Sudesna Ghosh doesn’t hate her body anymore

Say hello to a 29-year-old who’s spent most of her life hating her body and hiding herself from the world. That’s me. Lately, I haven’t cursed myself for being overweight, but I still continue to hide myself. Flashbacks from my days in school made me realise what had happened to make me behave this way.

Statues of women at the women’s museum in Bonn, Germany

Bonn is a culturally diverse city and one that appreciates the arts. I happened to visit the women’s museum in Bonn and was pleasantly surprised to see the wonderful installations on display there.

The author is having halal pizza at a restaurant in Bonn, Germany.

Any Muslim who has traveled around the world knows that it’s difficult to get Halal meat in many countries. On international trips you either become a vegetarian or can enjoy sea food if it’s available. In my recent travels to Yangoon, Beijing and Tokyo I enjoyed delicious vegetarian and sea food meals but by the end of my trip I was longing for chicken tikka, mutton karahi and beef kababs. 

As an Indian living in Germany, I try to hold on to as much “Indian-ness” I can possibly get. During one of my efforts to try and stay in tune with India, I went to a Bollywood dance workshop in Cologne. My curiosity grew when I found out that a German woman was conducting the workshop.

In newspapers there is a section called “personal ads.” When I was younger, I remember reading these personal ads, hiding from my mother since the content was explicit. Now, 25 years later, the language is the same: “Groom needed for a fair, pretty Muslim/Hindu girl,” or “A pretty fair bride needed for a businessman.” I wonder, even after so many years, why do women still have to be fair and pretty to be eligible for marriage?

Do men ever try to look at themselves as ‘men?’ A new film by Indian journalist and filmmaker Vivek Asri tries to portray the struggles of an Indian man trying to come to terms with the fact that he is infertile and cannot sire a child. How does such a man deal with the Indian stereotype of a macho, virile male and what does his wife have to go through in the process? Vivek speaks to Women Talk Online about the recurring themes of gender identity and of the sense of masculine loss in his film, “Every silence, another doubt.”

Sunscreens are known to shield you from sunburns and skin cancer. But a recent study exposed by the US-based Environment Working Group says that rather than protecting you from the sun, sunscreens can cause skin cancer. Debarati Mukherjee discusses surprising truths that you are probably unaware of when it comes to your closest guard-the sunscreen.