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March 01, 2010By Sreeparna Chattopadhyay
January 28, 2010
Even as I write this, I am NOT, repeat NOT PMSing. I understand there are some women who experience physical and emotional fluctuations in the days preceding Leak Week. I, fortunately, am not one of them. I do not cramp, I do not moan and I certainly don’t have my menstrual cycle whirring my tear ducts into overdrive. Tell me I’m PMSing, though, and I’ll ask you how you’d like your eyeballs for breakfast. (And yes, I vaguely get the self-fulfilling prophecy here.) January 13, 2010THE BANGALORE QUEER FILM FESTIVAL (BQFF 2010) is calling for submissions. The deadline is 30 January 2010. Details here. The festival will be held at the Alliance Francaise de Bangalore on 26, 27 and 28 February 2010. The BQFF 2010 is a non-ticketed free event aimed at providing a venue to screen films based on themes related to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or intersex (LGBT or Queer) communities across the world. This is the second edition of the Bangalore Queer Film Festival. The event is presented by Good As You (a support group for LGBT people, est. 1994), SWABHAVA (a non-profit organisation working with LGBT issues in Bangalore, est. 1999) and WHaQ! (a support group for queer women, est. 2009). While sincerely apologising for this short notice, the organisers request you to send in films for consideration/preview as early as possible. For more information please contact the organisers at blrqueerfilm fest[at]gmail.com. January 01, 2010By Susan Kiguli
Mothers Sing a Lullaby Mothers sing a lullaby In these camps without happiness Mothers sing a lullaby Mothers become a lullaby December 17, 2009By Sridala Swami IF YOU HAVEN’T ALREADY devoured every one of the three books in Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy, you have at least heard of it: the story of the girl with the dragon tattoo who plays with fire or kicks the hornet’s nest. She is Lisbeth Salander, abused child, accused adult and unlikely crusader along with Mikael Blomkvist of the magazine, Millennium. Over three books, the story is one of a giant cover-up to protect a secret organisation within Swedish intelligence. It is about the blind eye that is turned upon a mafia dealing in, among other things, human trafficking; the involvement of those in power and the denial of a woman’s human rights just so that a long-forgotten secret can remain buried. The sub-text of the series – made clear through telling epigraphs to each section – is of violent crimes committed against women in the name of national security or in the interests of keeping up appearances. It is a tale in which the silence surrounding the crimes makes society complicit in them. The Millennium Trilogy is fiction. There are protagonists whose lives align with the investigations they conduct with varying degrees of commitment and interest. They can stand against the State because it is in their interest to have the truth brought out into the light and written about. And because it is fiction, people will listen and are capable of examining their society afresh in light of the new facts they are shown. Justice is possible in crime fiction as it is often not in real life. December 10, 2009By Sonal Makhija EARLIER THIS MONTH, the ‘Staying Alive: Third Monitoring and Evaluation Report 09’ on the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 (PWDVA) was released in Delhi. The report tracks the implementation of the Act for the third year in a row and has become a way to document jurisprudential development of the law and create a monitoring system. Findings are shared at a national conference annually at which civil society organisations can question state officials and examine progress. This has inadvertently come to operate as a social audit. The naming and shaming as well as applauding and deriding of state departments in a public forum fosters accountability and drives state governments to take necessary action. For example, this year, Minister for Law and Justice M. Veerappa Moily recognised the need for fast-track courts to deal with cases of violence against women, easy availability of free legal aid and prioritisation of women’s cases in courts. December 01, 2009
It reminded me of this time I was talking to someone about writing for UV. She’s a quiet, dark-eyed girl who rarely gets emotional. On this occasion, she did. ‘What’s the point of all this talk?’ she said suddenly. ‘We just become more and more aware of our rage. And don’t know what to do with it.’ |
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