Hi, this is Shubham Gupta, SBI Youth For India 2017–18 fellow working with Aga Khan Rural Support Programme (India), a non-government development organisation, in Dharampuri block, Dhar district, Madhya Pradesh, India.

The place I’m working at is largely inhabited by the largest tribal group of India, i.e. Bhil community. The village of Kachhwanya has a population of approx. 2600, and is about 18 kilometres from the nearest town, Dhamnod.

After many field visits, I have realised that one of the major problems in our villages is the poor state of local governance. The Panchayati Raj members and the village community barely know about their roles and responsibilities and the powers that the Gram Sabha has been given in 73rd amendment of the Constitution.

Another issue I observed here is the low-level of digital literacy among the youth. Even, if someone wants to learn computers, they have to make the daily commute to Dhamnod to attend any computer training class which is definitely not a workable solution.

Once, during a conversation with the community, I got to know that even basic ICT services like photocopying, application form filling, etc. are not easily accessible. The nearest photocopy shop is at about 8 kilometres on the highway. Thanks to unpaved roads and lack of public transport facilities, along with the ₹30–40 commute charges, it would cost an entire day’s wage to a daily wage labourer to get their documents photocopied.

I felt that it was important to have ICT infrastructure in the village itself. If provided with a computer and an Internet connection, information on any government scheme/services or about any competitive exam could be easily accessed. So, based on my observations and the need of the community, I decided to take the challenge head-on and contributed my bit to solve these long existing issues of the village.

Now, under Rajiv Gandhi Panchayat Sashaktikaran Abhiyan 2013, the Government of India has provided each Panchayat building with a computer system complete with printer and scanner. But, there is a huge gap between the Government of India’s initiative to go digital and the villagers’ ability to go digital. That gap isn’t the infrastructure it’s the knowledge. The tools to go digital have been provided by the Government of India, but the knowledge to use them has not been provided. Hardly anyone knows how to use a computer. So what happens when people don’t know how to use something? It means nothing to them. It could be there or not there — it’s all the same. No one bothers to ask about it or its well-being or its resting place!

If you observe, both the issues I have taken up compliment each other. Working on one would automatically help solve another. To set up a working e-panchayat, first I had to empower and motivate the panchayat members and the community to unanimously raise the issue in Gram Sabha of January 26 and pass the resolution to repair the e-panchayat infrastructure.

The beginning of the project has had some minuscule highs but a lot of lows for sure. I started by visiting all the 17 villages that AKRSP(I) is working in Dharampuri block, one by one. After missing the project finalisation deadline by almost 2 months, I finally succeeded in identifying the problem, thankfully, which could be resolved to an extent, in the limited 9 months time I was left with.

Based on my conversations with the panchayat members, the community and their response towards my suggestion, I decided to begin my intervention in the Kachhwanya Panchayat without any further delay.

Fast forward to January 26 2018, Gram Sabha was held and there was an unexpectedly high attendance of more than 120 people, whereas the previously held Gram Sabha of October 2, 2017 had seen the attendance of only around 20 people in all.

Although beyond my expectations, the response and participation from the community was the result of the regular meetings with them and moreover their willingness to bring a positive change.

So, the resolution passed and I started working on setting up a fully functional e-panchayat with the help of the community. It took around 2 months from convincing the panchayat and motivating the community, to getting everything repaired from panchayat electricity connection to computer and printer.

Meanwhile, during this process, I also started giving basic computer literacy classes to 9th and 10th standard students in the village high school. I wanted to make sure that at least this batch develops some interest in computers. Those classes also helped me a lot in building a good rapport with the tribal community.

I feel grateful for getting the chance to give at least basic computer knowledge to more than 100 students of standard 9th and 10th combined from December 2017 to February 2018 and introducing them to the laptop, projector, and mouse which they had seen and operated for the first time then.

Coming to the present, after combined efforts, everything in e-panchayat is in its place. Today, Kachhwanya is the only panchayat among all other surrounding panchayats having a fully functional e-panchayat. People have started coming to learn how to use a computer, inform themselves about various government schemes, taking photocopies of their documents, etc.

Talking about the impact and the outcome of my intervention, the entire repair cost of ₹4400 was borne by the panchayat. The community participation in the Gram Sabha meetings has increased to a great extent and they start questioning the panchayat members about the ongoing developmental works and raising their voices for their needs, more openly. Till date, more than 300 people have benefited from the e-panchayat. People from other villages have also started coming to avail the services provided at half the rate in comparison to the market. The village youth and the kids have started coming to learn computer and to play games. More than ₹10,000 of the community has been saved, indirectly. The panchayat has earned the profit of around ₹1800, a part of which is given to the locally trained youth as an honorarium and the rest is kept for the maintenance of the e-panchayat.

Now, as my fellowship period is going to end soon, a group of local youth have been identified and are being trained by me, who, once I leave, will be able to handle minor technical issues, and can help in the smooth operation of e-panchayat.

“I would like to be remembered, if I am remembered at all, as being a catalyst for change in the world, change for good.”

The post The Story Of How A Tribal Village In MP Got Its First Computer Training Centre appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

हम एक बार सुन लेते हैं कि कोई किसी कक्षा में फेल हो गया तो बस उसकी ज़िन्दगी खत्म, अब वो कुछ हासिल कर ही नहीं पाएगा। इस घिसी पिटी सोच को पूर्ण विराम दिया रायपुर की अंजनी गांगुली ने। रायपुर के रेडियो मिर्ची की जानी-मानी अंजनी की आवाज़ घर-घर में गूंजती है। वे पढ़ाई में ज़्यादा अच्छी नहीं थी और बाहरवीं में एक नहीं तीन बार फेल हुईं। रिश्तेदारों के, दोस्तों के सबके ताने सुनें, लेकिन अपना हौसला कभी नहीं खोया। इंटरव्यूज़ में कई बार रिजेक्ट होने के बाद भी उन्हें हमेशा भरोसा था की वे अपना सपना ज़रूर पूरा करेंगी। खूब कोशिश और मेहनत के बाद आज वो एक RJ के तौर पर प्रसिद्द हैं।

इनकी पूरी कहानी जानने के लिए देखें यह जोश Talk

अपनी टॉक के दौरान अंजनी ने Interview से जुड़ी कुछ खास टिप्स भी दिए।

“Interview” शब्द से डरना बंद करें –

इंटरव्यू निकालना भी एक कला है। एक ऐसी कला जहां आप खुद को दूसरों के समक्ष पेश करते हैं और बताते हैं कि क्या है आपकी खासियत और आपको क्यों चुना जाना चाहिए। यदि एक कलाकार डरा हुआ होगा तो वो खुद को कैसे सर्वश्रेष्ठ दिखा पाएगा। इसीलिए सबसे महत्त्वपूर्ण है कि आप अपने अंदर का डर, इंटरव्यू के प्रति बिल्कुल ही खत्म कर दें।

Interview Room के किंग आप ही होते हैं –

आत्मविश्वास नहीं है, पता नहीं सवाल कैसे होंगे और पता नहीं क्या-क्या चलता है दिमाग में इंटरव्यू रूम में जाने से पहले। लेकिन ये जो एक हमारा डर है कि पता नहीं क्या पूछ लिया जाएगा तो इस बात की फिक्र करना बंद करें। आपसे कोई फिज़िक्स के सवाल नहीं पूछे जाएंगे बल्कि आपसे आपके बारे में ही पूछा जाएगा और एक दो आपकी फील्ड से जुड़े हुए सवाल। तो फिर क्यों ना हम चेहरे पर एक मुस्कराहट के साथ आत्मविश्वास के साथ-सवालों का उत्तर दें और एक वास्तविक व्यक्ति बनकर रहें। कोई दिखावा ना करें तो सफलता अवश्य ही प्राप्त होगी। यदि आप किसी सवाल का जवाब नहीं भी दे पाते हैं तो बिना किसी झिझक के मना करें।

इन बातों को हमेशा ध्यान रखें –

• अपना संक्षिप्त विवरण यानि Resume खुद ही टाइप करें ताकि आप उसमें लिखी प्रत्येक बात से बखूबी अवगत हों।
• अपनी कम्युनिकेशन स्किल्स दिन पर दिन सुधारें और एक आईने के सामने रोज़ बोलने का अभ्यास करें।
• अपने थ्योरेटिकल ज्ञान पर ध्यान दें और सामाजिक विज्ञान में भी रूचि रखें।
• रिजेक्शन और फेलियर से तो डरे ही नहीं क्योंकि उन्हीं की वजह से हम अपनी गलतियों में सुधार ला पाते हैं और आगे के लिए और अच्छे से तैयार रहते हैं।

The post अंजनी, बारहवीं में 3 बार हुई थीं फेल, आज हैं रेडियो मिर्ची की प्रसिद्ध RJ appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

My full name is Ayesha Aleem. Ayesha, as I’ve been told and I’ve learnt through the years, is a popular, “pretty girl” name. Khaled and Outlandish have sung about it. Sonam Kapoor has played a rich fashionable character of this name in a Bollywood movie of the same name, for an Indian version of Hollywood’s Clueless, both inspired by Jane Austen’s Emma. So it’s “cool” by mainstream pop-culture standards. I like the original Arabic meaning as well, which is “life”. I also like that it was the name of the Prophet Muhammed’s favourite wife.

But my last name was a little more problematic. While I knew Ayeshas who were Muslim, Christian, Hindu and Sikh, my last name, Aleem, was a dead giveaway. Once someone knew my last name, I could not be seen as anything else other than who I was – a Muslim. With this came all the stereotypes associated with Muslims. Not always, but often enough. And however “woke” someone may have been, it was hard to resist the “Aleem-haleem” jokes.

It didn’t help that my father, whose name this is, didn’t like his own name either. My sister and I remember how he wanted to change his name while we were growing up. When our father didn’t like his name enough to keep it, why did we have to suffer its burden? All three of us even discussed coming up with a brand new last name that we could share. And then realising that it would mean too much paperwork, and would probably never stick, just daydreamed about what the perfect last name might be. We even debated why we need a last name at all. Couldn’t we just go through life with a first, given name?

But now that I’m older, I know that what I was running from wasn’t my name, specifically. It was my Muslim identity. Attending an all-girls Catholic convent school in India, where I was usually one of maybe three or four Muslim girls, my friends were almost entirely from other faiths. This wasn’t deliberate. It just was. I didn’t wear the burkha or headscarf and neither did any of the women in my immediate family. My father didn’t have a beard. We didn’t eat biryani every day of the week. In other words, although we were a practising Muslim family, I wanted to distance myself from the tired perceptions that plagued the larger community.

That part hasn’t changed, and it doesn’t need to because pre-conceived notions never did anyone any good. Our world is rich and textured and beautiful because of its varied people who need to be seen for all that they are instead of the lazy ways in which they are widely portrayed. But there’s no need to feel ashamed of my last name either. When I was younger, I thought this problem of feeling no connection, no love, for your name, was uniquely mine until I heard this speech by an American Muslim student and thought how interesting it was that as an Indian-origin person growing up in India, my desire to “fit in” was as strong as someone at a similar time in their life growing up away from their country of origin, these experiences taking place on opposite sides of the globe.

In the past few years, my relationship with my name has made a complete turn. In fact, I love that it comes from the root word “ilm” in Arabic, which means knowledge because education changed my life. The speech by the American student is from graduation day this year at the university I attended – a life event that had seemed impossible at the time, as recently as a decade ago, because unmarried Muslim girls did not travel overseas to pursue master’s degrees in my social circles. But it was precisely in this multicultural and foreign environment of a New England campus that I grew into my own skin, much like the American student, because for the first time, I was introduced to the idea of celebrating individuality instead of trying so hard to “fit in.” This helped me see the transformative power of education, which continues to influence my choices and decisions.

As a Muslim woman today, I understand the value of context with greater clarity. My struggle at making peace with my last name came partly from a lack of context to engage with my identity, from viewing it through a narrow prism based on the trending narrative, which included painting the picture that all Muslims are conservative, rigid in their beliefs and unwilling to integrate with mainstream society – which could not be further from the truth.

Many young Muslims have trouble navigating a non-Islamic society because everything outside of religion is peddled as so evil and sinful. This is such a disservice because it is from an interaction with a world outside of Islam that informs a better understanding of the faith. Nothing can be studied, much less understood, in isolation. Bacteria hindered from multiplying will die, plants and animals are observed in their natural habitats, it’s difficult to grasp current affairs without looking at history. Similarly, closeting ourselves as Muslims from the rest of the world that doesn’t think and live like us takes us further from the life that we want to get closer to.

Parts of the world are still resisting diversity, denying plurality, insistent on creating a suitable brand of homogeneity.  But people are not homogenous. Our lives are not the same. No one is meant to live only with their kind. The beauty of humans is in their differences. It’s easy to practice whatever kind of “-ness” you choose to – vegan-ness, Muslim-ness, American-ness – when everyone around you is exactly like you. But practising what’s important to you while participating in a context that’s not entirely like yours: that’s what determines identity.

So after years of trying to wish away my last name, I’m finally embracing it fully because I’m finally comfortable with who I am. I’m still Ayesha Aleem. And I still love my first name because it’s “cool”. But I love my last name too – because it stands for ideals I believe in with all my heart, because it’s my identity, because it’s “cool” too.

The post I Never Liked My Last Name. But It Was My Muslim Identity I Was Really Running Away From appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

Originally written by one of our mentors, Falgooni Mehta, this story talks about her extraordinary journey with her mentee Priyanka (name changed in the interest of protecting the mentee’s identity) and Mentor Me India, since 2017.

It’s almost 10.30 PM. As I am preparing to sleep, I begin my daily routine of chanting a Buddhist prayer before I retire to bed. I think about my day tomorrow. It’s a working Saturday; so, I cannot go to meet my mentee like I usually do. I follow up this thought with a prayer in her name – and right then, I receive a call. It’s a video call on WhatsApp – and to my pleasant surprise, it’s from my mentee, Priyanka! My prayer seemed to have reached her instantly.

As we speak over the call, I think back on the year-and-a-half since I first met my mentee, through the dedicated folks at Mentor Me India. Mentor Me India is a Mumbai-based mentoring NGO that matches 9-14 years old children from low-income families with inspiring role-models in the form of mentors. During my first meeting with Priyanka, I remember how she beamed from ear to ear. She did not speak a word. I thought she was shy, and maybe, a bit overwhelmed (as was I) by the electric atmosphere of Mentor Me India’s orientation. The second time I met her, I had to re-introduce myself – and only then did the 11-year-old start to recall me, slowly.

It was 2016 when I first discovered the Mentor Me India organisation. I distinctly remember it because I had lost both my parents recently. I was inspired by their belief to always give back to society. It was then, during that emotional phase, that I felt the urgent need to pay it forward. I was moved by the vision of Mentor Me India – to support needful children to dream big and empower them to pursue their dreams by building strong one-to-one mentoring relationships. I had experienced first-hand the lack of mentorship of this sort, myself. I joined them as a mentor in July that year.

The journey was certainly not easy. Initially, I struggled to connect with Priyanka through dialogue, but I knew one thing for sure – I was not going to give up. I racked up my brains to innovate and kept thinking of new ways in which we could connect. With Mentor Me India’s round-the-year support in the form of group mentoring sessions and mentor meet-ups every quarter, I came up with many activities of interest to my mentee. Together we planted a tree, which Priyanka promised to look after (but soon forgot to) among other things. We watched cartoons and movies together, filled out colouring books, and gave craft a shot. All the while, Priyanka barely spoke a few words.

On another instance, I recall having gone to meet Priyanka at her home – it was a Sunday. There she was, lying down but awake, coyly listening to the conversation between her mother and me, but not at all keen to speak anything until I had left.

However, slowly, steadily, over the months, I could find a notable change in her. I found that Priyanka was getting more and more assertive. She was beginning to state clearly what she wanted to do. I think the turning point came when we watched the Bollywood movie “Dangal” during one of our meetings. As I discussed the movie later with Priyanka, I was surprised to see how strongly the two female characters in the movie had impacted her. Immediately afterwards, we went for an ice-cream – and as usual, I ordered on behalf of Priyanka too. But once again, I was surprised, and gladly so, to see that for the first time since we had met, she denied the ice-cream flavour I chose for her. Instead, she wished to have something of her own choice. This was something she would rarely do, initially.

Such small changes over time made me grow as a person. I learnt to be more patient, to not be disheartened by failure, and to never give up! So today, when she sends me messages on WhatsApp, I feel happy that I never gave in to my disappointment. I feel content that I never gave up on my mentee, thanks to Mentor Me India’s constant hand-holding and guidance.

In my second year of mentoring, I have plans for Priyanka and am determined to meet and share many things with her. I wish to enroll her in a vocational training institute, where she can become skilled and excel in what she chooses to do in life. I want her to become a confident and independent individual. I feel Mentor Me India has given me a platform and a chance to relive my childhood, through the dreams and aspirations of my mentee. It has given me an opportunity to come to terms with my own self and my own life. I can proudly assert that in the past year-and-a-half, I have evolved, along with Priyanka, like never before.

A version of this article was first published here.

To learn more about Mentor Me India, visit here.

To apply for our Summer Cohort, 2018, submit your application here.

The post The Power Of Mentoring: How A Little Girl Helped Me Overcome My Disappointment In Life appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

By Ayushi Chaudhary:

Reading has always been my hobby. As I grew up, I started penning down my thoughts – and in no time, my pen became my best friend. Soon, the pressure of getting into a good college and scoring good marks managed to get on the top of the priority list – and the friendship with my pen faded away.

In college days, when doing an internship was one big task, I got to know about Internshala. I registered on the platform and started applying for internships. My joy knew no bounds when the first virtual internship I got shortlisted for required me to write articles. The company was Dose Internet Media and I had to write articles for their website, Listaka.com. The possibility of befriending my long- lost friend ignited a spark in me. Therefore, I submitted a sample article on ‘feel-good factors’. They liked my write-up and I was hired!

During the internship, I wrote listicles on various themes like relationships, health, etc. Some of the major ones were: “6 benefits of sunlight for your health”, “10 health benefits of green tea”, “10 dishes pregnant women crave for”, etc. I also wrote descriptive articles on the tourism industry in places like the United Kingdom and Dubai. Seeing my name below the titles of those published articles was like a dream come true. And of course, it also helped me earn some pocket money!

This was just the beginning of my journey. Next, I did some volunteering work for PeeBuddy, the product that helps women stand and pee. My work mainly entailed creating awareness among people about the product through different campaigns. Soon after that, I landed a question-creation internship with Excellion Technologies Pvt. Ltd. through Internshala. The selection procedure was simple – I had to answer some basic questions regarding my educational background and future goals after which I was selected. My work mainly focused on creating questions on current affairs for various competitive exams.

I got another internship soon – and this time, it was a content writing one. After submitting a sample of my writing and a short telephonic interview, I was hired by Buddymantra. My work included writing listicles on a variety of topics – like “Top 10 inspirational women of all time”, “Top 10 hottest footballers”, “Can love be arranged?”, “Top 10 dangerous snakes”, etc.

Soon, I was in the final year and I could hardly get any time for internships. After graduation, I decided to browse through internships again. To my dismay, I got shortlisted for many but wasn’t hired. This continued for a month, and I was getting restless. However, before I could be depressed, I got shortlisted for an internship at Gradestacks Learning Pvt. Ltd. The internship required the candidates to prepare questions for different competitive exams – and so I was asked to create some questions (along with detailed solutions) as an assignment. After that, I was hired as a content writing intern.

I worked really hard as I had got a chance after months of dejection. The experts of the organisation helped me improve by providing continuous feedback, help and motivation. The internship came to an end, but everyone was really impressed by my work – and so I got the chance to convert it into a permanent affair. I faced a 3-round interview with the Vice President (Content team), the Community Manager (Banking team), and the final one with the CEO. It went well and I got the job.

Now, I work with test series on banking and SSC exams, handling the English section of both the examinations. My role is to provide quality content to the aspirants for practice, solve their queries, and guide them. It involves setting test papers, quizzes, and mock exams. The biggest challenge is travelling three hours in the metro to reach office. But the work environment in the company motivates me to wake up every day with a more determined and enthusiastic approach. I’ve been working as a content writer for about five months now, while also pursuing a long-distance MBA course.

The author completed her graduation from Lady Irwin College, Delhi. She talks about her love for writing and how she converted her passion into a career. This article was first published on Internshala.

The post I Turned My Hobby Into A Lucrative Career Through Four Internships appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

“Water bottle?” Check.
“Writing pad?” Check.
“Log sheets and pens?” Check.
“Breakfast bag?” Check.
“Pepper spray?” Double check.

I tightened my shoelaces, took a deep breath and walked into the forests on day one of the 2018 tiger census, organised by the Government of Goa. I was accompanied by two men I barely knew. I kept track of every bar of signal I lost as we went in further and further. The further we went, my mother’s floating head got bigger. “Madhu, you’ll get yourself into trouble,” she said. My thoughts had never been louder.

What went down at a tiger census had been a question mark for the longest time. Do they maintain a stakeout and manually count the tigers? How can they know they’ve not been counting the same tiger again and again? So many questions and so little access to credible information. One could tell how excited I was to finally be able to do this.

First off, let’s start with why it’s absolutely vital to conduct a tiger census. Just like any other population census, it’s important that we compile a numerical profile of the tigers in the country. This is done once in three years and apart from our obvious conservation needs, it’s also really helpful in combating poachers.

The study was broken down into three parts. The carnivore, the herbivore/omnivore, and the vegetation study. The first three days we penned down any evidence of carnivores. This meant keeping an eye out for direct sightings (if we were lucky), pugmark trails, scat (stool) samples and anything else that would give us affirmation that a carnivore was around. The most important bit was not what we found, it was how precise we were in logging all of it. Forget to record the exact location readings of where you found the sample and that’s it, you just wasted five hours in the jungle.

A tracker, a guard and a volunteer, we hustled in groups of three. I knew I had signed up for a very male-dominated assignment. I just didn’t think I’d be the only female volunteer. Apart from the occasional ‘this is how I die’ feeling and our compass showing us wrong readings, my first day was pretty great. And in the most broken Hindi ever spoken, I started a discussion with the two men on canopy covers and vegetation, all the while wishing I had paid more attention in Ms Bennett’s geography class.

Now, day two was the kind of day that made me want to do this every waking moment. Lucky for me, Paresh Porob, the range forest officer at the ‘Bhagwan Mahaveer Sanctuary’, decided to come along. It’s vital that you understand I’m not exaggerating when I say this: the man is a walking encyclopedia. At 600m above sea level, we trekked 11 km through one of the most untouched forests of Goa. We literally had to hack a path for ourselves; quite contrary to the engineers and the MBAs of the world whose degrees create paths for them.

So, we’re roughly about three hours in and we find ourselves some fairly fresh leopard scat, only a couple of hours old. If you’re a wildlife enthusiast, you know this is a pretty big deal! You’re walking the path a sub-adult, male leopard, took in the wee hours of that morning. I was ecstatic. I asked Mr Paresh question after question till my throat went dry. A conversation with him was like reading an entire book on ‘Did you know?’ facts. My jaws would drop to my knees as Mr Paresh would casually tell me about a leopard cub he rescued and raised. Lost in the imagination of the entire rescue operation, I nearly stepped on a very venomous ‘hump-nosed pit viper’. I could barely see the little snake. I took a picture, thanked it for not biting me, and off we went.

I was trying to keep up with him, taking notes of the names of the many birds we saw, tips on how to control your fear and adrenaline when you encounter a wild animal, shuffling between log sheets. All this, while also trying really hard to not trip and fall on my face. I didn’t always succeed, but that day, I understood what it felt like to have all my senses heightened. I was constantly on the lookout for distinct smells and calls. I can now differentiate between a bunch of birds and identify the scat of over seven different animal species. That experience to me is of more value than any formal education.

Day 4 of tiger census 2018 and about now I’m feeling like Reese Witherspoon from the movie ‘Wild’, finding herself while trekking along the Pacific Crest Trail. (This won’t be the most fun paragraph to read but, the one after this will tell you why it’s important.) We were halfway through the study. What was left was the line transect. In layman terms, the transect is a 2 km imaginary line drawn along a certain bearing, with five points plotted on them at 400m apart. Any direct herbivore/omnivore sightings, strictly along the bearing, were to be noted. I know I’m not an expert at spotting but I’m pretty sure I saw the same giant squirrel three days in a row. We started our vegetation study on the 2000 m marking and worked our way down, over the next two days. This was mainly done to understand the types of trees, shrubs, weeds, and grass in the area so as to arrive at the probability of the kinds of species that lived there. I lost you there, didn’t I?

Fast forward to day six and I’m thinking exactly what you’re thinking -“Where them tigers at?” Remember that boring paragraph I made you read on vegetation? Here’s why – The type of vegetation is directly related to the type of deer found and the type of deer, to that of the presence of tigers. No sambar deer, no tigers. We, at Bhagwan Mahaveer Sanctuary, weren’t lucky enough to spot any tigers but the people at Mhadei Wildlife Sanctuary hit it big! They found scat samples, pugmarks, and even captured some pictures through the camera traps. So, there it was. Evidence that Goa was so much more than her beaches.

The census or tiger ‘estimation’ as Mr P called it, was about more than this. Post work shenanigans were just as adventurous. Night safaris, river swims and not to mention, learning how to slack line! The thing about the jungle is, your guards are way down (emotionally, of course). They make way for some of the best conversations and relationships. Eight days down and I had learned all of this, two lines in Konkani, survived monster flies and had no broken bones. So, who are we if not for our adventures?

Also, if you clicked on this thinking you’d learn more about the wild and are disappointed, let’s try and balance that out. Snakes flicker their tongue to detect the outside temperature, so they would know if a warm-blooded animal was in the surrounding. The temperature around a crocodile’s eggs can determine the sex of the offspring. If the temperature goes up, they’re all females and if the temperature goes down, they’re all males. So, if you’ve worked on a census and had an experience similar to or different than mine, write to me. I’d love to know! Or if you work with animals and would like to give me a job, that would be great too!

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Images provided by author.

The post A 20-Something City Girl And Her First Tiger Census In Goa’s Forests appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

Our nation spends an ample amount of time talking about what dresses celebrities wore at the Cannes, which actor is dating whom, and how much Bunty, ‘Gupta ji ka beta’, scored in his exams. But talk about the things that really matter, and people will turn a deaf ear.

Try telling them that your daughter is being harassed for dowry, and they will tell you that dowry is a custom every father has to bear. Tell them about a girl being harassed by hooligans on the street, and they will ask you to protest your family’s ‘honour’ by ‘commanding’ your daughter to stay indoors. If you are a man, try hinting that you are being solicited by a woman, and comments like “mard bano” will be bombarded at you.

In a country where a rape victim’s face is ‘covered’ (because apparently, her name is blemished by a crime she did not commit), our voices are trapped beneath layers of mistreatment and fear. “If this story gets out, if it gains the public attention that Nirbhaya’s story did, nobody will marry me. But then again, given my dark complexion, nobody would marry me anyway. So why fear?”

Imagine a 10-year-old girl. A child with dreams, which she naively believes, will find the light of the day; a child who cries every time she watches “Titanic” – and who believes, like a million others, that her ‘knight in shining armour’ will arrive. Imagine a girl hitting puberty – the idea of her first kiss not lost in her mind – who has flown across the world in her head, and travelled through the mountains and oceans, who finds wonders in the form of the earthworms she catches.

My name is Ayushmita Samal. But I prefer to go by Ayushmita Krishna Samal – Krishna being my mother’s name. And I want you to know who exactly I am. You see, when I sat down to write this, I needed strength – a lot of it – which is now being defined by you knowing my exact identity. As to why I speak today – it’s because someone told me once, that every story counts, every account matters, for you never know, who might resonate with it.

I am the only child of my parents – and while living and growing up in a nuclear family with working parents, I learnt to race my cars and groom my dolls alone. When alone, my best friends were books like the “Panchatantra” and the “Tintin” – my favorite being the “Tell Me Why” series published by Manorama every month. When you are a 10-year-old, even ₹20 can buy you happiness. It is only 10 years later that I developed the habit of hiding cheap earrings (bought from Kamla Nagar) under the bed. Back then, however, I used to cherish those books.

Along with these books came an uncle – a man in his 50s – a trusted newspaper-wala who used to throw the newspaper at our door every morning, and rang the bell only once a month, to collect his pay. This man, old enough to be my grandfather, knocked at my door every month for three years – almost always during the afternoon, when I was alone at home – and made me believe that he loved me. By ‘love’, he meant sliding his hands down my clothes onto my breasts, reaching between my thighs and violating my body. By ‘love’, he meant kissing me on the lips, many a time – enough to cause bleeding. By ‘love’, he meant pressing his 50-year male hardness onto my body. By ‘love’, he meant 10 minutes of silent torture every month for three years. By ‘love’, he meant grabbing my tresses in his fists and making me afraid of ‘love’ – forever.

There is no glory in being a victim of child sexual abuse. These is no path to self-love and discovering that you were never wrong, but that the world was very much in the wrong. As a victim, since the past 10 years, I has been about trying to find the strength to tell my parents about what had happened under their very own roof – and I have been failing at this. These years have been about visuals from my past, which reminded me of my pain, whenever I was in the company of my on-and-off boyfriends. These years were also about shedding silent tears while watching Aamir Khan’s “Satyamev Jayte” – because I never found the courage that Cinderella did.

It is one thing to brush off your past to the farthermost corners of your brain. Accepting it when it faces you, right across, is a completely different story. It is ineffable how ten minutes can change your life; it is unimaginable how three years can grab your nerve endings, and become a rotting, stagnant pool of dearth in your brain; it is sad how an entire life can be shaped by one single person.

So, if you ask me why it is important to talk about sexuality, abuse and sex – in a world which is rampant with issues like terrorism and poverty – I will tell you. It is because a 10-year-old doesn’t know what wrong they might be going through. It is because the child, after being molested, will come back to their room, kneel down in front of the idols of the Gods and Goddesses that so gleefully adorn Indian households, and beg for it to stop. It is also because, as children, we are taught about the customs of religion, but never about the demons who live around us – and the swords we have to pick, in order to fight them. My sword today is my story, as is my the urge to share it – because we need to talk more, than we need to ‘protect our dignity’.

I never found the faith to tell my parents about it. I never found the guts to look into their eyes and tell them that I was molested as a child. I feel that they do not need to know, for I don’t blame them and I never will. But I also think that all mothers, including mine, need to know that the men groping their daughters and staring at their breasts wouldn’t haunt them half as much as being told to ignore them. Each time we ignore them, each time we turn away from them rather than retaliating, we make way for another girl to be harassed in a similar way. Every time we come across a case of child sexual abuse where the felon is a family member, rather than just cutting off all ties with them, it is important to report the crime and make sure they are punished. This is a necessity, not just for the one victim, but for the dozen others who might fall prey to the criminal.

Strength is subjective. For some people it might come from being able to lead a normal life after a traumatising experience. For some, it may be about building a persistent wall around them, preventing people from coming into their lives. For me, my strength lies in ignoring the people who will stare and point at me after reading this. It lies in the hope that some parent, somewhere, might have read it, and understood the importance of talking to their child about physical boundaries. Maybe a boy, who has been similarly molested, will forgive himself, because the people committed mistakes, not him.

So when and if you read this, share it with three people – and I hope that at least one of them will have a conversation with their children, because we need more Amazons to fight the wars, when there are no knights.

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The post My Strength Lies In Speaking Up About My Experiences Of Child Sexual Abuse appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

पिछले दिनों आमिर खान और उनकी बेटी की एक तस्वीर पर चले बवाल से तो आप वाकिफ होंगे ही। कितनी प्यारी है वो तस्वीर। एक-बाप बेटी के बीच के अटूट प्रेम को दिखाती हुई।

लेकिन, इस समाज में नफरत फैलाने और प्यार को अपना दुश्मन मानने वालों ने इस तस्वीर पर विरोध जताना शुरू कर दिया। ज़ाहिर सी बात है उन्हें प्रेम शब्द से ही डर लगता है, इसलिए कभी प्रेमी जोड़ों के बीच के प्रेम को वो गलत ठहराते हैं तो कभी बाप-बेटी के रिश्तों को।

अब आपको लगेगा कि मैं इतने दिनों बाद इस बात को क्यों उठा रही हूं। दरअसल, ये नफरत फैलाने वाले लोग जाने-अनजाने में एक भला काम कर गए हैं। उन्होंने एक ऐसी बहस शुरू कर दी है, जिसपर बात होनी बहुत ज़रूरी है। वो बहस है एक बाप-बेटी के बीच के रिश्ते की। आप मेरी बात गलत दिशा में ले जाए उससे पहले मैं आपको अपने और अपने पापा के बीच के रिश्ते के बारे में कुछ बताना चाहती हूं।

आमिर खान और उनकी बेटी की तस्वीर देखकर मुझे बिलकुल भी कुछ विचित्र नहीं लगा, आमिर खान की बेटी का अपने पापा की गोद में बैठना मेरे लिए कुछ अलग नहीं था। वजह, मैं भी तो अपने पापा की गोद में बैठती हूं। जी हां, आज भी 26 साल की उम्र में मैं अपने पापा की गोद में सुकून के साथ उनके प्यार को एन्जॉय करती हूं।

आमिर की बेटी की तरह मैं भी अपने पापा के साथ खेलती हूं। कभी उनके पेट पर चढ़कर बैठ जाना, कभी कंधे पर लटक जाना, कभी पेट पर तबला बजाना, तो कभी उनके सर को तबला बनाकर मज़े लेना। और हां, कभी उनके बचे-खुचे बालों से चोटी बनाना।

मैं उनके गालों को प्यार से खिंचती हूं तो कभी गालों में किस करके अपने प्यार को ज़ाहिर भी करती हूं, और जब मन हुआ तो उनसे एक प्यारी सी किस की डिमांड भी करती हूं। बचपन से लेकर अब तक, और आगे भी ये सिलसिला जारी रहने वाला है।

हमने अपने मां-पापा के साथ एक दोस्ती का रिश्ता कायम किया है, जहां हम अपना विरोध जता सकते हैं, अपना प्यार ज़ाहिर कर सकते हैं। अपने करियर, अपने बॉयफ्रेंड, अपनी पीरियड्स के बारे में चर्चा कर सकते हैं। इस दोस्ती वाले रिश्ते में सहमती-अहसमती सबका स्पेस है।

दरअसल, हमारे समाज में पिता के बारे में एक ऐसी इमेज बनाकर रख दी गई है कि पिता गुस्सैल होने चाहिए। हमें अपने पिता के सामने सर झुकाकर रहना चाहिए। आपने कई बार अपने बड़े-बुज़ुर्गों से ये कहते सुना होगा कि हम तो अपने पापा के सामने कभी सर उठाकर बात भी नहीं करते थे। आज भी कई लोग अपने पिता के सामने टीवी तक देखने को बुरा मानते हैं। और ध्यान रहे ऐसा अमूमन बेटी और पिता के बीच होता है, बेटों को कई बार इन चीज़ों की आज़ादी होती है।

लेकिन, समाज के कुछ दकियानूस लोग ये समझने को तैयार नहीं कि अब पिता सिर्फ पिता नहीं बल्कि वो एक दोस्त भी है। ना सिर्फ अपनी बेटों का बल्कि अपनी बेटियों के भी।

आज कई पिता और बेटी की बेहतरीन जोड़ियां आपको देखने को मिल जाएंगी जो दोस्ती का रिश्ता कायम करने में विश्वास रखती हैं। अब चुकी बहस बॉलीवुड स्टार को लेकर हुई है इसलिए यहां उदाहरण के रूप में बॉलीवुड स्टार्स को ही ले सकते हैं। शाहरुख खान, अक्षय, अमिताभ बच्चन जैसी कई हस्तियों को आप अपनी बेटियों के साथ एन्जॉय करते देख सकते हैं।

महेश भट्ट और पूजा भट्ट के बारे में बेतूकी बातों की तो मानों लिस्ट ही बना दी जाए। आपको वो तस्वीर शायद याद होगी, जिसमें दोनों एक दूसरे को किस कर रहे हैं। उस पोस्टर को लेकर भी बड़ा बवाल हुआ, लोगों ने दोनों को भरपूर गालियां दी। और वो गालियां आज के समय में भी लगातार जारी है। लेकिन, बावजूद महेश भट्ट ना सिर्फ पूजा भट्ट के साथ बल्कि अपनी छोटी बेटी आलिया के साथ भी फोटो शेयर करते रहते हैं।

हाल ही में गुड़गांव में रहने वाले अजीत बजाज और दीया बजाज की जोड़ी माउंट एवरेस्ट को फतह करने वाली पहली भारतीय पिता-बेटी की जोड़ी बन गई है। अगर हम पिता और बेटी के रिश्ते के बीच हमेशा एक गंभीरता की दीवार बनाकर रखते तो शायद भारत को ऐसी पिता-बेटी की जोड़ी नसीब नहीं होती।

आमिर और उनकी बेटी की फोटो में कुछ लोगों ने आमिर को यह भी नसीहत दी कि आप अपनी बेटी को कपड़े पहनने का सलीका क्यों नहीं सिखाते। लेकिन, आमिर की बेटी को शायद ही इन नसीहतों से फर्क पड़ने वाला है। क्योंकि जब बेटी को उसके पिता का साथ हो तो दुनिया के तमाम नकरात्मक कमेंट्स उसको कोई चोट नहीं पहुंचा सकते हैं।

मेरे साथ भी कई बार ऐसा हुआ। कपड़ों को लेकर मुझे अकसर कमेंट्स मिलते रहते हैं। मगर हर बार उसी फोटो को पापा ने फेसबुक पर लाइक करके मेरा हौसला बढ़ाया है। डिस्क या क्लब जाने पर भी कुछ लोगों से ताने सुनने को मिले, मगर मेरे पापा ने कभी विरोध नहीं किया। बल्कि एक बार उनके दिल्ली आने पर मैं क्लब से 2 बजे रात को अपने दोस्तों के साथ वापस आई थी। यहां तक कि मैंने पापा को डरते हुए एक कपड़ा दिखाया, “पापा ये कैसा लग रहा, पहन कर जाऊं।” पापा ने झट के बिना किसी शिकन के कह डाला, हां अच्छा तो लग रहा जाओ पहनकर।

हम बेटियों को अपने पिता से इस तरह के सपोर्ट मिलने के बाद दुनिया की फिक्र नहीं होती है। और मुझे पूरा यकीन है आमिर की बेटी भी ऐसे दकियानूस लोगों को इग्नोर ही करेंगी। बल्कि मैं तो कहूंगी, करो जितनी फोटो शेयर करनी है अपने पिता के साथ, उनके साथ खेलते हुए, उनके साथ शरारत करते हुए। और आइए हम सब अपने पापा के साथ एक मस्ती भरी फोटो शेयर करके ऐसे दकियानूस लोगों को एक करारा जवाब देते हैं। बल्कि 17 जून को तो फार्दस डे भी है, तो आइए इस बार फार्दस डे पिता और बेटी के प्यार को नफरत की निगाह से देखने वालों को एक करारा जवाब देते हुए मनाते हैं।

The post मैं भी अपने पिता की गोद में आमिर की बेटी की तरह ही खेलती हूं, इसमें हैरानी क्यों? appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

Twelve days ago, I turned 18 and entered adulthood. But even today, I feel no change in my life. I don’t think it matters whether you are 16 or 18 – we become mature much before we reach the legally-prescribed age for adulthood. As you may be aware, girls start having their periods from an early age – and in most cases, we spend five to six years of our school lives engrossed with our menstrual cycles.

Today, when I look back at my school years, one incident related to my periods makes me laugh and feel disappointed at the same time. That day, my periods started when I was in school. I wanted to go back home because my abdomen was hurting like hell. The other reason why I wanted to return home was because the teacher at the school dispensary was charging exorbitantly for handmade cotton pads and taking advantage of our plight. I did not want to give in to this, by any means.

As children, we were always told to keep quiet about our periods, especially in front of men. The principal of my school at that time was a man. So, it was embarrassing to even think of asking him to let me go home by citing my periods. Then, one of my friend told me the secret formula – to get a half-day off, she used to write an application in the school diary that she was having a ‘girl’s problem’ – and she had got the day off many times in this way. I thought – why not try this? I’ve tried it – and guess what? My request was granted a number of times.

Since then, I thought that if our principal knew what our problem was, why couldn’t we girls state our problem directly – “Sir, I’m having my periods. My abdomen hurts and I want to go back home”? At the same time, I realised why we couldn’t write this. After all, we had always been told by society to not talk about periods in public – since it’s a ‘girl’s thing’.

But I don’t feel that this is true  It’s a ‘boy’s thing’ too. In the womb of a mother, blood is one of the sources of nutrition for the baby. And if it doesn’t matter if it’s a girl or a boy in the womb, then why does it matter when girls face their periods? Periods are a human affair, after all. Let’s talk about it!

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The post Periods: Embarassment Or Pride? appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

In the past few days, the news has been full of articles and shows on examination results. I recall the days when I used to wait for my results. Invariably, the day on which the results were scheduled to be announced would turn into a doomsday.

I spent 10 long years in the same school. When I was admitted to the school, my parents told me that I had been admitted to one of the best schools in the city – a privilege which only a few received in the country. Followed by my parents, the teachers told me that I had to be disciplined, hardworking, obedient and regular.

We followed the instructions as they were supposedly for our good. Years later, when I moved to a university in a new place I realised how I was taught to be what I wasn’t supposed to be.

The worst nightmare for us at school was the ‘diary entries’. I had weekly tests at school. The passing marks were kept high, as were the expectations. Failure meant ‘diary entries’. So the diary had sections like, “Date of offence”, “Subject failed”, “Teachers’ signature” and “Parents’ signature”. Failing was a serious offence, no matter how hardworking you were. The daily and weekly tests were so boring and burdensome that a huge section would fail. Failing twice meant going out, while failing thrice meant that your parents would be called. I too had to ‘move out’ once – and this remains a shameful memory even now.

Though I never pondered upon the meaning of those tests back then, I now think about questions like these: Did passing all the tests make me a good student? Was I supposed to perform well in every single test? Are tests so important for my education?

We were supposed to behave in a disciplined way. We felt proud over the fact that we were disciplined, besides getting the best education in the city. And every kid outside the school premise was a ‘savage’!

The discipline had a lot to do with our personalities. We believed whatever the teacher said. We were taught only those subjects which were deemed to be necessary for our future. We obeyed them happily. Only the ‘bad children’ disobeyed their teachers.

I remember – once we had a free class, as the teacher was absent. We didn’t have any sports. So, we asked the vice principal whether we could go and play games. This courage was construed as our dislike for studies. Consequently, we were asked to complete every single exercise in all the subjects that had been taught till then. It turned out to disastrous for us. The mathematics exercises deserve a special mention here; the exercises for the other subjects were burdensome too. I remember students waiting till four in the evening, sitting in the class and figuring out the giant task to be completed. We didn’t sleep that night.

The day of the results was also a day of mourning for us. No matter how hard we studied, our results were seldom up to the expectations. Even when we scored well, the next time, we had to do better. Progress was reduced to numbers, and we were bound to lose the war.

The principal, whom we considered to be the strictest man on earth, used visited us on the day of the results. There would be an eerie silence as we would see him visiting different classes and calculating the time by which he would reach our class. A deep state of mourning would prevail after his visit, and a similar sorrow would wait for us at home.

We didn’t learn the way we should have. The biology classes were all about a set of diagrams. The chemistry classes left no impression as I seldom understood the lessons. I still remember that class where I couldn’t make the sense of the distinction between an atom and an element. Both were synonymous for me. The fear of the teacher going mad at me led me to mug up the definitions of both.

However, the physics lessons would turn out to be interesting, as I could relate them to the world around. The history classes also sounded interesting, as did the geography ones.

With a few months for me to pass out of secondary school, we were told to decide for our future. The 11 subjects would get reduced to three or four main subjects after we went to the next level. Some wanted to be engineers, some doctors, a few of them IAS officers and others chartered accountant. I wanted to be none of these. But I had to choose among the four career options. I still hadn’t decided for myself what I should aim at.

At the end of it all, I was left with either science or commerce. In my area, arts or humanities were mainly pursued by those who studied in government schools. I was contacted by private coaching academies with their attractive packages for becoming doctors and engineers and what not. I was left with no choice – I had to stay within the limits set upon me. Schooling, in many ways, stood in the way of the education I wanted to pursue. It created a binary where there was no room for the third option.

Years after I left my school, I wondered whether my school wasn’t actually meant to educate or create narrow passages within our minds. Sometimes, I still think about the meaning of the Sanskrit prayer that I recited daily in the morning assembly. I still wonder if the education imparted at my school had anything to do with my future at all.

Must the low marks I scored back in school stand on my way to success? Also what is the nature of success we are taught at school? And why do we have to think about all these after we have finished our schooling? Isn’t it better that we think about these issues within the school premises itself? It’s time for us to introspect.

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The post How My School Stood In The Way Of Education appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

Posted anonymously.

I, an unapologetic ‘victim’ of Love Jihad.

An upper middle class, Brahmin Hindu woman. I was one of the safest, here in my country, India. Until I fell in love with a Kashmiri Muslim man. And I became the target.

For the past one year, I have toyed with the idea of typing down my story. Even today, as I type this in my bedroom in the national capital, my hands tremble a bit. What if, my safe haven, the internet fails to keep my anonymity? What if, they fish out my identity? What if, they get to know? What if, they find me?

The ‘they’ of my love story are the antagonists. And, what is a love story without a good, old villain? ‘They’ aren’t so easy to be contained in a single line or definition, but can claim my life if it comes to that. Actually, my tale is more about ‘them’, than it is about my man and me.

The ‘they’ of my story stem from the background of the time I type this in: 2018. We are now in the once distant future that we were so excited about back in the 00’s. Humankind is buzzing, tweeting, ringing with new, progressive thoughts, ideas, innovations and opinions. ‘They’, however, operate from the other end of this spectrum. Their ideas are redundant and regressive, and more often than not, incoherent. Their tool is coercion. Their colour is saffron, and they justify their actions in the name of religion.

So far as my story goes, it was a quintessential college romance. He was a senior at my college. We would talk endlessly, go out on dates, have coffee and hang out with friends. And I thought to myself, well, that’s that. But, it was only after we both confessed our love to each other about a year ago, did the magnitude of our sweet innocent love really hit me. My personal love affair became political. I still shiver at the thought of that.

And that’s how ‘they’ would deem me to be a victim of ‘Love Jihad’. Love Jihad is said to happen, wherein Muslim men ‘lure’ Hindu women with promises of love, with an ulterior motive to get them converted to Islam. The concept is rooted to the bigoted propaganda, by dominant agencies, who wish to establish a Hindu nation in my secular country (or, whatever).

When I was entering college, my mother said to me, “Bass Muslim Ladka mat pakadna” (Just don’t get attached with a Muslim man). My relatives have unapologetically, forwarded messages, videos and memes about the ‘Muslim threat’ our country faces on our family WhatsApp groups. My friends have asked me, time and again, if I feel safe with my Muslim man. The newspaper warns me of all the murders of young adult lovers in the name of religion and honour of their families. My television shouts in high decibels how my judiciary discounts the voice of a consenting adult woman and probes it as a potential case of Love Jihad.

Here is a Hindu Woman answering back to all such agencies and my misinformed friends, family, readers and institutions of the state and the judiciary who have fallen, and become victims of malicious lies.

I am an active opinion maker, Aadhaar card holder, an adult woman of my beloved country. I actively consume knowledge, debate about pertinent issues of our society and work towards making this country a place worth living in. I am not a vulnerable body, a naive mind, to whom a man can simply ‘sweep away and get me converted’. I do not need to wear my religion on my sleeve to prove my ‘association’ with it. I consented to this relationship. I love my Kashmiri, Muslim man with all that I’ve got. My love is my personal choice, none of anybody’s business.

My friend recently asked me, if I wished my man was a Hindu. I scoffed at the idea. “I probably wouldn’t have fallen in love with him if he wasn’t a Muslim”, said I to her. His choice of religion was an integral part of his identity. His religion is his choice, just as my religion is mine.

It feels strangely nice to type this out today. Maybe, I am one of the optimistic few. I still believe, love can conquer all. Love is all we need. Love, and not hate, would save my country. Love can make everything right. And a day will come when everything will be all right.

A day will come when I wouldn’t have to write my love story anonymously.

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Image used for representation only.

Image source: Waseem Andrabi/Hindustan Times via Getty Images

The post When I Fell In Love With A Kashmiri Muslim My Personal Life Became Political appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

By Saransh Heilige:

Dear Saransh,

I know that by this time, you would have returned from your morning jog. Today will be a special day for you. You’ve finally turned 18 and are invigorated with an ever-flowing philanthropic spirit.

I write not in the hopes of swaying any of your future decisions. I am in a happy place now and wouldn’t wish you to take an alternate route at all. You might already be thinking of all the possible courses of action you could take in the coming time. While not all of your wishes will come to fruition, hereon, you won’t regret any step you take, either.

I am also aware that up till now, you haven’t explored your sexuality much. The idea of being physically intimate with someone makes you cringe. But do not worry, young Saransh. Your sexual quest will begin soon enough. Till now, you might have felt confused and bewildered about your feelings towards people of the same sex – especially your best friend. A warning – you are going to get hurt soon. And that is alright, young Saransh, as a kindred spirit awaits you. You will soon fall in and out of love, perhaps multiple times – but don’t lose hope. Love is a beautiful feeling and the wounds heal in no time, you will realise.  The most crucial lesson that I have learnt so far is that no matter what you might have to deal with, never stop loving yourself.

When you reach my age, you will transform. You will start taking pride in your queerness. You still have the option to live in denial like many queer people do, but letting go of denial would make you feel integrated – I can assure you that much. I do understand that it is quite tough to be openly queer when your parents are orthodox and have rigid mentalities. But well, with time, you will learn to care less. I still don’t know if it is wise or not, but being distanced from them might give you the space you have always desired.

But dear young Saransh, being queer is not always about gleaming rainbows and glossy unicorns. With time, you will realise that being queer also entails constantly questioning what’s considered ‘normal’ and why that norm gets privileged over other ways of being. You will be involved in life-altering discussions on addressing and understanding the intersectionality between race, gender, sexuality, caste and class – and how it affects each person’s experience and identity differently. This will equally benefit and enrich your understanding of queerness.

I hope you do remember that last year, you were in the pits of depression. That year, you realised the importance of dissent. That year, you finally took over your life and made some crucial decisions for yourself. This minute act of defiance has ignited the rebel spirit within you. In the years to come, you will be directly confront patriarchy and toxic masculinity. Even though this fight is ever-exhausting, don’t give up. You will learn to fight for your own rights. You will begin to question your privileges too.

Alongside this turmoil, there may be times when you will feel lonely and melancholic. If I am being honest, let me tell you – it’s not going to be easy to be queer. You will have to deal with certain mental health issues owing to the negative prejudices prevalent in our society. You will wish to either end your despairing life or renounce the world altogether. But you know what? For every dark night, there will always be a brighter day. You will outshine these hard times. You will be respected and loved. Your life will unfold in richer and happier ways, more than you have ever dared to hope.

In parting, even though I have evolved for the better, I still admire you. Your innocence and optimism defines you. In times to come, perhaps, people will adore you for that.

I hope you continue to strive for a world where everyone feels safe and accepted.

All the best,

With love,

Your much older self.

Saransh Heilige is a cis-gender queer person. He is currently pursuing his Masters in Psychology from Ambedkar University, Delhi. He aspires to work with queer individuals, later in his life, as a psychologist.

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The post A Letter To My Younger Self: Being Queer Is Not Always About Rainbows And Glossy Unicorns appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

हमारे देश में सेक्युलरिज़्म पर बहुत बड़ी बहस है। यहां सेक्युलर होना भी एक फैशन है, जैसे हिन्दू होना और मुसलमान होना। हम लेकिन सेकुलरिज्म की नींव पर चर्चा नहीं करना चाहते। सेक्युलर होने का मतलब क्या है, दरअसल हम अभी इसका आकलन नहीं कर पाए हैं। क्या महज़ अल्पसंख्यक समुदाय का समर्थन करना सेक्युलरिज़्म है? क्या हिंदुत्व को गाली देना सेक्युलरिज़्म है? क्या टोपी पहनकर इफ्तार में जाना या किसी मुस्लिम का होली-दीवाली में शामिल होना सेक्युलरिज़्म है? इसपर चर्चा करना ज़रूरी है।

मुझे निजी तौर पर हिंदुत्व के एजेंडे से दिक्कत है। हिन्दू राष्ट्र ना बने मैं इसके लिए हमेशा काम करूंगा, लेकिन इसका मतलब यह नहीं कि मैं किसी और धर्म को भारत पर काबिज़ होने देने के पक्ष में हूं। संविधान के अधिकार को और उसके साथ सामाजिक नैतिक को स्थापित कर उसका अनुसरण करना सेक्युलरिज़्म है। अगर कोई ये कहे कि अपने धर्म का पालन करते हुए दूसरे धर्म की इज़्ज़त करना महज़ सेकुलरिज्म की परिभाषा नहीं है, हम लोगों ने इसे ही सेक्युलरिज़्म की परिभाषा मान लिया है।

हमारे समाज में बहुत सारी बुराई है, जिसे धर्म के आधार पर अंजाम दिया जाता है। धर्म को इस बुराई की छतरी इसलिए बनाई जाती है ताकि लोग सवाल ना खड़ा करें। अधिकतर धर्म के आधार पर सबसे ज़्यादा अत्याचार महिलाओं पर होता है। धर्म का पूरा बोझ उनके कंधों पर डाल दिया गया है। ऐसा नहीं है सिर्फ महिलाएं ही इसका शिकार हैं, पुरुष भी धर्म के डंडे से डराये जा रहे हैं।

सेक्युलरिज़्म का मतलब यह भी है कि हमारे सामने घट रही सभी बुराई पर सवाल उठाना होगा। हम यह नहीं कह सकते कि मैं सभी धर्म की इज़्ज़त करता हूं इसलिए इस बारे में नहीं बोलूंगा उस बारे में नहीं बोलूंगा। ये सेक्युलरिज़्म नहीं है, सेकुलरिज्म मानवीय मूल्यों पर आधारित है। मानसिक गुलाम कभी भी सेक्युलर नहीं हो सकता।

महिलाओं को परदे की नसीहत देने वाला कभी सेक्युलर नहीं हो सकता। महिलाओं को बच्चे पैदा करने की मशीन समझने वाला सेक्युलर नहीं हो सकता। पीरियड्स में उनका मंदिर और रसोई में जाने पर रोक लगाने वाला कभी सेक्युलर नहीं हो सकता। महिलाओं के लिए मंगलसूत्र, सिंदूर और घूंघट अनिवार्य करने वाला कभी सेक्युलर नहीं हो सकता। ये बड़ी चीज़ है ये किसी कथित गैर भाजपाई नेता द्वारा गढ़ी गई थ्योरी नहीं है।

सेक्युलरिज़्म समानता की बात करता है, वो ये नहीं कहता कि ऊपर वाले ने औरत-मर्दों को अलग-अलग काम के लिए बनाया है। आप सोच रहे होंगे कि सेक्युलरिज़्म की बहस को मैं जेंडर पर कैसे मोड़ रहा हूं। क्योंकि शुरुआत यही है, इसके बाद सब कुछ है, सेक्युलर मुल्क मतलब संविधान श्रेष्ठ है। सेक्युलर व्यक्ति मानवीय मूल्यों को बचाने के लिए धर्म से जंग लड़ सकता है। धर्म को लेकर कट्टर व्यक्ति सेक्युलर नहीं हो सकता। क्योंकि सेक्युलर व्यक्ति हर तरह की धार्मिक बुराई के बारे में बोलेगा। वो इसलिए नहीं चुप हो सकता कि कुछ मौलाना और पंडित नाराज़ हो जाएंगे।

धार्मिक बुराई को सिर्फ इसलिए नहीं रोकना कि वो मेरा धर्म नहीं है, ये सेकुलरिज़्म नहीं हो सकता। अगर कल हिन्दू धर्म वाले बोलने लगे कि दलितों में मंदिर में प्रवेश नहीं करना चाहिए और सती प्रथा उनका धार्मिक मामला है और उसपर सवाल नहीं उठाया जा सकता? तो क्या ये चलेगा? कल कोई बोले हमारे मज़हब के अनुसार महिलाओं को पीटा जाना चाहिए तो क्या हम एक सेक्युलर होने के नाते उसके खिलाफ नहीं बोलेंगे? क्या हम उस वक्त भी यही हवाला देंगे कि मैं तो सभी धर्मों का सम्मान करता हूं?

कल कोई कहे कि हमारे मज़हबी रवायत के अनुसार लड़कियों का खतना किया जाता है। तो क्या हम इसलिए नहीं बोलेंगे कि हम सभी धर्मों का सम्मान करते हैं। ये धर्म के ठेकेदारों ने खुद की आंखों पर पट्टी ना बांधकर औरतों को हिजाब में घूंघट की बंदिश लगा दी। तो क्या हम समानता वाला समाज चाहने वाले इसलिए नहीं बोलेंगे कि हम सभी धर्मों का सम्मान करते हैं। ऐसा कहने वाले सेक्युलर नहीं हैं बल्कि वो चाहते हैं उनकी धार्मिक बुराई पर सवाल ना करें इसलिए वो दूसरों की धार्मिक बुराई पर चुप रहकर कह देते हैं कि हम तो सभी धर्म का सम्मान करते हैं।

मैंने सोशल मीडिया पर धार्मिक कट्टर लोगों से कई बार बातचीत की है। हिन्दू कट्टरपंथी और मुस्लिम कट्टरपंथी देखा है, दोनों के आंखों में एक ही सपना है अपने-अपने धर्म का वर्चस्व। दोनों चाहते हैं भारत का झंडा उनके मज़हबी झंडों से बदल दिया जाए। मुझे पता है बहुत सारे लोग डरकर खुद को सेक्युलर कहते हैं। मैंने जब-जब हिन्दू राष्ट्र और हिंदुत्व के धुरंधर के खिलाफ बोला और लिखा, तो मुझे गाली और धमकी मिली। मेरे मुंबई में रहने वाले माता-पिता तक को बजरंग दल वालों द्वारा धमकाया गया। मैं नहीं रुका क्योंकि सेक्युलर हूं। मैंने जब हिंदुत्व के धुरंधरों को धोया, तो मुस्लिम समुदाय के व्यक्तिओं का मैं हितैषी बन गया। कई लोग मेरी तारीफ करते थे, वो मुझे अपने कौम के बारे में अच्छा सोचने वाला व्यक्ति समझने लगे, लेकिन वो ये जान नहीं पाए कि मैं सेक्युलर हूं।

मैंने जब बुरखा और हिजाब जैसी गुलामी के प्रतीक के खिलाफ लिखा तो मैं इस्लाम का दुश्मन हो गया। मैंने जब रमज़ान में शराब के साथ लड़की की एक फोटो पर हज़ारों की तादाद में उसे गाली देने वाले, हत्या की धमकी देने वाले और रंडी के साथ इसके साथ सोने वाली कहने वालों के खिलाफ लिखना शुरू किया, तो मैंने इस्लाम पर हमला कर दिया। यही लाइन बजरंग दल के लोग बोलते थे कि मैंने हिन्दू धर्म पर हमला कर दिया। अब मैं इन कट्टर मुसलमानों के लिए आरएसएस का आदमी हो गया हूं। क्योंकि मैंने इनके धार्मिक बुराई को गिनना शुरू किया। मैं जब मोदी को गाली दूं तो तालियां बजती हैं और मौलाना को दी तो गलियां पड़ती हैं। दोनों तरफ अंधभक्तों का टोला है। मुझे मारने की धमकी भी दी गई लेकिन मैं सीरियसली नहीं लूंगा। मुझे पता है वो कुछ नहीं करेंगे।

मुझे एक बात समझ आ गई पिछले महीनों में कि इस मुल्क में सेक्युलर लोगों की तादाद ना के बराबर है। हो सकता बहुत लोग सेक्युलर हैं पर समाज के दबाव के चलते नहीं बता पा रहे हैं। हो सकता है कि इसके लिए उनपर फतवा दे दिया जाए या कोई मंदिर का पुजारी सामाजिक बहिष्कार करवा दे। अगर बाबासाहेब आंबेडकर और भगत सिंह के सपने का भारत का निर्माण करना है तो धार्मिक कट्टरता वालों को एक बंद संदूक में बंद करना होगा। हमें समानता वाला समाज निर्माण करने के लिए और सेक्युलर लोगों की ज़रूरत है। अगर ऐसे लोग नहीं होंगे तो महिला पर होने वाला धार्मिक और सामाजिक अत्याचार नहीं रुकेगा, ना ही उन्हें बराबरी का मौका मिलेगा। हमारा समाज उन्हें सिर्फ बिस्तर ही शान बनाकर रखेगा।

(फोटो प्रतीकात्मक है)

The post अपने देश भारत में सेक्युलर होना बड़ा मुश्किल है appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

At some point in class 11, I realised that my name was unique. It wasn’t your run of the mill name and of course, that lent a sense of superiority to it that I still struggle with. There was no other ‘Preyansi’ around. At that point, I somehow thought that I could get away by just mentioning myself as ‘Preyansi’. No surname and the name was complete in itself. I would think to myself that if I just stuck to Preyansi, nobody would know that I was carrying Brahmanical baggage, the lineage that I had just started to despise.

I became an Indian voter and it was all over in my face. Preyansi suffix X suffix Y. Unfortunately, now that I have mentioned about the Brahmanical baggage, I must accept my surname. The name that I was born with was Preyansi Mani Tripathi. Boom! There it goes! ‘Tripathi’ – the one who has mastered three Vedas and such is the historical grace of studying the Vedas that you know this person belongs to the group classified as ‘oppressors’. Between the two suffixes, Tripathi would always stand out.

I gradually realised that while Tripathi was unambiguous and seethed of north Indian Brahmanical lineage, Mani was far more ambiguous. And so it happened. Subsequently, all my identity cards had Preyansi Mani engraved on them. In the north Indian world, I would get away with the assumption that I was a south Indian and no one would then try to assimilate me as a ‘UP wali’, ‘Tiwari ji’, ‘Dilliwali Sharmaji’ and so on. But it’s not that easy, you see! Whenever I introduced myself as only ‘Preyansi’, people would ask, “Aage kya lagate ho (What comes after that)?” And then, if they could not figure it out, they would ask, “Kaun se shahar se ho (Which city are you from)?” And after playing this game of 21 questions, people would eventually find a way to assimilate or discard you from their casteist/classist/ regionalist universe.

With my marriage, things got a bit more complicated. I was always clear that I would never change my prefix or suffix. Not for better astrological predictions, not for all my starry-eyed love. For the sake of imagination, I once dwelled on the idea of ‘Preyansi Choudhary’! What! Is that me? And suddenly I fell in love with ‘Preyansi Mani’ – the clarity of sticking to an identity that I inherited suddenly dawned upon me. In the world of chest-thumping loyalty to surnames, I have always felt alienated. But suddenly ‘Mani’ became my refuge to protect my feminist identity post-marriage. Despite the long lecture of the passport service officer of how things would get complicated for my children if I did not change my name to Preyansi Choudhary, I stood my ground.

Even today, I feel appalled at the idea of my friends and acquaintances on social media adding the surnames of their husbands. This step of indulging with their husband’s suffix makes me judgemental of their feminism (if they claim to be one).

Over the years, I have realised that symbolism is indispensable to rebellion. My quest to be Preyansi or Preyansi Mani and not be Preyansi Choudhary have all been symbolic of my search for an independent identity free from historical and familial baggage. Symbolism is important but it is only a surface level step. Questioning one’s identity is much more arduous and exhausting work requiring a great amount of patience and deeper sensitivity and courage to do away with layers of privileged conditioning. It is about navigating multiple identities and along the way taking steps to make it more inclusive, more empathetic, more conscious and letting go of most of the privileges that come with it.

Unfortunately, I can’t hide away in the garb of neutral ‘Preyansi’. Suffix or no suffix, I inherited a privileged caste identity, privileged class identity and, those privileges have also fuelled my privileged feminist identity.

Somebody can be a born Brahmin, but they need not be born an oppressor. This realisation has taken me away from a disempowering narrative to an empowering one. Of course, I have to do away with the Brahmanical baggage. And I have taken the symbolic steps towards it. However, being conscious of it also requires addressing oppression and exploitation in the daily life, in one’s home, among one’s friends, among one’s community and most of all, in one’s own mind and actions.

Next time you see someone, don’t ask or wonder about their surname. Just ask yourself, what have you done to let go of your privileges?

The post Don’t Ask Me My Surname! appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

For me, becoming an artist-entrepreneur has been a joyous journey with all its highs and lows. Here is her story.

My journey into entrepreneurship was led by art. I am an artist and I trained at NIFT Delhi. After my post-graduation, I did not take up a full-time job with an organisation, because I felt that would stifle my creativity. As a free-spirited artist, I wanted to explore my own potential – which is why I started selling my artworks.

I set up Shruti Arts to spread the word about the kind of work I do – and I am glad to say that I have been very lucky to have such a great response to my platform which curates my artworks. I use it to sell my works all over the world.

The internet has no limitations and I think it is a great tool to reach out to a global audience. Originally, it was not a conscious decision to focus on digital, but I started curating my works on the website to build a platform for them and to showcase them to a larger global audience. The rest just followed. I started getting inquiries through the website for selling my designs, and I thought of growing it further. My inspiration was always my art and a desire to showcase it to a larger audience.

Of course, the journey is not always a smooth one. There are everyday issues that you have to take in your stride, some big and some small. But at the end of the day, it’s a joyous journey. Your focus should be on your expertise and what you are offering, and the money will follow. I am focused on my art and always strive to better it. When I get appreciation for that, it means a lot to me. And when people want to have it for keeps, make a part of their lives, it is highly gratifying.

Since the journey is long, it is important to have courage and belief in your work. Don’t get dejected by criticism. Some times, the response may come very slowly, but if you have faith in what you are doing, you will get there.

In my case, since I started small, I did not have any problems pertaining to funds. All I needed was some space for my art studio and some art equipment. I started off with a small room in my house, and made it my studio where I would do my paintings. The art materials came out of the savings I had made over a few years. My family has been very supportive of my work and they have always encouraged me to pursue my dreams.

For me, the biggest moments of success have been when I received appreciation from art aficionados and critics alike, in India and abroad. A few of my works have also been exhibited in various international events like the Delhi International Film Festival and Indo-Korean Art Festival.

It’s not always smooth sailing, so you have to take the ups and downs of your journey as they come. Keep the faith strong and keep surging ahead.

The post ‘The Internet Has No Limitations For An Artist’: An Art Entrepreneur’s Journey appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

Having survived 100 days without work, I can definitely say it’s really difficult for a workaholic like me to sit aimlessly at home doing nothing. I can tell you I crave for the contentment and exhaustion of a long and fulfilling day at work. I’ve been spending sleepless nights writing one application after the other, writing the same things over and over again.

Finding myself unemployed, I can tell you it feels a bit too incongruous at first. But once you accept it, it becomes easier for you to deal with it. Redundancy in life means (for me at least) that you have time for yourself. You have plenty of time to think how your life became so complicated. Redundancy tries you and after going through the ordeal, you become stronger. Being unemployed also means I am not prone to hateful propaganda that most people working in the corporate sector are subjected to.

There’s a common belief that those who are unemployed are unwanted. I remember being unemployed for a little over three months. The worst time for me was when I used to wake up in the morning. I used to hesitate while leaving my house. I hardly had a chat with people. I was too embarrassed to tell people that I had resigned from the job. Initially, it used to be a sense of shame. I used to feel much like a weed, completely unwanted.

During one of those long chats with my father, who has been a constant source of strength and motivation, I got to know that a large number of people in their early 20s tend to leave their job as they fail to adjust. Others leave it because they’re tired of being constantly victimised by office politics. Well, I must confess I am not at all comfortable with all these political ploys happening around me. Although I know it quite well that if one needs to succeed professionally, then he needs to keep his head down and bear the heat thinking it’s all a part and parcel of a much bigger scheme of things.

He further told me as a working professional, he had changed as many as four jobs within a year before getting an offer from one of these embassies in Chanakyapuri, a place where he’s been working for close to 30 years.

We also talked about the wider problem of unemployment and the rising number of unemployed people in the country. He told me that being unemployed is better than finding a job that does not provide emotional satisfaction and fulfilment. It is here that my agony began to slack. Unemployment is something many working professionals want intentionally at times in order to plan the future course of action for themselves and their families.

When you’re unemployed, you can take out a lot of time for yourself. You can actually sit there in peace and recollect all the jumbled thoughts that keep floating in your head. Locking yourself up in a dingy room for hours, days, and weeks can make you feel emotionally unfit and unhappy. It is advisable to talk to people in order to freshen yourself up. If it’s possible, you can even talk to a couple of your closest friends and tell them about what’s going on in your life. Keeping things to yourself ends up adding to the stigma of being unemployed.

Coming to terms with unemployment is undoubtedly difficult, but you shouldn’t let it undermine the opportunity to earn back your life. You must also recognise that being unemployed is just a present state of affairs and not a character failing. Talking to people can actually help you realise that not all people are judgmental. The more trustworthy people you talk to, the better you’re bound to feel as an individual.

The post As A Workaholic, How I Learnt That Being Unemployed Is Not A Character Failing appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

A dusty evening, crowded metro, earphones blaring with loud music – a normal going-back-home scenario for Delhites. And that’s where I had my first ‘uncomfortable event’ on Delhi Metro.

I caught the metro from Noida Sector 16, a ‘general’ coach (questionable, why not the women’s coach, will be explained later). The train being extremely crowded, I sought refuge next to a pole to lean on for my ride till Rajiv Chowk. A man, probably in his 50s, stared at me for a while. I chose to ignore. Stares are quite common (as women, we have normalised this kind of behaviour). That’s when I noticed he was scanning me head to toe. Every time I looked at him, he turned away, only to look back.

He visibly hung onto the overhead-rails, drooping to look into my phone. Real close. A whisk of his breath, uncomfortable glares and posture made me certain he was drunk. I shut the movie I was watching, to look at him and let him know I was aware. Although he appeared to look away, he still bent down to catch a view of the clothes I was wearing and yes, tried to look inside my clothes.

Just for those who might have already judged the clothes I was wearing, I wore a long shirt with long sleeves and collars and ankle-length yoga pants. Whew, safe there, because, if I were to wear short clothes, I invited the stare.

I couldn’t move an inch. I tried shifting positions around the pole. Nothing helped. I could still smell his foul breath.

I thought of getting off the metro, but the arrival time of the next metro made me reluctant. So I stayed.

Every time the metro stopped at a station, I prayed for someone to just stand between the man and me. I looked at every other person around me with helpless eyes, crying internally of course, for help. I just wished somebody noticed. I just hoped that this man got off at some station, soon. As the crowd cleared, I moved away from his sight.

As the metro stopped at Rajiv Chowk, I was glad I was getting rid of him. But, he got off there too. I took a different route, so that he lost track of me, just in case. I stopped and checked around for a while. I skipped a metro.

And then, I reached home safely. Yay!

To all those who read through, and thought, that’s just a daily thing, you gotta go through if you’re on public transport. I refuse to go through it.

If you say, he just stared, and that’s not a big deal. I refuse to be stared at by random drunk men who make my commute uncomfortable.

The very act of being disturbed by just a stare brought in a realisation of the fear that has been instilled in our gender.

I have heard stories of men who brush against women’s bodies. I have heard stories of men leaning on women. Metros are crowded, you know.

Yesterday, I experienced a trailer of what my commute to work is going to be like for the rest of my life. Yesterday, I got my own little story to tell. Yesterday, I heard my heart pounding with fear, and also trying to gather the courage to shout at him if he took a step ahead, to touch me.

I still wonder why I did not speak up. I still wonder why, the otherwise ‘strong’ me felt weak. I still blame myself, I could have reacted. I could have told him to stand away. I regret it.

While I advice friends to stay strong and voice discomfort, I failed. Horribly.

Now back to your doubt. Why didn’t I go in the women’s coach?

• I chose to ride in a mixed coach.

Well, the last point must have triggered many.

Argument No. 1: It’s better to be in a crowded coach of women than of 90% men.

Ans. Well, yes. But women’s coach is more crowded. I can’t breath. Nobody can in fact.

Argument No. 2: If  I chose to ride a mixed coach, I must bear with the stares and brushes. In short, I must bear with the molestation.

Ans. Dear people, it is not just the metro. The women’s coach shall protect me during my commute. But what happens after I get off? What happens when I stand in line to get my token, to swipe my card to exit, when I’m in a bus, when I’m in a rickshaw, when I’m out there. In the real world.

Will the DMRC, or anybody who questions my decision to take the mixed coach to build women-only facilities for me and other women, around the world? How long can you protect us by isolating us?

The problem is the mentality, ladies and gentlemen.

I recently saw a YouTube video, where staring men were confronted. One of them says, “Girls deserve to be raped if she is wearing shorts clothes, or those clinging to the body. because she provokes them.” and the other one, objectified women, comparing her to the Taj Mahal, and that he shall stare till his heart pleases.

Watch the video by Slang here:

This video creeped me out. Just like yesterday’s event.

The post was first published on my blog.

I’m not really the kind of person who loves to share her pain and stories, feels easy with sympathy flowing in or boasts about her strength and struggles. But today, I really felt an urge to write this because I want people to know what pain really looks like, how cruel life can be and what some people in this earth are still living with.

When I was 8, I lost my dad who was in the police force to some accident I don’t have many details about. I had never asked my mom anything more than what she wanted to say because I simply didn’t want to upset her even a little bit. Moreover, how did the details of the death matter then? I don’t even remember my father’s face. He was a drunkard who had crossed every limit of domestic violence. He and his family had never really wanted me to be born. My mom protected me from several attempts of foeticide. Dad had never really met me or mom when he was alive. However, he loved mom and didn’t divorce her or marry again. When dad died, it didn’t affect me even the slightest. I felt like people were talking about a stranger’s death. It wasn’t hatred, it was just my negligence.

My father was a government servant and mom, a teacher. After dad passed away, his pension and mom’s income were enough for both of us. Though I’ve not witnessed affluence of wealth, I must hereby admit that I’ve never ever felt poor or deprived of anything in my life. Not even now. I was always good at studies and aimed at making my mamma and dead papa proud of me. I was more well-behaved and courteous than most other children of my age group just because I didn’t want anyone to raise a finger at my mother’s upbringing as a single parent.

I’ve seen my mom’s struggles as a single parent. I’ve seen my maternal grandfather standing strong as a pillar of support upon whom mom and I could lean upon anytime. My maternal grandmother never held back her unconditional love for us.

I grew up to be a good student and had built up an image of ‘writer and poetess’ at a young age. I have always tried to do something that would make my teachers and relatives appreciate me and thus, my mom. All I’ve ever wanted is to keep her happy.

I gave my best and got into the course mom had always dreamt of seeing me join. I stood out in University too. I became famous as a writer. I had not one but two bright careers ahead of me. Mom and I had dreams of building our own house in future, of my wedding which she really wanted to be lavish and of course, she was way more excited for her grandchildren.

Ask me how it feels when thunder strikes your head and I can describe it. One day, she was diagnosed with an incurable disease. I knew her condition well. I knew her prognosis would be poor. And yes, gradually, I got to know that she had very little time to live. Then began the darkest period so my life. I was seeing the strongest person of my life lying feebly on a hospital bed, relying upon saline drips and sometimes asking me, “What do you think? Will I make through? Will I survive?”

“Of course Maa. What a stupid question are you asking? It’s a little illness, chill,” I’d fool her and my entire family with the same honey-coated lie. Because I didn’t want my mom’s spirit to die before her breaths stop. I was dishonest back then and I’m proud of the lies I’ve told. At least, I soothed her.

And one day, I was caught. The day she died, I’d no lies left to cover the truth. Probably no more reason to do so too. And guess what, exactly two months before my mom’s death, my grandpa died too. It was I who lit my mom’s pyre. Yes, girls don’t do that but my mom had given the exclusive right to me and I had to prove her right. I fought all to do so.

I’ve seen the ugliest faces of people ever since her demise but nothing affects me anymore. I’ve not shed even a single tear because I’ve to be strong for grandma who’s all alone now. I’ve to succeed in my both careers. I’ve to fulfil every dream we had seen together. I never get sad. I feel like she’s not dead. She’s still alive within me and being sad is equivalent to making her sad.

A part of me still believes it’s all a bad dream that would soon be over. A part of me wants to cry till I pass out. But the strongest part of me wants to fight and never quit, just like my mom. I feel so alone when I see others with their parents and jealous when my friends talk of their parents and particularly mother’s love. I’ll have to live with this void forever, I know.

By Tara Vidisha Ghose:

My partner of seven years (husband of five months) introduced me to this fantastic show on Cartoon Network called “Adventure Time”. The show follows the story of a young boy named Finn and his dog/adopted brother, Jake, in the magical land of Oo. It’s a pretty zany show, but I love it – not only because of its deceptively complex story-line, but also because it features some fantastic characters who are queer!

I found myself becoming insanely obsessed with two of these characters – Marceline the Vampire Queen and her on-and-off partner, Princess Bubblegum. I had a poster of them in my room, and my phone wallpaper was a picture of the two of them kissing. I even drew them kissing in my sketchbook!

I never really questioned my obsession with them (which incidentally, isn’t even close to ending yet) until quite recently. The reason why I took this thought seriously in the first place was because over the past two years or so, I finally consolidated certain feelings I had been having towards women for a long time. Having been with a steady male partner since high school, I couldn’t entirely get myself to acknowledge that I was anything more than ‘bi-curious’ – that I’d kiss girls, but only when drunk, or gush over my various ‘girl crushes’ who weren’t really crushes at all, apparently. I barely thought twice about how in every sex scene I had seen in my life – including all the porn that I had ever watched – I only ever got aroused by watching the women. I even ignored the fact that a whole bunch of drawings I made and stories I had thought up typically featured women who were together.

But, as I continued creating art and writing stories featuring women, I slowly started to introspect. I realised how so many of the ideas of love and romance I had formed in my mind were just that – only ideas. They had been planted there by the overwhelmingly heteronormative ideals and expectations perpetuated by the ‘rom-coms’ and ‘chick-lit’ novels I obsessively consumed as a teenager. I realised that I wasn’t so much exclusively attracted to men as I was to the idea of being feminine. Since I was always nuts about all things associated with the performative aspects of femininity (when it came to love), I enacted the girls I read about in trashy Meg Cabot novels. Men were merely instrumental in my assertion of my femininity, and not in defining my sexuality.

Opening myself to this realisation changed my perception of myself. Though I understood myself better, I felt vulnerable to a whole new world of judgement from people. Since I had been with a steady male partner for a really long time, and my gender expression is feminine, people didn’t take me seriously when I came out. Emotions I developed towards a female friend were perceived to be my experiments with my sexuality, or as efforts to make myself seem more ‘interesting’ or ‘sexy’.  When I shared how I felt about this friend, some of my friends responded by saying that everyone was bisexual to some extent. Others responded by saying things like “You’re bisexual? You? Really? That’s great!”

Clearly queer people looked and acted in specific ways – and I, somehow, hadn’t gotten the memo.

People’s reactions and my awareness of the challenges and difficulties that queer people face caused me to hesitate to come to terms with my sexuality and identify as queer. Yet, I couldn’t deny how I felt in my heart – identifying as straight felt wrong. At the same time, I had to find a way to express these emotions and desires, which were actively being shut down or sidelined by people around me or by the voices in my head. Moreover, I had to learn how to do this without hurting my partner or threatening the relationship we had built together.

So, I channeled it into the very thing that helped me realise that I wasn’t straight – into art and writing. Writing or drawing about queer relationships allows me to imagine and express what I feel it would be like to be with another woman, or with someone who doesn’t fall into the binary. It has not only helped me in expressing deeper aspects of my identity, but has also allowed me to give myself the acceptance and validation I expect others to give me. It helps me acknowledge that my sexual and romantic desires that aren’t heterosexual are legitimate, even though my partner is a man.

Reconciling and expressing these emotions and aspects of my identity is a process. As someone who doesn’t feel the social ramifications of being queer on account of being a cisgender woman in a heteronormative relationship, I hesitate to take up the space I feel belongs to those whose lives are more significantly impacted by their sexual orientation and gender identity. Since my partner and parents have been relatively supportive of my identity, violence from family isn’t a threat for me either.

Balancing my privilege with the legitimacy of my own identity and emotions has been challenging, and it pushes me into a constant state of expressing myself and holding back. I’m still learning about how I can hit the sweet spot between taking up space that isn’t mine, and allowing myself to see myself as a legitimately queer being. Until I can work this out, making art for the purpose of catharsis and self-expression will have to do.

Lover of all things sparkly and fluffy, Tara feels ridiculously happy in a tiara, and spends far to much time thinking about what she’ll wear. She is as indecisive as the Delhi weather in late July, and is in the constant lookout for boxes to fit into – for now, Cisgender-Panromantic-Demisexual-Libran-Unicorn sounds great, but she may change her mind.

In celebration of Pride Month, The YP Foundation is running an online campaign to spark conversations around issues specific to queer youth and their engagement in queer politics, through narrative pieces, articles, essays, comic strips, artworks, and personal interviews. Through these, the campaign seeks to explore the importance of the queer movement in India and the intricacies of queer organising. it also looks at the different ways in which the queer movement in India is forging alliances with other movements, through the active engagement and involvement of young queer people. This campaign is a part of a larger international campaign hosted by CHOICE for Youth and Sexuality.

To submit your stories, poems, articles and artwork, send them to info@theypfoundation.org by June 20, 2018.

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