A Bowl of Elusive

As promised, here I am with the second part of this article. Let us talk about the sexual predator our kids face. We need to know what we are up against to fight it better. This is a sensitive topic and we need to eradicate all misinformation from our minds. I will sketch a character profile here, drawing inspiration from my own experiences and that of many people I know. There would be many readers who when they hear the phrase “Sexual Abuse of Children” will instantly imagine a pedophile. (A pedophile is a person who is sexually attracted to children.) But this isn't always the case with people who abuse children. To understand this better, we have to first get over the misconception that rape is committed out of lust. Rapists are almost never sex addicts, they are violent aggressive and disturbed people, and the purpose of rape is never just sexual gratification. Similarly, child abusers aren't always driven by attraction to children. Terrifying as it is, this means tha...

Having been a victim of sexual abuse myself, this was a topic I always wanted to discuss out loud. This is the first part of this series. I don’t expect these articles to change the lives of abuse victims out there, but at least they should enhance our understanding of it. This part is meant for parents. Almost all of you have faced some form of sexual abuse as a child. You might not talk about it, you might not report it or you might have blocked it from your conscious memory. But it has happened. Approximately 52.33% children report having faced some form of sexual abuse or the other. But seeing how sexually repressed our society is and how we condition our children to think of sex as something bad and alien, you can imagine how high that figure might actually be. Being a victim myself, I have always tried to make myself aware about this topic. I have spoken to a lot of peers about it, friends, colleagues, old flames, etc. And an alarmingly high percentage of the people...

“TRUTH“…Such a sublime concept, isn't it? And yet, its never absolute. No, this is not a lesson in philosophy. I am talking about a very practical aspect here. Because, we aren't a species that is driven solely on instincts and reflexes. We take time to analyse “the truth”, “the reality” and then act on it, as we see fit. And hence, the need for “truth” gets elevated several folds. And truth here should be absolute. As a lot depends on it. Sometimes life and death and at other times, a person’s identity. Coz what we believe makes us who we are. Thats the truth I am speaking of. Have you wondered why things are never absolutely true? If you start thinking about it, you'll realise that this ambiguity in the concept of truth exists only in things that are human or related to humans. For example, look at the sun or the moon. One is a star and the other, a satellite. Both of them are celestial bodies. That is the truth, the absolute truth. As its universally ...

This article is about a real living person, lets call her Alisha. I am aware that a single article can never do justice to a person’s story, so I am going to try to cover only certain aspects of the story. What is Love? When people claim that they have fallen in love, what exactly do they love in the person? And I am specifically wondering about people who say they have fallen for someone who doesn’t feel for them. I mean, are they in awe with how that person looks, speaks or carries themselves? Is that what love means to them? See, I am not trying to make a point by asking these seemingly existential questions. I am genuinely perplexed by these thoughts, have always been. You see, love, for me, has always been a reaction. A reaction to someone’s affection for me. The only reason I ever needed to love a person was for them to love me first. And that’s why I could never understand Alisha. We had first met under the worst possible circumstances. I was in the last stag...

So yesterday, I wrote this article about certain hardships I faced in college. And all hell broke loose. Coz certain people who read my article, didn't quite get it and just worked out a meaning that suited them. And kept on sharing my blog post and criticising it all day. I say “free publicity”. Anyway, this article is NOT about them. Among a bunch of people of who commented on my FB page, there were several sweet souls, who showed concern about my well-being, by advising me to move on. They got the impression that I am still beaten down by the struggles of college days. I’d like to set the records straight. I am not sad or depressed about college. I took it in my stride. I just wrote about it yesterday coz I was reminiscing. And I love to write. This was something I had always wanted to write about. And a lot has happened since college. It was 3 years ago. And the things I wrote about yesterday happened in the first 2 years of college. Things had started looking u...

Innocent Song of a Six-Year Old I will make the moon brighter, I will paint the world in green; I will make this earth a beautiful place: Such as was never seen. The air will be free of dust, The walks shall be all clean. I will fill people’s heart with trust: They shall not be so mean. I will make this earth a loveable planet, Where everything will just be right. Peace shall be the ruling passion: No more useless fight. I don't remember when I wrote this one. I had it filed along with other poems I wrote. Hope you like it. Its short & sweet.

I still ask myself whether I’d have been better off at IHM, Pusa. My AIR (All India Rank) in the Entrance exam was good enough to secure me a seat at Pusa or Dadar, the best IHMs in India and I chose to be at IHM, Goa. I know what you’re thinking; Beaches, babes & booze, right? Wrong. For one, I don’t like beaches that much. Two, I never had a dearth of babes, irrespective of the place. And lastly, I was a teetotaler & I still am. I chose IHM, Goa coz I knew for a fact that Goa was culturally different than the rest of the country. And I needed to experience the diversity and the exposure. And yes, I did get all that I came looking for, and a lot of other crap. Maybe a little more than had I bargained for. The three years of college at IHM, Goa broke me down! You see, IHM, Goa is more than an educational institute. It is a way of life. The students here are as diverse as the flow of tourists that Goa gets each year. So imagine a random mixture of student...