For the past 2 minutes I have been experiencing this excruciating pain in my throat. I am not even sick. Healthy at 27… bit stout… my husband calls me “kathirikkaai[brinjal]” instead of “Poorni”.
Ah… pain is getting worse…Where is my 4 year old son Raju? He could call someone for help. Oh! I saw him playing with his friends. I remember his sweet innocent face which lit up in surprise and joy as I came home early that evening.
For three years now, I have been working as a domestic help …

Footsteps echoing through the rooms devoid of the sound of human voices, computers booting late into the night, the pungent smell of alcohol in parties, cigarette butts still warm in the ashtrays, the aroma of cologne in the bath, wardrobes with silk ties and golden cuffs, the smell of new furniture, the sound of new tyres screeching on the driveway – this was Akshay’s world. And Shalini fit into the scheme of things like icing on the cake – she was the beautiful wife he was envied for; the diva every man hoped he had.

When a 18 year old is given the right to vote, it is ironic to note she doesn’t even have the right to choose what she can wear. I’m not going to ask people to GIVE women the freedom; Freedom is not charity but everyone’s right. All am saying is, don’t suppress us. We’re trying to float. If you try to push us under water, we shall come up with double the force.

If the previous generations grew up with the idea that a woman’s ultimate joy in life is waiting on her husband, this generation is being fed ideas of a ‘liberated’ woman– a woman who has all the freedom to roam the city, delightfully competing with peers to spend her father’s or husband’s money on clothes and manicures

It was a dark night and in the gruesome cold, the baby was left all alone to pass away quietly to a “better place.” Her crime: she was born a girl.

Sexual desire still makes the slut. Its repression makes the good woman – the “slut” image getting more and more popular doesn’t obliterate the fact that the sexual image associated with the “slut” is still violent – a sexuality of power and domination where the woman adds to the excitement by being what she is.

Here’s to all mothers – especially working mothers- whose lives are full of wonderful chaos and inexplicable guilt.