Kusum Choppra

28.12.12. If it were to take people a whole ten days to disaster to start thinking of how to tackle it, in this era of weapons of mass destruction, the globe would be totally destroyed before any remedial action would be taken, wouldn’t it! That is the spectacle in India just now.  Almost a fortnight after the gruesome gang rape in Delhi, after the poor girl has been flown out of the country, finally a sane voice has spoken.  Lawyer and columnist in Ahmedabad Mirror (28.12.2012),  Gautam Patel  has listed the various sections of the law on rape which need amendment and then implementation, rather than the  death penalty being touted.   That penalty, in all probability, will never happen, given the judicial system of our times that lets off the rapists in no time. He covers a whole range, from criminal assault to outrage 'modesty' ( what is that, if not another male / patriarchal concept??), adultery which only men are entitl...

Gandhigiri, A Contrary View Eons ago, I was in college when Mahatma Gandhi's birth centenary rolled around and campuses went into a whirl of Gandhi related events; not quite unlike the drumming up of the recent Gandhigiri frenzy . Unfortunately for my college, I took a contrary view. Taking a cue from the space mania of those times, I declared at one public speaking contest that perhaps Gandhi mania should be packed off into space for sometime, to give the economy a chance to get out of the corruption, dharna, public sector, strike syndrome then inflicted on our generation. At this point of time, I cannot remember how we connected these four to the Father of the Nation phenomena; no doubt, fertile collegiate minds must have done so; but I do remember the shocked expressions of the convenors of the event, who communicated their indignant trauma to the college management, which was conveyed to yours truly by a Vice Principal hard put to keep a straight face when he asked ...

As a society, we are so hung up on the victims of rape alone. All the newspaper column inches and their graphic focus on the female in ‘shame’ mode. Her home, family, neighborhood, school are visited, so that it is easy for neighbors to figure out who the victim is. In one celebrated case, apart from the family home in the village, a married sister of the victim living in town was tracked down for a quote!! What of the Rapists? Why are they never shown for everyone to recognize later “There goes that Rapist.” Why are their faces covered, their names given one minor court outing, their family background, extended families, friends, school and colleges never visited. Let us take a look at this scenario: Young guy is tracked down by police. At the media meeting, he is paraded. Then media hunts out his school and college pals, office colleagues for quotes about him. His family, immediate and extended is visited for pictures of the spaces he grew up in, the people who brought him up. ...

I have been fascinated by the magical Dola Re dance ever since I first saw it on a big screen.   Never could decipher its allure until recently, after catching it for the umpteenth time on TV. Here are two beautiful women, dancing gloriously for themselves and enjoying every moment of it in pure joy, taking pleasure in themselves and their dance.   That the piece has been magnificently choreographed only adds to the viewer pleasure.   The lyrics are not the key to the performance. It is the sheer enjoyment in the dance of two women from vastly different backgrounds, who love the same man and know that neither of them can have him; ……deciding to let that regret be and just revel in their feeling of joy at being in love;   and being friends;   and being free to sing and dance their joy in what should have been an all-woman moment.    The follow-on was of course, filmy drama.   How else would the story move forward?   But those moments o...

This is being written not merely as a journalist, but also as a woman who has been wife of an Army officer and mother of another one. In the entire noise made over the Leh incident, there was little said about the genesis of the spat:   the lady wife. What was she doing at a post virtually under the nose of two aggressive neighbors, triggering off an ugly spat?   When   wives of officers are allowed to make such excursions, they are also expected to follow some niceties, including making themselves presentable before the sahayak enters the officer’s quarters or wait till after;    instead of triggering off   such incidents, if those reports are actually true??    One can only wonder. Another key element to the Leh episode is the level of jawan – officer antipathy.   What is the cause of this? Is it merely the lack of discipline that triggered it off?   Or do the causes lie deeper? Perhaps it   begins at the recruitment lev...

So many religious, social, cultural sentiments are hurt nowadays in India.  the Dirty Picture was banned for TV fearing exposure to young children.  But what about the exposure to delicious boobs?  No voice has been raised against repeated Ads on TV, purportedly for our 'national' dress, in which the model displays her curvaceous booty clad in wispy lacy bras?   Not even after Jashwant Singh let fly at the white paper, declaring that it was like a bikini that 'covers only the essentials and reveals the non essentials'? Hurt sentiments anyone?

India as the land of sharp contrasts was brought home on a fleeting visit to a mall on Sunday.  In many rural areas, bathing is a luxury not frequently afforded. When possible, some one will run to the store for that tiny cake of soap ususally used in guest rooms. There it will do for the whole family, with any leftovers carefully stored for some future emergency. And there in this lavishly appointed store were huge chunks of different flavored soaps offering customers exquisitely different experiences.  Inquiries yielded that the cost of a 10 gm sliver would range from anywhere from Rs. 40 / to 60/-.  Would that little sliver suffice for the generous abulations of M'Lady or M'Lord, or perhaps one of their little ones, I wondered.

MASTANI is  unique book in that it is India’s first historical novel that offers its readers two endings, diagrammatically opposed to each other;  the second one  plugs all the holes left in the story of Mastani left by traditional renderings of the myths and legends that surround the second wife of Peshwa Baji Rao I, widely accepted as India’s answer to Napoleon Bonaparte as a unbeaten general.  Congratulations are due to Mr. Kapish Mehra of Rupa Publications for allowing this to happen. As a history buff, every reading of Maratha history left me bewildered at the steadfastness of historians in never failing to mention Mastani as leading influence in Baji Rao’s life; and then leaving that mention as a single sentence or paragraph without any elaboration of such a ‘towering’ personality, so to speak. Hence the research that went on and on and on to explode all the myths and legends that surround Mastani, to expose her tragedy, her true character and her royal...