Feminist Rantings

Past two weeks I have been working/hanging with a bunch of youngsters. Read that as, my entire time and existence engulfed in hyper energy, chaos, hormones, irreverence and lust confused as love. The number of love songs and corny love quotes I hear in an hour these days is more than the rate of India’s population growth per minute. Fortunately (?!), my youngsters are comical. In fact too comical even to my only-absurd loving self. I have not been able to have a ‘serious’ conversation for longer than two sentences in past few days without somebody saying something funny followed by hollers of laughter. And I am not complaining… So I am in Mizoram, based in a place called Lawngtlai, travelling to places called Thaltlang, Sentetfiang, Sangau, Siachangkawn, Vartek. If you try to check these places up on the map (assuming you know where Mizoram is) you won’t find them. They are so far away from the world’s understanding of the world that (I think) they have managed to escape Google and CIA...

Currently no one is paying me for anything. I am not doing anything for money. And I am finding it increasingly difficult to avoid that unavoidable question that strangers ask you every time you meet some – ‘so, what do you do?’ Or the slightly different original version from the ones who are no strangers to you – ‘what are you doing these days?’ My definitive answers like – ‘um..uh…actually I am writing’ (a lie that has been told for so long that now its almost a truth. At least no one can challenge it) or – ‘err.. eh.. I do not know’ or even the one that I deliver with dead-sure confidence – ‘aaa.. I think I am thinking of planning to do something’ - get some of the world’s best really-unbelieving, very-insulting and supremely-mocking expressions. Some of our Bollywood actors could learn from my questioners. Anyway, before I digress, the story I am trying to tell is that, to avoid these questions and more to avoid giving my questioners more opportunity to practice their disbelieving,...