This is not a picture from a cookbook, but a picture of a lunch box made by a Japanese mother for her child. The cell phone traffic is maximum between 7 and 8 a.m. on a work week. It’s the time when most Japanese mothers share pictures of the lovely lunches they have made for their kids.

read more

“Don’t kill me please… I have done nothing wrong… I was just enjoying the rain, I don’t want to die… please … for God’s sake, brother, don’t kill me!”

I was begging and trying to hide myself behind my mother who was also begging for my life. She was asking my cousins to pardon me for bringing shame to the family. We kept pleading, but they shot me. I was dying, as the words “family honour” kept flashing across my mind.

read more

As a child, I often imagined I would die in front of my family or class mates and they would express their love to me and grieve over my dead body. This thought gave me a lot of satisfaction and even though I never really wished to be dead, just thinking I could be close to death assured me that I was loved and cared for.

read more

Mitu Khurana is a doctor who been fighting for years against female foeticide. She has been a victim of her parents-in-law who tried everything in their power to stop Mitu from giving birth to her twin girls. She has now become the woman who champions the cause of baby girls and an activist who leaves no stone unturned to create awareness on the problem of sex selection.

read more

Last January, I heard that a female student who jumped off a running bus in Jakarta and died because she was being harassed and the bus driver refused to stop the vehicle. It reminded me of so many other stories about rape in public transportation. The victims vary from students and career women to housewives.  But is a ‘wrong mentality’ to blame in this case?

read more

Arson and poison attacks on schools across Afghanistan, mostly against those teaching girls, have forced students to defend themselves, an extra-curricular activity imposed by the government which blames the Taliban for the violence.  Some 550 schools in 11 provinces have been closed because the state could not provide enough security.

read more

Women in Afghanistan suffered severely under the Taliban regime. They were prevented from going to school and working. Today, the country depends on help from abroad to guarantee schooling for girls.

read more