Why the needless damage ??

Image source : toondo

The festive season is upon us, Indians in India and around the world are celebrating one of their biggest festivals... Diwali ! Happy Diwali to all my blog friends around the world !!
I've mentioned before on the blog, that I'm not much of a religious person, so for me festivals don't have a high religious significance, however that does not mean I don't celebrate them, I love celebrating any ocassion, big or small and festivals are no different. I love to celebrate them, including diwali and enjoy the festivities associated with it .

Debate audience or lynch mob ?

America is nearing another election year. The race for 2012 seems to be getting hotter every passing day . I am a keen observer of US politics, it is a fascinating topic for me. America is a polarized nation when it comes to political views. Now that the elections are getting close, emotions are reaching a peak, and the nation seems more polarized than ever.
Currently the debates between the pool of possible candidates from the Republican party (GOP) who could contest against President Obama are on. These debates are an interesting watch in general, but this year there's a peculiar aspect of the debates that has made more people sit up and take notice.

Why sita sings the blues ?

Anyone who grew up during the 80's in India, during the era of doordarshan (i.e pre cable tv era) , has definitely seen the epics of Hindu mythology, which were made into television shows on doordarshan, i.e the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Both were hugely popular shows, causing deserted streets, during the air times, because of their popularity. These epics have a very big significance in the Hindu religion, why I am not exactly sure, but I've been told that they are important.  Recently I happened to come across a narration of the Ramayana, through a different angle, i.e from sita's angle. It is an animated satirical documentary film, by Nina Paley called sita sings the blues (warning : it is mature subject matter) . It explains the story of ramayana through the eyes of sita, while also having a parellel narrative of an American couple and their split, eventually relating the story of sita to the modern woman. It got me thinking about the story of Ramayana, and in turn about most of hindu mythology and it's treatment of women, from an angle I hadn't given much thought to before.

Group Dynamics of women

Image Source : This is your conscience

In my last post about the way female bonding is represented in Bollywood, one of the fellow bloggers Preeti, made an interesting comment about the whole issue of female bonding.
In my post I had alluded to the fact that in society many think that women are incapable of long standing, deep relationships. I have mixed feelings on this point. On one hand I do believe that women are totally capable of long, deep friendships, and can be honest and supportive to one another, but I also agree that this is more the case of one on one friendships or with a small and close group of few girls.

Where's the sisterly love bollywood ?

Image source : Prairie girl

I had heard some good reviews of the latest bollywood hit ' Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara ' (roughly translated is you only live once ) . Many of my friends were raving about it on facebook, and twitter, so I was super excited to see a good bollywood movie. Although the movie wasn't disappointing, beautiful locations, nice songs, good performances, overall a good bollywood movie, but one thing that kinda struck me was to see yet another movie dedicated to the close male friendship bond.
I guess I've seen one too many bollywood movies about  brotherly love, and male bonding, so the less than enthusiastic reaction, and, it begs the question in my mind, 'Where's the sisterly love, Bollywood ???'. Where are the movies showing similar close female bonds, with their girlfriends ?

The Delhi slutless walk

Image Source : Indian Express

It was a warm sunday morning in July, in Delhi, the capital of India, and a few hundred women and men took to the streets for something called a slut walk . For those of you, who haven't heard what this walk is, lemme tell you, it's nothing creepy, it's actually a women's movement. You can get a detailed account of this movement here .
In a nutshell, it started, when a Toronto cop made a statement saying, that women should avoid dressing up like sluts (i.e provocatively) so as to avoid getting victimized (raped/molested). This triggered a response in the form of thousands of women marching the streets of toronto (many dressed as so called 'sluts') with messages written on their body or holding placards reading things like 'Don't tell us (women) how to dress, tell men not to rape' . The movement spread like wildfire across the world with similar walks being held in multiple cities in the USA, england, australia, new-zealand, across europe, across south america, etc. Women everywhere were inspired to take a stand and make a statement about not accepting being branded as sluts for taking charge of their bodies and sexuality.

The melting pot that is America

It is often said that America is one big melting pot, and I've often wondered what that means ?

Does it mean that as in a melting pot, everything must lose it's original shape/form.color etc, and become one, likewise those who choose to come here/live here, must lose their uniqueness, or cultural identity, in order to become one with the rest of the country .

I also grew up in a country with a lot of diversity, yes it wasn't people from different countries per se, but anyone who knows how India was formed after independence knows that most of the states now, were actually separate kingdom's or regions all together, so there was a lot of difference among them, this is one of the reason, why Indians still don't always identify themselves as one block (they do so politically, but on a micro level, among themselves, not quite).
If one Indians meets another, (especially if they are out of India) they are almost certain to ask the question which part of India are you from ? There's quite a bit of cultural diversity between different regions, also there are people practicing a whole variety of religions, Hinduism being the main one, but apart from that Christianity, Catholicism, Islam, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, etc. So diversity is nothing new to me .So I thought that America wouldn't be all that different for me to adjust to either, it'll be diverse, just on a more widespread level .