'Ritual purity, a great injustice to women' - The Hindu
'Ritual purity, a great injustice to women' - The Hindu
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Travelling Monologues
Leafing through the in flight magazine on the London New York leg of my journey, the intriguing title caught my eye – Room a-Genders! The column that followed gave some interesting insights about the changing hotel scenario. It talked about how hotels, which typically project a ubiquitous male presence, with smoke filled rooms and corridors lined with empty bottles of booze, are slowly yielding to a gentler, more women friendly ambience as a recognition of the greater presence of women guests. The Hyatt in London, apparently earns 37 percent of its revenue from its women guests and this is not an isolated instance. In keeping with this changing trend, the hotel industry, never slothful in its response to changes, is increasingly getting into the act of structuring their traditional male friendly facilities to accommodate the solo travelling power brokers – women! The article goes on to specifically mention the increasin...
In an antique land, a modern-world kingdom | The Asian Age
In an antique land, a modern-world kingdom | The Asian Jordan – In an Antique Land Arriving in Jordan is supposed to be a hassle free, visa-on-arrival convenience aimed at bestowing a charmingly Arabic welcome to the harried, cattle-class fatigued visitor. Mine, didn’t quite fall in that category though, preceded as it was with an encounter with a suspiciously querying visa officer, followed by three senior ones, before my passport was stamped. Enough to put a dampener on one’s mood one would agree. But I decided to shrug this irritant aside, attributing the brusqueness to the region’s currently troubled reality and instead decided to concentrate on the country that lay beyond its Immigration Section. And that was a revelation. Jordan is in many ways a matchless confluence of ancient stories replete with the whispers from empires long lost, Biblical allusions and a kingdom of the modern world. Roads w...
Urban Slums - A World of Images
The world on the other side of the huge plate glass window revealed itself in its changing facets, as the day shifted from early morning to the time when the lights came on in the city, to when these too were snuffed out. The view, from the eight floor restaurant of the luxury hotel that I was standing in, as a result of several interesting circumstances, left one with mixed feelings. It showed a Mumbai rakish and suave in its self-assurance, matchless in its fused identity of big money and glamour and yet as my eyes roved over the changing landscape of luxury hotels, forgotten relics of building and the ceaseless activity centred around the construction of various infrastructural projects, they were arrested by the naked visibility of its other face. One, raw with need and the hunger to clamber up the slithery steps to a better life....
The Hills Come Alive with Ancient Songs
We still had two hours of daylight left when we left Chindwara on our way to Panchmarhi – both in Madhya Pradesh. It had been raining since the morning and its occasional ferocity threatened to wash out the Handloom Exhibition which had been sponsored by our organisation and enthusiastically set up by the weavers from the nearby regions. Our bullet point agenda had already delayed us and we were wondering if it would still be possible to visit Patalkot, a tribal village, which entailed a 17 kms detour from the main road. The drive to Tamia, a picturesque town on the way, was like stepping back in time to a land infused with poetic images and an era, which could well have fitted into a passage in history. Vast fields covered in verdure stretched into the horizon, its edges fringed by the rays from a watery sun. Hutments bandaged in tarpaulin and guarded by herds of buffaloes dotted the land - no factories, no malls, no cafes in sight...