By Anamika Chatterjee

It’s not often that one finds that someone penned a book titled The Book I Won’t Be Writing And Other Essays. And yet, H.Y. Sharada Prasad did just that. In the brief introduction, the former media adviser to Indian prime ministers Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi made a case for not writing the book his peers so badly wanted him to write: an insider’s account of the leader that was Indira Gandhi. He said he lacked “the capacity to do justice to her complexity” — that prevented him from trying.

Continue reading It makes no sense to protest the release of a political movie →

By Suresh Pattali

In the beginning, I wasn’t a big fan of the Vanitha Mathil, or Women’s Wall, conceptualised and marshalled by the Left Democratic government and some Hindu organisations in the Indian state of Kerala. The basic premise behind the formation of a human wall on New Year’s day was the consolidation of women’s voices for gender equality. And that’s where I had a problem with the wall.

Continue reading The patriarchy they stood up against deserves more walls →