The Rebelle blog

There is this thing about reading that is unique and personal to each. It awakens feelings and thoughts that one could not have conjured while sitting idly. Although that is too much of an overstatement to be true. But whenever I share my reads on a public platform like Goodreads or Instagram where book stories are put under the hashtag of bookstagram , I feel the result is pretty much the same as sharing them with someone in person. There are so many amazing people who are bold, uninhibited and clear while speaking their mind, especially on the internet. Some of them have become such good friends of mine even though we haven't met or have no possibility of meeting in the near future. I am sounding more like the pessimist but it is true, sadly.  One can't live on books and thus is effectively proved in a book I read two days ago. It's called, The House of Paper written by Carlos Dominguez . It came as a very timely shocker and a reminder to me since I was drifting in...

Life offers a beautiful and sometimes miserable concoction of moments and events that there is a terrible beauty about it. The world has become small and yet so unrecognisable that people are fighting to live just one more day. Those that embrace death do so because their efforts have gone futile in understanding the workings of this universe. No one is able to hear them any more. Do we honour them just one last wee bit and forget the brutalities inflicted upon them or do we emerge stronger and voice our dissent collectively evermore now? Nations are going to war. The blacks and dalits are back to where they began their journey less than 70 years ago under two great visionaries, Martin Luther King, Jr and Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar. The refugee crisis has heightened turmoil among classes. The rich versus poor dichotomy is emboldened like never before. Where do revolutionary ideas stand within this chaos that has infiltrated systems of justice and righteousness? Do we merely expres...

Sometimes I wish I'd documented all my thoughts about dismantling patriarchy in a diary or a journal when I was younger. I wish this now, because I recently read some letters I'd written to a distant friend on role of women in workplaces and this uneven household/work system. And I realised my thoughts on certain books like Wuthering Heights or Virginia Woolf's writings and Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar have undergone a slight change. Maybe I was young, back when I first read these books. I was disappointed by the portrayal of women and it marred my understanding about the quality of life 19th century women lived in. SO, the thoughts on tramping patriarchy also arose from two recent incidents seen in India. One, the Happy to Bleed project which started as a reaction to some Temple Trustee's atrocious remarks against menstruating women in Kerala, by women of all age groups on Twitter and other social media. The other is the story of a woman breaking a 400 year old t...

Festivals have ceased to make me happy since a couple of years. They don't carry the same innocence and excitement any more. And since India is a nation that celebrates culture and life so vivaciously, it's weird to feel this way about culture. Really, but what is culture? Is it merely being happy and celebrating and spending money while many more can't afford a one-time meal? I think it is. We have commercialized and categorized celebrations too. Festivals no longer bring happiness because while the rich can splurge however they wish the poor worry about meeting expenses and trying to make their children not feel the brunt of being helpless and poor. Do they not have any right to be happy any more? And when I see this blatant display of wealth everywhere with not an iota of discomfort on the faces of those who are flaunting it, it makes me wonder as to whether we have ceased being humans after all? Poverty can't make everyone move to tears. Why don't we, the commo...

My blood boils in anger seeing this massive load of impossible injustice and atrocities committed every waking minute in our country. Are we here just to sit by, comfortably cocooned in our circles; not bothering to look up and beyond social mediums? Khairlanji William Nagar, Meghalaya Nirbhaya Shakti Mills Badaun Bareilly What Next? Exterminating Women? Why is nobody speaking up against the Badaun rape and murder of the two teenage girls? Because, they were poor, low-caste and girls. They were girls who have no rights to live in this world, they do not deserve to be out on the fields or on the road without being teased, insulted, assaulted and murdered. WHAT India are we talking about? This India, in 2014 which is hailed for its ability to churn out engineers, analysts, businessmen, leaders with the potential to change the world, are we truly even looking in the interiors of our nation? This is an India- Where women are worshipped during a nine day l...