries..
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The Great Escape
The second of the three finals of the ICL at Sardar Patel Stadium was being played. Two of my friends had complimentary VIP passes and went off to see the match with great enthusiasm. The passes were marked Gate 2. As they made their way to the gate, they happened to meet the friend who had given them the passes. He sent an escort to help them get an entry..
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Electing the President of the World
The tension is palpable, in New York and in Washington DC. In the latter, many of our friends can’t come to my weekend event because they are going to be going from house to house in Virginia, a swing state, canvassing for Obama. Last Sunday two white supremacist guys have been picked up with guns and an idea of shooting Obama and other ‘black’ kids..
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