As far back as I can remember, my two override switches have been between my (seemingly) conflicting desires: to be taken seriously and have a good time. One of my earliest memories is my father telling me bemusedly, “You can’t always be having fun!”
Arrupe Canteen is home to acidity-inducing Zinger burgers and a colourful range of other packaged foods that sustain a bustling college population. I try to be mildly health-conscious, especially when people are watching, so I usually keep my distance from its energy drink, chips and candy-covered counters.
This is Part II of a series on the psyche and sexuality, based on the author’s research, reflections and analysis. The series explains key psychoanalytic concepts and offers pedagogical possibilities while working on sexuality.
Yummy yuckiness is the stuff of life. Allowing the bewilderment around it to bubble up matters. Alongside recognition, the exploration of why pleasure and danger are so mixed up also matters. While sharing why I think this exploration is important, I’d like to begin with my own experiences.
In the finale episode of Season 1 of the F-Rated Interview, Suneeta takes us through her childhood in the mining town of Mahoba where she went from reading whatever scraps of newspaper she could find to becoming an award-winning journalist with Khabar Lahariya. For Suneeta, crime reporting is a source of great pleasure as she gets to look powerful people in the eye, and ask them questions.
We send people to jail so we don’t have to think about them. What happens in jail, we’d rather not know. Or if we do, it’s through beefy heroes who beat the ‘criminal’ to pulp, preferably in slow motion.
In our third episode, we meet Rupal Oza, a geographer who works with gender and space. In her new book, Semiotics of Rape, published by Zubaan, she talks about the making of the book, the politics of rape, the role of land and caste in cases of rape, and discusses some critical cases that emerged from Haryana in the last decade.
Food has been an issue for most of my life. It has stood like a giant question mark between my relationships, my friendships, outside my home, inside my home.
In November 2021, a group of eleven women found themselves sitting together in a room in Indore, Madhya Pradesh. Three of us (Anushi, Ekta and Angarika) had traveled from Bangalore, and the rest from different parts of Madhya Pradesh. There was a nervous energy in the room. “Why do you think we’ve all come here?”
The third episode features Nidhi Suresh who takes us to Lakhimpur and Hathras, and makes visible the violence that takes place on the scene post the crime. She negotiates quid pro quo with local reporters and highlights the importance of slow and quiet questions even (and especially) when hordes of reporters are covering one story.
