Nisha Susan
KK Shailaja dropped from new Kerala Cabinet: If ever there was a time to rethink 'party tradition', it would be now
Kerala, we don’t need you to be exceptional. Just give the woman the place she won. And give Kerala a whole lot more women to rise to the top, to not just serve tradition.
How one short Rihanna tweet made Indian right wing Twitter work, work, work, work
Having given the Indian establishment apoplexy with a simple tweet asking why everyone isn’t talking about the farmers’ protests, is Rihanna sighing (mildly) at the ensuing absurdity?
When this is over, what will the internet be? Inequities in access thrown into sharper relief by coronavirus outbreak
India has 451 million active internet users, second only to China. A solid 66 million of these are between 5 and 11 years old. This is the kind of data point that puts a gleam in the eyes of tech bros who think that India’s education crisis can be solved with a mobile phone in the hand of every child.
During coronavirus outbreak, there's much we cannot control. But we can deal with the misogyny of the 'Wife Joke'
Knowing how the coronavirus lockdown is ravaging our country, if you have a roof over your head and a couple of meals lined up, very few people can currently feel sorry for themselves — except of course for the archetype of the man in the Wife Joke | Nisha Susan writes
Coronavirus Outbreak: Amid social distancing, India should shift the needle on importance of big, fat wedding, or even its low-carb version
All the world loves a lover, but folks, India loves anyone going into massive shaadi-related debt and anxiety, even in times of the coronavirus pandemic.
Women's Day may be marked by the sun, but women's lives find resonance in the moon
Women’s Day rolls around every year on the sun’s plodding, I-am-making-a-masterpiece-schedule and leaves us wondering about our lives. But the moon is closer home, reflecting the repetitive, beautiful, boring, terrible churn of our daily lives, the repetitive ways of civilisations rediscovering new ways to liberate and imprison women.
Support for Jamia shooter underscores that those bearing markers of privilege will always be 'children' ready to be forgiven
While the debate continues about the actual age of the Jamia shooter, the truth is that he could be 10 years older and will still be treated with greater kindness than young Kashmiri boys who shouted slogans and were charged illegally under the Public Safety Act and shipped off to Uttar Pradesh to be imprisoned alongside adults after the abrogation of Article 370, or a little girl with a Muslim name in that Bidar school which is being ‘investigated’ right now.
I wish this wasn't the time India's students hid in sewers, dressed broken heads and braced for falling lathis. But it is
The night of 15 December, 2019, when the police waged war inside Jamia Milia Islamia and then Aligarh Muslim University, will forever be marked in my mind as one of many, many pareekshas. What lies ahead is what is known in more modern-type schools as continuous assessment. How will we fare? Here are some tips from top students.
Where there are jobs aplenty, schools for all, and rapists don't stalk the streets, into that Kailasa of freedom, my Father, let my country awake
At some point, human beings embraced nationhood and utopias started taking on well-defined borders. We all have our utopias but it remains in our head or in rhyme, but for some, these notions have become the basis for re-litigating historical grudges
Cities and Canopies: On trees in urban spaces, and discovering our private histories with them
Cities and Canopies builds on the mission of Harini Nagendra’s previous work, expanding one’s conceptual understanding of trees in urban spaces.
Two years and 35 complaints later, Unnao rape case is tragic display of faith that system will somehow prevail
Unnao case: The word ‘survivor’ has never seemed as dubious — from the very beginning, when the 17-year-old had alleged rape by MLA Kuldeep Singh Sengar in June 2017 and her family went to the police to report the crime which was perpetrated by the MLA, his brother Atul Singh Sengar and cronies.
In Rivers Remember, Krupa Ge examines aftermath of 2015 Chennai floods, skewers state's ineptitude
Krupa Ge’s book contributes to the cultural memory of the disastrous Chennai floods of December 2015 — a job it does with deceptive simplicity and barely suppressed rage
Why reading this great study on Indian migration is a throwback to Prakrit erotic poetry
As I read Chinmay Tumbe’s tapestry of men moving in circles and women on lonely islands in his book India Moving: A History of Migration, I was strongly reminded of AK Mehrotra’s Absent Traveller, a wonderful translation of select poems from Gathasaptasati, writes Nisha Susan
Mahua Moitra's speech, Owaisi's oath taking, Speaker Suresh's benign chastising: Why this week in Parliament left me feeling empty
During Moitra's speech, Kerala Congress MP Suresh Kodikunnil was in the Speaker's Chair looking benign, smiling and occasionally saying things like 'you already took three minutes'. Suresh is an interesting character, a seven-time MP. This week when he took his oath in Hindi and was reportedly scolded by Sonia Gandhi for not taking it in Malayalam or English.
Darvesh Yadav murder: Male insecurity, possible motive for killing, is a constant threat for successful women
It isn’t only rape that women have to fear. It is all manner of violence, and professional jealousy of the kind that led to Darvesh Yadav's death.
Payal Tadvi's suicide: Marred by casteism, dominated by donations, medical education in India needs mirror to avoid dehumanisation
Three senior doctors allegedly bullied and tortured Dr Payal Tadvi because of her caste - she was born into an Adivasi family - all the way to suicide at Mumbai's BYL Nair Hospital.
Atishi-Gambhir row: Politicians use misogynistic slurs to slight women leaders, but bias won't swerve women from their political destiny
Read any line from the pamphlet about Atishi and ask yourself, does it really mean anything? The words, in the end, do not mean anything. From Urmila Matondkar’s rival calling her a bholi bhali ladki to a Samajwadi Party leader saying Jaya Prada would make nights rangeen in Rampur, all that these sentences convey is a blinding smirk and a cloud of befuddling contempt.
Sri Lanka 'face veil' ban designed to distract people from govt's failures, reaffirms structural oppression of Muslim women
In just over a week since Easter Sunday blasts in Sri Lanka, the meaning of hijab is changing in the island nation; Maithripala Sirisena govt's ban on 'face veil' reaffirms the structural oppression of Muslim women
Talk of 'porn jihad' on Twitter shows how fear of the 'sexy other' is still being used to polarise the country
While Twitter user Poornima Nayak Deb started her thread by acknowledging the truth of the 'sexy other', she and those who agree with the premise of 'porn jihad' mostly wallow in the fear of the 'sexy other'.
Jacinda Ardern's compassionate response to New Zealand terror attack shows us what a leader should look like
We can try to understand whether it is Jacinda Ardern's gender that has prompted her to a respond (first in words and then in action) that did not make a tragedy worse. Or was it the progressive political movements that she has been part of her entire life?