Talking about vaginas is not sexy – not in the least bit. I’m not saying it couldn’t be made sexy, but we choose to keep that out and instead simply talk about them – making ourselves vulnerable, being honest, for once emerging from the forts we’ve constructed for ourselves. That fort is sexy – it doesn’t care about anything but its own defence, plays power games and cannot, will not love – loving you see, is vulnerability. That’s how it differs from admiration – to admire and to be admired involves no risk.

The 2009 Nobel Prizes show us that women can be passionate and perseverant. We are fighting a battle for equality and this year a number of women have proved us right – we can think, we can discover, we can explore and we can win – just like the male of our species. I’d like to believe that this is more than pure accident, and that seeds of equality planted years ago are bearing fruit in the victory of these women. If we see greater numbers in the future years, I might be right – the world might be leaning toward better times for women.

This is an imperfect world. Those of us that study its imperfections and ponder their causes and those of us that provide the support services that help people surmount and survive the challenges they pose, both know that angry polemics and esoteric theory go only so far. But humane and altruistic responses have a way of fixing at least one problem at a time, right here, right now. This may be the everyday essence of feminism. And every other ism.

At 5:45 on a Monday evening, as she watched her five-year old son swim under his instructor’s critical gaze, it came to Kaavya that everything about her was mediocre – she was a mediocre home maker, living a mediocre life, in a mediocre suburb in America.

The Writer starts at the voice. He did not sense the woman’s approach. Yet, there she is. Standing so close! Her long black hair cascades down to her hips. Her skin is dusky and aglow with the rich sheen of youthful health. She is of slight build; her lean form wrapped in a rich red saree. She is bare of jewelry except for the diamonds in her ears and – of course- anklets at her feet.

Before Sa was published, we were planning to be media watchdogs. But as we started writing our articles, we ran into so many original ideas and realized that the large world, outside what was being covered in daily news, was equally enticing. We started with one such article –‘Dance of the Slave girl’, which asks a very important question: Is today’s tamed version of Bharatnatyam, more liberating than the old form? After all it did pave way for the wide popularity that this dance enjoys. But is the style suffering under the suppressive thumb of patriarchy?

World over, the spirit of feminism has become the clarion call for every woman to free herself from the shackles of ‘femininity’ (a cultural construct) and the patriarchy (the setup that designs this cultural construct to maintain male supremacy). Literature and politics are closely connected. Feminism is incomplete without feminist literary criticism and gender politics.

I am merely wondering if our natural differences warranted the differences in the rooms we were allotted. I believe it did. One chromosome my dear Mr. Y – just one and we developed different needs, different instincts and different passions. Yours is a world darling that I see, I appreciate and marvel at. I even wonder if my appreciation fosters it. It is a thing with all species I hear – the urge to keep going on fosters those characteristics in the male and the female that the opposite sex loves. Scientists call it sexual selection. I call it the spark that keeps us both aflame.

Groaning with pain inwardly, I gritted my teeth and stood behind my colleague showing him how something was done. I eyed his chair longingly and realized I couldn’t really ask him to get up and give it to me without invoking either pity or disdain. Year after year of dealing with intense pain as my [...]

In February 2006, a Sudanese man married amidst great media attention. Having been caught trying to have sex with a neighbour’s goat, it was deemed by a council of elders that the accused would have to pay the owner a dowry of 15000 Sudanese dinars and, of course, marry the goat. When asked to comment on the issue, the owner Mr. Alifi, who had caught the accused red handed, said that the elders had not felt the need to involve the police. The dowry would suffice for the loss of the goat. The marriage of goat and man (who according to the owner were still very much together) was of course necessary because the goat had been ‘used as a wife’.