"Slutwalk" programmes are an attempt to sensitize men towards their female contemporaries

Sherlyn Chopra is the first Indian woman to feature in Playboy. The Indian media is choc-a-bloc with news about the model, her life and challenges, the hardships she faced and the accolades she won after she was chosen to “decorate” the pages of Playboy. The media in India obviously knows that this will generate a lot of interest, and it has. Until now, Indian newspapers and magazines have been trying to create the impression that they are simply presenting the “facts” as they are. Strangely enough, in a country which has seen a couple of shocking incidents of crime against women in the past few weeks, nobody has commented on the social impact of Sherlyn’s “contribution” to Playboy or that of other scantily clad stars.

Abha Mondhe had a tough time in school, struggling with Math and Chemistry. To top it all, her handwriting was an eyesore. She remembers how she got inspired and finally achieved the unthinkable-for her.

Irfana Ali Bhat from Kashmir speaks about her experiences in Kashmir at a coeducational school as a girl wearing the veil.

How do you weave a picture of a girl in a conservative and conflict ridden society? Can she make it to school? Does she have dreams? Benish Ali Bhat on school in the conflict-ridden Kashmir valley.

Jahantab Faiz reminisces about her time at school, when she and friends played ball and how the rise of the Taliban shattered her school and her dreams.

When in 2000 at Sydney, weightlifter Karnam Malleswari became India’s first woman Olympic medalist, it was indeed a historic moment. Two decades later, several Indian women athletes are going to London with a dream of shattering Malleswari’s bronze effort.  Boxer Mangte Chungneijang Mary Kom or Mary Kom, as she is popularly known, is the brightest of them all.

Ray Charles sings “No more, No more” on my sound system as I try to take in my daily dose of facebook and realize that all my friends are posting pictures of some twenty men, faces circled in red. “Another terrorist attack in Delhi?”, I ask myself. “Guwahati”, I read under the photo. “Ah, ULFA it must be”, I tell myself, thinking about the separatist organization that has been a controversial issue for some decades now. But what has really happened?