Haemophilia is a chronic genetic condition because of which even a relatively minor injury can result in death because blood fails to clot. Sufferers of haemophilia need to receive shots with factors that cannot be produced by their bodies and that are essential for clotting. The vast majority of sufferers are men.

Currently, India does not have a national policy on preventing and controlling genetic disorders like haemophilia. While these conditions are relatively rare, because India has the largest birth cohort in the world, in absolute terms, the numbers of people suffering from these disorders is quite high.

In the case of haemophilia, it is estimated that 1 in 10,000 Indians suffers from it, which means that there are at least 100,000 patients in the country. This is a relatively large burden of patients and therefore warrants a comprehensive public health intervention in the form of preventive and supportive services.

Moreover, there are several social and economic costs associated with the disorder.

1. Patients' lack of access to treatment

Inadequate access to treatment remains a major challenge in India, thereby affecting the quality of life of patients adversely. In a number of western countries, haemophiliacs receive regular injections of the clotting factor even in the absence of an injury. This is not the case in India. While some states offer the factor free of cost in public hospitals, others don't. Also some states offer the factor at only a few facilities which also limits access to treatment, especially for those who are socio-economically more vulnerable. The factor is expensive as a single shot can cost up to Rs 10,000 and hence is out of reach for poor patients.

2. Joint damage and disability

If a haemophilia patient does not receive timely medical help when he is injured, it leads to a weakening of his joints and can eventually result in disability. A study conducted in India showed that only 9 out of 148 patients did not have a disability. Many of these patients were young boys who belonged to socio-economically weaker sections of society.

3. Effect on education and employment

Frequent bleeding episodes and the associated excruciating pain causes many students to miss or drop out of school. Poor education results in a large number of patients being unable to find gainful employment. This is exacerbated by their inability to do certain types of jobs (such as those requiring physical labour) in the absence of regular treatment and prevention of disability.

4. Emotional costs and stigma

Haemophilia causes considerable distress to the families of patients because of the frequent bleeding episodes and consequent disability, as well as due to the high cost of treatment. Parents from poor backgrounds suffer from guilt and hopelessness due to the condition of their child and their inability to access appropriate treatment for him. Additionally, some people consider the condition to be a "curse", which means haemophiliacs often do not participate in family functions or marriage ceremonies which only worsens their mental condition and quality of life.

The combination of a large patient burden and the socio-economic costs of neglecting the condition suggests that India needs to consider a comprehensive national program for haemophilia. The emphasis needs to be not only on providing free factor at all public facilities but also supportive services for patients and their families including counselling and physiotherapy.

Co-authored by Sandesh Dubey, Senior Program Manager, Operation ASHA.

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Shaandaar, directed by Vikas Bahl, revolves around an orphan girl named Alia, an insomniac, and her adoptive family. Alia's condition worries her adoptive father and he keeps feeding her with fairy tales hoping they will eventually cure her by inducing some dreams. But, it's all in vain until one day she is swept off her feet by someone special. Shaandaar stars Shahid Kapoor, Alia Bhatt, Pankaj Kapur, Sanjay Kapoor, and Shushma Seth in the pivotal roles.

While the theme of wedding is quite common to Hindi films, Shaandaar toys with the idea of destination wedding--it's a trend that's fast picking up in India and Bollywood these days has pockets that go deep enough to pounce on any such promising opportunity. In Shaandaar, Vikas Bahl takes some creative liberties such as opting for the use of animated cartoons to narrate certain sections of the film including the opening and closing sequences with Naseeruddin Shah's voiceover narration. Although, this technique is new to Hindi cinema, filmmakers around the world have been employing this creative technique to spice up the conventional narratives. One is reminded of Quentin Tarantino's use of Japanese Anime in Kill Bill: Vol. 1.

"While the movie lacks any real substance, the creative thought that went into it needs to be commended."

While watching Shaandaar, one is repeatedly reminded of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. It appears to be a conscious choice on the part of Bahl and team to create a wonderland of sorts for their characters to inhabit. Alia is bored by her monotonous life and finds solace in the fairy tales fed by her adoptive father. Like Alice, she is driven by curiosity as well as the desire to live an adventurous life. And, just like Alice, she has the gift of imagination. Carroll's wonderland is a home to a panoply of colorful characters. While the characters in Shaandaar are nowhere near as vibrant, they nonetheless are fun to watch with their endless idiosyncrasies. Let's not forget that at the end of the day Shaandaar is a commercial Bollywood film!

As far as Hindi cinema is concerned, films that revolve around wedding are the safest bet at the box-office. It's the kind of cinema that the Indian masses crave for--a formula that just cannot fail in a diverse and colorful country like India. For, we Indians love to celebrate. The dozen or two religious festivals are just not enough. Festivities are an innate part of our lives. And marriage functions are the grandest of them all. We don't see marriage as merely a union of two individuals; it's essentially an alliance of two families. It's an occasion that gets everyone excited--be it the children, the young, or the old--for it is perceived as the greatest celebration of life. In short, the marriages are a singularly viable business. For Bollywood, it's a bankable subject like no other. Evidently, some of the biggest commercial hits in the history of Bollywood have been the films revolving around the theme of wedding. Given its rather innovative theme of destination wedding, it would be quite interesting to see how Shaandaar fares at the box-office.

Overall, Shaandaar can best be described as a nonsensical entertainer that epitomizes commercial escapism in modern-day cinema. While the movie lacks any real substance, the creative thought that went into it needs to be commended. Probably, the movie's greatest strength is that it makes us laugh, nonstop. It's over the top but it is fun nonetheless. Barring Pankaj Kapur, who delivers a solid performance, the acting on display is pretty average. The film features a flashy, tasteless cameo from Karan Johar who's the movie's co-producer. Shaandaar, while, for the most part, makes little sense, it is a perfect way to spend time with one's family during the festival season. So, go for it, if you are looking for a popcorn flick, else stay put!

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The Home Minister has expressed concern over growing intolerance in the country. The Finance Minister has spoken out against vandalism as a form of protest. Senior BJP leader Shanta Kumar is worried over growing communal strife in the country. Several people from the government and the Bhartiya Janata Party have spoken out against the tinderbox of hatred that our ecosystem has become. In a way, they are all admitting that all is not well with Modi's India and yet none of the above - including the Prime Minister want to address the crux of the problem.

Incidentally, Mohan Bhagwat vaguely describes the current incidents as 'small episodes that cannot dilute our culture', in his annual Vijaya Dashmi speech that got covered live by Doordarshan second time in the history of RSS (the first time was last year). General VK Singh invited well-deserved criticism by his dog-analogy when he likened the gruesome killing of two Dalit kids by Rajputs in Faridabad to dogs being stoned.

A lot of responsible and irresponsible comments are being made by senior ministers but little being done to contain the drift. It is important to know where the buck stops.

The answer to this question is critical to our understanding of the threat an organization that has all authority but no responsibility can pose to the society. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh with its paramilitary notions of being a self-appointed custodian of Hinduism, has under its umbrella, several organizations unaccounted for.

mohan bhagwat

This ambiguity provides the organization legal immunity just as anonymity helps trolls on social media to get away with the worst form of abuse and personal attack.

Thus, when Nathuram Godse kills Mahatma Gandhi, he is termed as a former member of the RSS. When Golwalkar's distasteful writings supporting the caste system, Brahmin supremacy and Hitler's concept of purity of race appear politically too incorrect, foolish attempts are made to first distance the author from his book and then distance the organization from the author - who was incidentally the second Sarsanghchalak of this organization.

When Organiser opposes the Constitution for not inspired by Manusmriti or when Panchjanya gets cornered for justifying the Dadri killing as sanctified by the Vedas, the organization smoothly disowns itself from both its mouthpieces.

When the affiliated organizations go and demolish the Babri Masjid, RSS distances itself from them too - the Liberhan Commission defines the RSS as a 'highly successful and corporatized model of a political party...' 'BJP remains an appendage of the RSS, which had the purpose only of providing an acceptable veneer to the less popular decisions and a façade for the brash members of the Sangh Parivar'.

Then RSS supremo KC Sudershan distanced his organization from the demolition by saying 'the mosque was demolished by the government men and not by karsevaks'. Displaying the tendency to speak in multiple voices and confusing people, there were other leaders of the RSS and its affiliates who took credit for the 'movement'.

rss bjp

Mohan Bhagwat expresses an opinion against caste based reservations - a stand consistent with RSS's opposition to any privileges stipulated in the Constitution right from the beginning - the rest of the organization and the BJP distances itself from the stand. Multiple voices attempting to please all but the writ of the RSS runs large. It is not what the RSS says that matters, it is what it does that affects our lives, because it does it through its various organizations. And the result can be seen in Dadri, Muzaffar Nagar, Mainpuri and Trilokpuri.

Apart from the BJP, Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, Bajrang Dal and Vishwa Hindu Parishad are among the leading organizations owing ideological patronage to the Sangh. There are other countless 'cradle-to-grave' organizations that draw active but invisible support and sustenance from the RSS. These include schools, NGOs, Gau Shalas, social clubs and organizations like the Vanwasi Kalyan Parishad, Gita Parivar, Janaki Ashram and Gayatri Pariwar, ostensibly for the welfare of tribals but essentially meant to sanskritize them.

"As the Modi government enters the middle of its second year, the agenda is swiftly getting hijacked by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh"
An organization that inculcates and thrives on pulp patriotism and spreads meaningless notions of cultural supremacy cannot be entrusted with guiding those who govern India. And those who govern India derive their world view and vision from this organization. The country is learning to its dismay that voting for the BJP translates into voting for a bunch of pseudo-nationalists who have no understanding of India and the modern world and want to impose their choices of food, language, culture, education and lifestyles on this vast country with varied cultures that have co-existed for centuries.

Imagine what would have been the impact of National Socialists if they had the aid of WhatsApp. That's the power of the Right Wing today. Every day millions of hate-filled messages are being transmitted to willing eyes ready to lap up anything that legitimizes their prejudices and beliefs.
As the Modi government enters the middle of its second year, the agenda is swiftly getting hijacked by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. The government is visibly losing its grip on the narrative and the country heading to a long phase of uncertainty. An election victory at this critical stage would mean an unwarranted legitimacy to this polarizing narrative. Can India afford this? Does India deserve this?

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This article is from Open Magazine.

By Sharin Bhatti

The ripples started last year. In 2014, Priyanka Chopra made an appearance at the Golden Globe Awards and its after-party in a strapless Burberry dress and a Bibhu Mohapatra. Team Priyanka--her managers and promoters in the US--made it known that the 'Bollywood star and exotic singer' was indeed in Beverly Hills. There she was, sashaying down the Hollywood red carpet alongside Julia Roberts, Lena Dunham, Jennifer Lawrence and Tina Fey, in relative anonymity. It was early in the year, the award season had just begun, and even though her presence in Hollywood won her admiring glances, it did not arouse much curiosity.

It's the fall of 2015 now and Priyanka Chopra, 33, has become an American TV icon. She is the luminously-haired, brown-skinned, accented and luscious Alex Parrish from the three- episodes-old ABC drama series Quantico, star trainee of the FBI and someone who is accused of 'the biggest terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11'. The Hollywood press has fallen in love with Priyanka's Alex. They are lauding her performance, her charm, her strong female characterisation, and how she stands a cut above the rest of the show's cast. With this, she joins America's gilded list of multicultural stars on television, like Taraji P Henson's Cookie (Empire), Viola Davis' Annalise Keating (How to Get Away with Murder) and Kerry Washington's Olivia Pope (Scandal).

And the praise is still pouring in. The New York Times has called Priyanka 'the strongest human asset in Quantico. Ms Chopra, a Bollywood superstar and former Miss World is immediately charismatic and commanding amid the otherwise generic ensemble. If there is a problem with her casting, it is that she may come across as too seasoned and assured to be persuasive as a shaky, neophyte recruit.' This almost back- handed compliment is echoed in review after review. Notes Variety: 'With an arresting lead in Priyanka Chopra, a former Miss World who was born in India, the show races through a lot of material very quickly, which makes it difficult to get a firm handle on where all of this will settle.' Reviewers all seem struck by how she seems like a beguiling mix of beauty with brains. The New Yorker's TV critic Emily Nussbaum was impressed enough with the show to write on Twitter, 'Part of the reason the Quantico pilot works so well is that it's a massive game of Truth or Dare and I will ALWAYS watch a TV Truth or Dare...' She later gushes that Priyanka's hair is 'a treasure we don't deserve.'

Quantico's poster on a billboard in Los Angeles (Photo: CORBIS)

She has even had a good run promoting the show. On Jimmy Kimmel Live, she was alluring and self-assured with Kimmel. Statistics wise, the show is doing exceedingly well. Variety reported as many as 6.9 million viewers tuning in for the second episode. This puts Quantico in the league of top-rated shows like CSI and NCIS.

'The show has been so widely received and appreciated by audiences in the US, proof of which is in the staggering numbers that the premiere episode has received,' writes Priyanka Chopra via email from Montreal, where she is shooting for upcoming episodes of the show's Season One. 'I am overwhelmed by the response and am glad that I've been able to make a connect with a whole new audience base. It's exciting times and I am looking forward to see where this goes. I'm just glad that my work has been appreciated. It was a huge risk for me to take and I'm happy that it's worked out positively.'

She has also been making friends with the reigning TV queens. 'It's amazing how supportive the entire ABC family has been to me. Kerry (of Scandal) has been someone who I've developed this crazy bond with... and we hadn't even met personally till a few months ago... it's all happened over Twitter and texts! I remember the first TV Upfronts in NYC and how Kerry, Ellen Pompeo, Paul Lee and the rest of the amazing people at ABC welcomed me into the fold so to speak and made me feel so comfortable, taking me through some of the fears I had as a TV debutant. It really was very very helpful and just so amazing,' she says.

The audience, meanwhile, is loving every bit of Priyanka Chopra on television. That this would happen was something ABC had an inkling of quite early on when at the ABC Upfront at both New York and LA, Paul Lee, president of ABC Entertainment, called on "the quintessential ABC star" to share the stage with him, hailing her as the toast of the upcoming season. Before the show hit airwaves, Priyanka Chopra found herself plastered all across New York's Times Square and on buses, pitched prominently in publicity material as the show's lead.

+++

Popular culture critic Aniruddha Guha outlines how she fits in with the network's strategy. "The conversation is more about ABC making a concerted effort to bring in different ethnicities. Quantico is a part of that bigger scheme," he says. Nevertheless, he adds that she has earned her big break, having invested cleverly in talking to studios and looking for opportunities that would suit her especially well. "A large part of why this is working for her is because she has put in the effort."

Now that the show is a hit, would she pick American television over Hindi cinema, though? 'I'm constantly reinventing... I don't like to stand still. I always have pushed myself to challenge the status quo, so to speak. There's a lot I want to do: explore other facets of myself, expand my creative base, reach new audiences, try new things... the least I can do is try! And no, [while] I will go wherever my work takes me, I will never leave Bollywood.'

She has been courting the West at least since 2012, even as she continued to take up major roles in big-budget Bollywood movies like Barfi, Krrish 3, Mary Kom and Dil Dhadakne Do as well as in forgettable ones like Gunday and Zanjeer. She has tried turning singer with Universal Music and found a representative in Troy Carter, who manages Lady Gaga. Even though her music diva avatar didn't quite go as well as she had hoped, she still managed collaborations with music superstars Pitbull and Will.i.am, and played at the opening of NFL Network's Thursday Night Football season in 2013.

Priyanka Chopra in an ad campaign for Guess

Making further headway in the American market for entertainment, Guess signed her on as its global brand ambassador. "I am the first Guess girl of ethnicity," she had said at the time, "I bring with me a demographic that may or may not know these quintessential American brands... I also think diversity is the name of the game today and Guess recognises that the quintessential American girl can be from any part of the world and I am proud to be part of the Guess campaign and be a major part of that change. I think I am a great blend of the East and West." A large part of what she is doing, intentionally or unintentionally, is breaking the 'Indian' stereotype in American popular culture.

Which brings us to her Americanised Indian accent. Contrary to popular belief, Priyanka Chopra actually has a speech coach on the sets of Quantico who is constantly coaching her and asking her to repeat lines over and over again. The aim is to arrive at a pronunciation that is New York Indian enough but also recognisably American. Ironically, while the Indian media has been fixated with her accent, of which it has been mostly critical, in America it has not been commented upon at all.

She is simply following a brief, and has managed to deglamourise herself completely to fit the role of Alex Parrish, something she earlier did for her award-winning role in Barfi. "When I went to cast Priyanka Chopra [in the film]," recalls filmmaker Anurag Basu, "I realised that I could not see her as my character. I told her that I was not sure, and that we should have a three-day workshop. But she surpassed all my expectations and now I cannot imagine the movie without her."

Priyanka Chopra says she chose Quantico over a lot of other American shows being planned because she anticipated a change in the way Indian women are viewed across the world. 'There's this force that exists today, where so many women in India are effecting change by just going out and chasing their dreams, doing things differently and pushing the boundaries of convention. We still have a long way to go, but the journey is fully underway and it's gaining serious momentum. So yes,'strong, independent, resourceful, intelligent and hardworking' is how Indian women should be viewed today.'

(Photo: Phillipe Bosse/Getty Images)

If Quantico sustains the traction needed for further seasons, Priyanka Chopra could find herself a regular on American TV screens for years and years. But she is not packing her bags and moving away just yet. 'Right now I don't think there are enough hours in a day for me to even consider that (more roles). I have my hands full right now with Quantico... we still have many episodes to shoot to complete the season. I also have some work left to film for Bajirao Mastani. There's a lot happening and at this time I would like to focus on Quantico and my film work here in India,' she says.

A large part of her success, though, must be credited to her productive and market-savvy team. She found a superb agent and marketer in US-based Anjula Acharia-Bath, founder of the media and pop culture company Desi Hits! and partner at the venture capital firm, Trinity Ventures. She's been the driving force behind Priyanka Chopra's American sojourns after she signed her on in 2010 and helped her strike a music deal with Universal and Interscope Records. She even got her to hobnob at last year's Golden Globe awards and ran a PR and digital campaign, working alongside Natasha Pal, who handles Priyanka Chopra's digital strategy. It was Acharia-Bath who set up a meeting with Keli Lee, executive vice-president, talent and casting, at Disney ABC TV Group, who in turn helped Priyanka Chopra bag the Quantico role.

Before choosing it, she read a few concept show scripts. And now that she is part of America's TV industry, she confesses to binge-watching shows of all kinds on air. 'I am a TV junkie,' she says, 'I love the way TV has grown and the rich content and amazing stories that have come out of TV land over the past few years. It's one of the main reasons I even considered doing TV in the US... there is such a wealth of ideas and amazing ways that stories are being told today.'

It's early days yet for the show, let alone dreams of appearing on the red carpet for a Golden Globe, but Priyanka seems set to gain fame in the US episode by episode. Before she knows it, she might have enough celebrity power in America to be more than a mere patch on what she has back home.

All images have been provided by Open Magazine.

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With Julian Opie's suite of landscape prints from 2012 titled "Winter", on display at the Sunaparanta Centre for the Arts in Panjim until 28 October, Goa has the opportunity to view the work of a contemporary master. Since the 1980s, Opie has gained prestige as one of the most influential artists on the British scene. Stirring up a new mood in the world of art and image-making, his work seamlessly traverses the boundaries that relegated mass market to kitsch and placed a high aesthetic value to practices within the traditional fine arts.

Trained as a sculptor from Goldsmith's College of Art in London, Opie belonged to a tight-knit batch of students that posed provocative visual critiques on practices of consumption in contemporary culture; this group came to be known as the YBAs, or Young British Artists. His art is conceptual, minimal and pop, all combined; his influences encompass the whole gamut of associations in the history of images and image-making. His intention is to reveal the logics of visual perception. Opie borrows and re-frames from the classical masters as much as from contemporary virtual technologies and the banal aesthetic of street signage.

"The slick precision creates a mood of a 'floating world' and brings to life the brisk crispness of the French winter."

Glancing upon the gallery walls, my mind jumps through thoughts and random associations. Ah landscape! I conjure art history, not only Opie's place within it, but the whole genealogy of its representation cascades -- from cave paintings to the renaissance, to enlightened 18th century aquatints, to colonial mappings and sci-fi movies. In the history of landscape depiction, travellers and adventurers attempted to capture the essence of faraway lands naturalistically, the romance of the picturesque, exotic milieus and colourful vistas.

Almost every instance of landscape depiction can be read as a claim of ownership, a desire to possess what one has rested one's eyes on, to inhabit, to nurture. The struggle and conflict in this desire lay in the truth that some lands were not up for grabs. Desire and conflict -- the psychological push and pull -- submerged the "cultured" world in a madness that lasted centuries; ugly wars and battles were fought. The market economy was born, and based upon this idea that one wants what one cannot have, and our socio-political identities became heightened and fraught in these aspirational longings. This history of the world lends everything to our current state of knowledge, aesthetics, tastes and notions of belonging to one's nation or imperial state; constructions of citizenship and Otherness were formulated within such visual representations of a "manifest destiny".

For those not fortunate enough to adventure overseas, a painting was the virtual reality of the time. Opie's installation reminds us of humankind's constant and consistent need to plot and map our footprint or location, and acquire a position of perspective -- visual, aural, existential. In the contemporary context, satellite imagery and Google mapping becomes a tool that Opie readily employs.

In Opie's minimal representations of nature's bounty, its layered textures are stripped down to give way to fluid, rounded shapes, and filled with winter hues. With every bend in the road, the light shifts and hazes through branches, a simple stroke of line shapes the contours in the horizon or structures that are passed by. Every principle of perspective and colour theory is applied -- things at a distance are faint and cool, and things in the middle and foreground are dark and warm. One can, as Opie intends, step into the picture(s) and claim rights of passage.

"With our eyes we walk, as Opie suggests, logging a-day-in-the-life-of-a-landscape experienced through light and feeling."

How might one represent a landscape today, in age of the speed of light and satellite imagery, and still conjure romance? How can a computer-processed image bring forth that same longing for escape into the romantic vista that painterly painting once did? Opie, with this slick, clean, precise installation of 75 prints, laminated on glass panels, and mounted in a gridded format ever-so-slightly off the wall, inserts himself into the genre of landscape depiction. The slick precision creates a mood of a "floating world" and brings to life the brisk crispness of the French winter. The registration is perfect. The unframed glass offers the effect of windows to the outside. There's a sense of floating also in the perceptual movement of the eye as it travels from panel to panel horizontally, from top to bottom. With our eyes we walk, as Opie suggests, logging a-day-in-the-life-of-a-landscape experienced through light and feeling. A photograph is taken every 20 steps of his walk, digitally manipulated and re-presented as a soft graphic image; bold shapes, suggestive of prints on camouflage gear; and the mis-en-scene of a video game or animated feature.

"Winter" is brought to Sunaparanta Centre for the Arts, in Panjim, Goa under the patronage of Raj and Dipti Salgaocar, in partnership with the British Council, as part of a travelling exhibition to India. Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi served as curatorial adviser for this show, which will be on display until 28 October, 2015.

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What is this attachment to misery?

There are reasons. Just look into your misery, watch, and you will be able to find what the reasons are. Then look into those moments when once in a while you allow yourself the joy of being in joy, and then see what differences are there. These will be the few things....

When you are miserable you are a conformist.

Society loves it, people respect you, you have great respectability, you can even become a saint; hence your saints are all miserable. The misery is written large on their faces, in their eyes. Because they are miserable they are against all joy. They condemn all joy as hedonism; they condemn every possibility of joy as sin. They are miserable, and they would like to see the whole world miserable. In fact only in a miserable world can they be thought to be saints. In a happy world they would have to be hospitalised, mentally treated. They are pathological.

Look into your misery and you will find certain fundamental things. One: it gives you respect. People feel friendlier towards you, more sympathetic. You will have more friends if you are miserable.

"If somebody is miserable, help, but don't sympathise. Don't give him the idea that misery is something worthwhile."

This is a very strange world, something is fundamentally wrong with it. It should not be so; the happy person should have more friends. But become happy and people become jealous of you, they are no longer friendly. They feel cheated; you have something that is not available to them. Why are you happy? So we have learned down the ages a subtle mechanism: to repress happiness and to express misery. It has become our second nature.

My sannyasins have to drop this whole mechanism. You have to learn how to be happy, and you have to learn to respect happy people and you have to learn to pay more attention to happy people. This is a great service to humanity.

Don't sympathise too much with people who are miserable.

If somebody is miserable, help, but don't sympathise. Don't give him the idea that misery is something worthwhile. Let him know perfectly well that you are helping him, but "This is not out of respect, this is simply because you are miserable." And you are not doing anything but trying to bring the man out of his misery, because misery is ugly. Let the person feel that the misery is ugly, that to be miserable is not something virtuous, that "You are not doing a great service to humanity."

Be happy, respect happiness, and help people to understand that happiness is the goal of life -- Sat-Chit-Anand.

The Eastern mystics have said the divine has three qualities. It is sat: it is truth, being. It is chit: consciousness, awareness. And, ultimately, the highest peak is anand: bliss. Wherever bliss is, the divine is. Whenever you see a blissful person, respect him, he is holy. And wherever you feel a gathering which is blissful, festive, think of it as a sacred place.

We have to learn a totally new language, only then can this old rotten humanity be changed. We have to learn the language of health, wholeness, happiness. It is going to be difficult because our investments are great.

That is why it is so difficult to be happy and so easy to be miserable.

Excerpted from The Book of Wisdom by Osho

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I have been avidly following the contentious debate - both in the Indian news and social media -- on writers returning their Sahitya Akademi awards. So far, 30 writers have done so in a move that the government has called " a manufactured protest."

Everyone has an opinion. The politicians, the media, the citizens, other writers. Their reactions have ranged from admiration and respect, to contempt and scorn.

These writers, who returned their awards to make a powerful statement, have had their integrity questioned, their gesture mocked and their motives questioned.

In the cacophony of discordant voices, has everyone missed the irony of the fact that these writers were protesting against the intolerance that now shrouds India?

Are they not right? Have we respected their decision? Have we allowed them the right to express themselves in the way in which they wanted to?

"I am not shocked at the politicians criticising them. I am not outraged at readers making comments but I am totally disappointed at the lack of understanding displayed by fellow writers."

And among the noise, the voices screaming in the loudest and shrillest tones are the colleagues of these writers. Why didn't they return their awards before? What politics is this? Why show disrespect to the country? Are they going to change their citizenship too? Hand in their passports?

The criticism, the personal attacks and the questions flew hard and fast. Writers and journalists began Twitter battles, their various followers joining in on the sniping.

As a journalist and a writer myself, I am angered at the barrage of criticism hurled at these writers, who, in the end, made a personal choice. They wanted to do it. Why can't they be free to express themselves in the way they want?

I am not shocked at the politicians criticising them. I am not outraged at readers making comments but I am totally disappointed at the lack of understanding displayed by fellow writers.

The whole idea of being a writer means that you have an open mind and you are willing to explore and understand multiple viewpoints.

Do you really have a right to judge your colleagues? Are they asking you to renounce your honours? To give up your awards? Then why this holier-than-thou stance?

What are you getting out of this? Shouldn't we question your motives? Your agenda?

As a writer and journalist of Indian origin based in the United States, I believe that we should be able to keep an open dialogue within our fraternity. We don't have to agree always but we should have a sort of unity among ourselves. We can stand together and be supportive while having different opinions.

We are a unique group. We are compassionate, sensitive, and emotional and we care deeply about the causes and issues that affect our world. We fight for the underdogs and we stand up against injustice. Sometimes we do so in our art, sometimes we do in the stories we report and sometimes we do as gestures of protest. We believe that it's important so we do it. We don't need your approval. We knew going in that we were not going to win popularity contests. But we believed it had to be done. Deal with it.

As for the question, does it make a difference? Let me share a personal story. In 1984, I was a Sikh teenager who witnessed the viciousness and brutality of the anti-Sikh riots that occurred after Indira Gandhi was assassinated.

I watched my devastated community dealing with the horror of the riots and in the aftermath as we rebuilt, we searched for kindness and support and we did get it from many sources.

But one of the gestures that touched my young heart was the one made by Khushwant Singh, who gave back his award after the Operation Blue Star incident. The badly bruised Sikh community had to salute him on that day.

It did make a difference.

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"We, the trade ministers, of Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States of America and Vietnam, are pleased to announce that we have successfully concluded the Trans-Pacific Partnership."

This announcement about the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) just ruffled the economists, political scientists, traders and businesspeople of the world. The US presents this trade pact as one that will promote economic growth, enhance competitiveness, raise living standards and reduce poverty. With extensive analyst reports, there remains no doubt that the Japanese automobile industry stands to gain the most with cheaper access to the US, the biggest export market for the Japanese car-makers. With Vietnam's eyes set on access to Japanese and US markets, it is likely that China will lose some of its market shares in these two countries. Certainly, this historic agreement might change China's position in the global trade spectrum.

No matter which country you're in, the TPP appears to be gearing one economy while slacking off another at the same time. But this might not happen immediately. And several other trade pacts are on their way; together these will shape the trade world of late 21st century. What is surprising and needs attention is that while the world is sinking into protectionist policies, the political leaders of 12 countries sat on a table to sign this common trade pact. This is more political than economic. While the economic impact will take time to roll off, the immediate political effect can already be seen in the form of insecurities among other states that are not a part of the TPP. And the story is not very different for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the US and the EU.

"These FTAs are causing eyebrows to be raised on the very existence of an institution like the World Trade Organization (WTO)..."

If I am Morocco, I see the TTIP happening and am keen on joining the European Union; if I am China, the TPP is a big blow to my face; if I am India, I am one country being really left out; if I am Brazil, I would rather not discuss my case.

But are these major agreements like TPP and TTIP the only triggers? The answer is no. There is increasing focus on regional integration with immediate neighbours, as is evidenced by the formation of regional blocs such as the South African Development Community (SADC) and the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC). Countries like the US which have no neighbours are reaching further to ink cross-Pacific or cross-Atlantic agreements like the recent Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) or the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).

Even more than regional integration, countries are increasingly looking for bilateral relationships. Bilateral agreements are at their zenith, running fast ahead of the multilateral ones. A country like Canada, which ranks high on trade openness (trade forming 64% of its GDP), has signed seven bilateral Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) in the last seven years with Korea, Honduras, Panama, Jordan, Colombia, Peru and European Free Trade Association -- the TPP bus is on its way. The list is long. These FTAs are causing eyebrows to be raised on the very existence of an institution like the World Trade Organization (WTO) which does not support bilateral and regional agreements in the first place.

Despite the WTO regulations, countries are increasingly taking measures to play the game their own way. Lately, the Doha Development Round aimed a major reform in the international trading system through reduction of trade barriers. With countries failing to agree on the agreements, be it on account of food security, domestic protectionism or any other, it can be said that the future of the Doha Round is uncertain, if not fully bleak.

"With increasing openness across borders, it is close to impossible to ascertain the sources of prospective pain points. No wonder, countries are inclining towards domesticising their economies."

Today, people don't know what is coming next. With increasing openness across borders, it is close to impossible to ascertain the sources of prospective pain points. No wonder, countries are inclining towards domesticising their economies. There are more capital controls than there is capital openness. China has imposed new capital controls on cash withdrawal; Cyprus took similar steps in 2013; Ukraine in 2014 limited the purchase of foreign currency; Argentina has significantly high capital and foreign exchange controls -- relaxation of capital controls high up in the presidential campaign in Argentina stands testimony to the fact that this is one of the most contentious issues in the life of a common Argentinean.

Increasingly, companies might not want to play global. For example, with a stronger dollar and volatility in China, Russia and Latin America, companies in the US are in a dilemma, wondering if they should focus on catering to the domestic demand, thereby increasing their domestic shares. If you export, you bring dividends back home in the foreign currency - not a very inspiring scenario for American manufacturers today.

Overall, trade in value is contracting. What is worrisome is that the trade in volume is also contracting. The world has seen the third consecutive year in which the trade grew at less than 3%.

There is a situation of overall slowdown and hence a global panic. Every country is navigating its own way, trying to buffer itself from the shocks in the global market. The battle rests with the player who navigates using the right compass.

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This article is from Open Magazine.

By Sonali Acharjee

She's only 12 years old, a school student in Delhi, and Sonam Tiwari is already throwing teenage tantrums. But it's not a new phone, a holiday abroad, a new bike or a new dress that she is after. No, her IIM-educated professional parents have already given her all these. Now she wants something that they had never thought their 5-ft 2-in painfully thin daughter would ever ask for--a nose just like Sridevi's 14-year-old daughter Khushi Kapoor. "We still aren't sure how to react to her request. No parent ever expects their child to ask for cosmetic surgery. Honestly, till she brought it up, we didn't even know who Khushi Kapoor was," says her mother, Geet Tiwari.

So who is Khushi Kapoor? She's definitely not 'just another Bollywood star's kid'. With 38,000 followers on Instagram and 2,000 followers on Twitter, Khushi, much like her older sister Jhanvi, is now a star in her own right. The photos she puts up of her father Boney Kapoor, of herself kissing singer Jack Gilinsky on the cheek and standing next to Ed Sheeran, of her travels and even selfies of her hands and legs go viral instantly, each inviting close to 3,000 likes and 200 comments typically. But it's not just her lifestyle and her star heritage that is bringing her this attention. Kids simply can't get enough of her looks.

khushi kapoor

"She used to be this really chubby sidelined kid. I remember seeing her on a magazine cover with her mother and sister, and she looked like a real ugly duckling. Then she suddenly had a dramatic makeover and became so seriously hot. Just look at her selfies now--so much confidence and self-assurance. No wonder young people love her. She's now got the looks that one can aspire for," says Neeti Srivastava, 22, a member of Jhanvi Kapoor fan club. Interestingly, Jhanvi only has a paltry 1,162 'likes' on Instagram and 1,491 followers on Twitter. But she does have her own fan club. "I think people have always been used to Jhanvi being thin and pretty. But somehow it's Khushi's transformation that has really got everyone talking. The ugly duckling really did turn into a swan," adds Srivastava.

And talk, they do. Every since Khushi revealed her new avatar, the press and her followers haven't stopped circulating rumours of her having undertaken cosmetic surgery. These have become so strong that cosmetic surgeons as far away as Dubai have received requests from young girls who want their nose or their smile or even their eyes to look 'just like Khushi'. "Kids today are much more conscious of their looks and cosmetic surgery prices have been falling like crazy because of excess demand. Why not achieve perfection when it's available? Earlier requests used to come in for body parts like [those of] Bollywood actors, and now it's their children that people aspire for," observes Dr Sohan, a laser surgeon from Delhi, adding that this switch in popularity has been all thanks to social media. "Earlier you'd need to land a film or at least a TV commercial for people to fall in love with your looks. Now all you need to do is take the perfect selfie and be social media savvy."

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khushi instagram

An Instgaram post by Khushi Kapoor

Khushi isn't the only star progeny that social media users are going gaga over. Aalia Ebrahim, Pooja Bedi's 17-year-old daughter, who describes herself on Facebook as an 'actor and director', has close to 10,000 'likes' on her Facebook page. Her posts, '13 cute kids who are porn stars today', '10 top tips for girls: How to have the best time with him', 'This Delivery Boy Finds A Lonely Girl Sleeping And Rapes Her-- What Happens Next Is A Shocker', and 'Top 10 Amy Jackson Hot HD Seductive Wallpapers' have got her fans falling head over heels in love with her and the academic community up in arms. "What sort of role models are we giving our young children today? If the body is the only way to look good and feel good about yourself, then it is little wonder that kids face so much pressure in their teenage years. A constant need to click 500 selfies of yourself does make young people insecure and low on self-esteem," says Malavika Kapur, a noted child psychologist from Bengaluru and a honorary professor at the National Institute of Advanced Studies.

Easy or not, it isn't stopping star children, and even star nephews and nieces, from claiming their share of the limelight online. Ahaan Panday, Chunky Panday's teenage nephew, has 22,000 followers on Instagram and has received 560,000 'likes' on ask.fm. Another widely admired account is that of Ibrahim Ali Khan, Saif Ali Khan's 15-year-old son, has over 25,000 followers on his Instagram page. He posts frequent selfies (sometimes topless) and photos of himself chilling with friends and hanging out with his famous grandmother, aunt and step-mother (Sharmila Tagore, Soha Ali Khan and Kareena Kapoor).

pooja bedi daughter

But it is the photos with Khushi Kapoor, Jhanvi Kapoor and Navya Naveli Nandan (Amitabh Bachchan's 17-year-old granddaughter who has 57,000 people on her Facebook page and 6,000 followers on Twitter) that bring him the most publicity. "I was heartbroken for days when I saw the photos with the other girls. For the last year, I have wanted to marry him. I am such a huge fan of his. He is so much more classy and gorgeous than his father. I think I would just go into depression if he doesn't go into films. He was made for the screen," gushes Maria Thomas, 15, one of his followers from Kerala.

Another fan, 14-year-old Sia Manchandani, from Dubai emails saying, 'He should never have a girlfriend. Such a handsome person deserves to belong to the world.' Manchandani prints out every photo that Ibrahim posts and diligently pastes them in a scrapbook so that she can 'look at it whenever she wants.' And if there is a gap in his posts, she feels 'so depressed that I don't even want to go to school that day.'

If the girls 'are in love' with the male star kids, for the boys, Aalia, the Kapoor sisters, Navya Nandan, Shanaya Kapoor (Sanjay Kapoor's 15-year-old daughter), Krishna Shroff (Jackie Shroff's daughter who has 70,000 followers on Facebook) and Aaliyah Kashyap (Anurag Kashyap's 14-year-old daughter who has 160,000 'likes' on ask.fm and 19,000 followers on Instagram) are pure eye candy. 'When I see Aaliyah's legs I can barely go to sleep at night. I also was in love with Krishna Shroff's topless photos. But Aaliyah is my dream girl. There is something in her pose, her grace, her eyes, her smile that can drive a girl completely crazy. She is just so pure looking,' emails one fan, 18-year-old Mikey K from Puducherry. She is 'so pure looking' that Mikey claims he dumped two girlfriends just because they couldn't 'match upto Aaliyah's looks'.

Interestingly, it's not like the girls aren't aware of their online sex appeal. 'Sexy', 'hot', 'boobs', 'cutie', 'fuck' and 'hottie' are some of the most common terms that appear in the comments left on their photos. Some, such as bikini shots, images of thighs, derrière pictures in tight dresses, cleavage flashes in selfies and other kind of party photographs tend to inspire even more vulgar comments. Dhiraj Gupta, a 16-year-old student from Patna, says that his entire class passes around photos of Aalia Ebrahim in a leopard-print bikini via email, but he only likes to look at "the sweet photos". "I think they are all very innocent and cute. When they post skin waale photos, I simply don't look at them. For me, it's the lifestyle and their travel that is so interesting," he says.

aryan khan navya

Of course, not all comments involve flattery. When Vidie Mukherjea, Indrani and Peter Mukherjea's daughter, posted selfies during the alleged murder case against her mother several trolls turned on her. "She should be with her mother. I lost all respect for her," says Srivastava, who had contemplated starting a Vidhie Mukherjea fan club but lost interest after seeing her posts.

Such is the popularity of Bollywood's teenage offspring that a select few don't even need to be on social media to gather a colossal fan following. Aryan Khan, Shah Rukh Khan's 18-year-old son, has a whopping 74,000 people who 'subscribe' to his unofficial fan page on Facebook. His Twitter fanclub has 3,000 followers, and on Instagram he has close to 3,000. And what do these clubs do? Why, they stalk him of course. Every post, every photo, every video and every public spotting that is available of Aryan is chronicled, edited, captioned and hashtagged on these pages. And it is here that Sonam Tiwari first got the idea of getting herself a nose 'like Khushi Kapoor' and her distraught mother just doesn't know how to wean her daughter off her latest request.

ibrahim khan

According to Geet, "Sonam was a huge fan of Aryan Khan. This, we knew about. And we let her have all the photos and wallpapers she wanted. Then she read somewhere that he hangs out with Khushi Kapoor and she thinks she looks just like Khushi Kapoor, except for her nose. Having a teenage crush is one thing... even I was in love with Tom Cruise at one point, but I didn't want to make my face like Nicole Kidman's. Social media makes these celeb kids seem like they are completely approachable for young girls. They feel like these kids-- who have incidentally achieved nothing significant in their life apart from having some really well-known genes--are their friends because they let them in on their lives through selfies and posts. I know girls in Sonam's class actually believe that Ibrahim Ali Khan reads their messages and will meet them all one day. It's ridiculous. I don't even know how to argue or reason with my child anymore. If I tell her she's too young for a nose job, she turns around and tells me, 'Well, Khushi did it'."

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The road to parenthood becoming a fruitful reality is approximately 40 weeks long. Try as you may, you just cannot go above the nature-regulated speed limit. This journey, to me, is a bit like a board game. More often than not, you go from the starting point to the winner's circle on a set path, and lady luck occasionally throws you a few lucky rolls of the dice, the outcomes of which are anybody's guess.

As a father, I see pregnancy as five complex yet beautiful phases.

Phase 1: Wonderful beginnings

From a man's point of view, this stage almost always starts with either a "Yay, we're pregnant!" or a "I'm pregnant with your child".

"Be prepared for a lot of 'Do I look fat in this?' or 'I don't fit into those jeans anymore'."

Great, you're expecting! This has to be amazing news. Both of you are excited beyond words, and suddenly everywhere you turn, you can't help but notice expectant couples. You personally want to shout out the news from the top of a very high building, but you do somehow keep the news to only immediate family/friends. You dote on your partner and are available at her beck and call. Her tiniest ooh, her smallest aah has you in a flurry of concern. If you are a couple that enjoy the occasional drink, you voluntarily vow to take a detox along with the mother until the little one(s) is/are out. This phase usually lasts until the first proper scan.

Phase 2: Ups & downs

You've just accompanied your partner for her first scan. As much as you hate to admit it, you've been jittery for the past couple of days -- after all, this scan is black and white proof of your impending parenthood. The scan goes well, your excitement is confirmed, and you've now officially got an ultrasound image of something that resembles a cross between a mid-size squashed coffee bean and a baby chimp. Though you are vividly aware of both the scan technician and your better half squealing in delight at the apparent features of your baby, you probably are squinting at the screen, unable to differentiate the baby's head from its feet. Fear not, for research has shown that men struggle with inkblot tests, which would probably go some way to explain our lack of skill in this field.

However, the ride is not entirely stress-free. As your baby grows, so does your partner, albeit very slowly. And invariably so do your partner's pregnancy-related syndromes -- nausea, tiredness, an absolute aversion to some previously well-liked aromas, to name just a few.

To add to your misery, your partner now starts to show signs of weight gain; unfortunately the worst part of this is that she now starts to look more overweight than pregnant. So be prepared for a lot of "Do I look fat in this?" or "I don't fit into those jeans anymore".

Be patient -- she deserves to complain. However, this is where the luck of the dice starts to come into play for the first time in this board game of pregnancy. Your partner could have all, some or none of these symptoms at all. This phase also sets off a round of maternity-related purchases --maternity clothes, baby toys and so on.

Phase 3: Calm before the storm

As a couple, you are now approximately seven months into your pregnancy. In all likelihood, your partner has now been set free from the vicious hold of the initial pregnancy -related symptoms. Or perhaps, the two of you have made peace with them and accepted them as part and parcel of this wonderful journey.

"At approximately eight-plus months starts the penultimate leg of this lovely journey. Be prepared to hear this phrase, at least once a day: 'I hate you!'"

By now, the signs of pregnancy are really starting to show -- she with her cute round bump and you with those monstrous dark circles under your eyes as well as your overall dishevelled state. Personally this is one of the best stages of the pregnancy -- your partner gets a lot of attention from everyone, loads of congratulatory messages and plenty of "You look so beautiful / You're glowing" messages. It's great because these feed her ego, and hence you are inevitably much more relaxed.

However, you can't secretly help but wonder if you should invest in a king-size bed, in the hope that this might stop you from being kicked out at night. Have fun while this lasts.

Phase 4: "I hate you... and everything else"

At approximately eight-plus months starts the penultimate leg of this lovely journey. Be prepared to hear this phrase, at least once a day: "I hate you!"

She finds it difficult to breathe, and everything part of her body that can swell, will. Maternity clothes stop fitting and she even finds it an arduous task to wear any kind of footwear that involves straps or a pair of laces. And you find yourself at the receiving end of every single outburst. You're torn between wanting to take care of her, and secretly wanting to stay a bit longer at work -- until she goes to bed, perhaps. But at this stage, even a simple thing like a nap is excruciatingly difficult for her to come by.

Once again, be patient. We men can whine and whinge all we want when we are able to do what she is doing - growing a life. Until then, be as loving and kind as you can be. At this point, though, your resolve to abstain from alcohol (refer Phase 1) is beginning to falter, especially when you hear for the millionth time from friends and well-wishers: "Haven't you guys had the baby yet?"

Phase 4 culminates with both of you secretly harbouring the same thoughts - "I don't care if that baby needs to be pulled out through the ears, I just wish it'd hurry up!"

Phase 5: The miracle of birth

This phase often starts with a long resounding aaah from your better half, which progressively gets repeated every 10 minutes or so. So you do the best thing possible -- call the maternity wing and let them know you think the bun has been in the over long enough.

Depending on your luck, you'll either be asked to come in straight away, or the duty nurse will insist on speaking to the mother-to-be to assess the situation. Eventually, your partner will make it to the hospital. She'll be "comfortably" (yeah, right!) settled on the hospital bed, dressed in a traditional maternity gown, bed at a half-elevated position. As for you, you're just sitting around by the bed, waiting for the inevitable. Besides the occasional visits from the maternity nurse and the doctor-on-call, the two of you have some quality time to pass. Unfortunately, neither of you are in the mood to have lengthy philosophical or romantic conversations.

Sooner or later, the fated moment will materialise, and riding on these waves of pushes and deep breaths shall arrive the answer to the age-old travel question, "are we there yet?": Your little bundle of joy!

Sounds simple, doesn't it?

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Last week I visited Lucknow. What I saw was an extremely congested, very noisy and, in some places, very dirty city. How I long for my Lucknow of the 1960s.

I was born and raised in Lucknow. I did my schooling in St Francis' College (situated on Shahnajaf Road and very close to Hazratganj) and then went in 1967 to IIT Kanpur to study Mechanical Engineering. After my graduation from IIT Kanpur, I went to the US and then came back to rural India to run a small NGO.

The house in which I was born was situated in the centre of Hazratganj. It was an old British bungalow which was allotted to my father in 1947. We lived in this house till 1960 because in that year it became unliveable after the great Lucknow floods. We then moved to a Lal Bagh flat which was opposite Basant cinema. We surrendered this flat to the building owner in 2006 after my father's death and thus ended my physical connection to Lucknow.

"The beautiful parks and open spaces are now all converted to high-rise apartments. A manifold increase in traffic and deafening noise pollution complete the picture."

I had a great love for parks and the outdoors and I vividly remember going quite regularly to the National Botanical Garden (NBG) to sit and study under a tree. The NBG is part of National Botanical Research Institute (NBRI) and is on Rana Pratap Marg and close to Hazratganj. In the 1960s the garden used to remain open the whole day and was peaceful and very few people came during day time. After coming home from school, I would have my lunch and then take my books and go to NBG.

Since we lived in Lal Bagh near Hazratganj -- a mere kilometre from the park -- it was very easy to go there. Also the road to NBG, which passed through Hazratganj and Shahnajaf Road, used to be deserted during the afternoon save for the odd cycle-rickshaw or Ambassador car.

Nowadays, the NBG is closed during the day. It opens only in the morning or evening for daily walkers and the crowd is so heavy that sometimes it is difficult to walk on the paved pathways.

When I recently visited Lucknow and went to see our flat, I was shocked to see the horrific traffic. It was impossible to cross Lal Bagh Road since it was completely choked by two wheelers which were parked three layers deep! Also Shahnajaf Road on which St Francis' College is located is now completely jammed with cars, motorcycles and rickshaws. When the school gets over in the afternoon it is impossible to even walk on the broad road.

Similarly I remember very vividly that in the morning I used to go for long walks starting from our flat in Lal Bagh, going through Lucknow Zoo (called BanarsiBagh), passing along the side of the lovely golf course, through La Martiniere College and ending at the Shamshan Ghat (Cremation ground) in Dilkusha Garden. The return journey would be via Loreto Convent School, Raj Bhavan and General Post Office (GPO). The total journey of about 8-9km was done in about 1½ hours.

Recently during my Lucknow visit when I tied to retrace this route I got lost after crossing BanarsiBagh (Lucknow Zoo). Because instead of the small tree-lined road going to La Martiniere College there was this four-lane highway going towards Faizabad! La Martiniere College itself has become a gated campus, so the open, tree-filled environs have altered irrevocably.

" I wonder what impressions will be left with the children growing up in this polluted, noisy city. How I wish they could have in future the green Lucknow that I grew up in."

The same is true all over Lucknow. The beautiful parks and open spaces are now all converted to high-rise apartments. A manifold increase in traffic and deafening noise pollution complete the picture. Gomti Nagar, a new upscale colony, boasts the Ambedkar Park, which boasts about 125 stone elephant statues! During the summer months this whole area is like an oven since it bakes under the sun and with hardly any trees the whole place radiates absorbed solar energy at night.

After passing Indian School Certificate Examination in 1966 I joined Colvin Taluqdar College. This old college, with beautiful buildings from the Mughal era, is located across Gomti River and from our flat in Lal Bagh would take about 10-15 minutes by bicycle. I would carry my younger brother, riding pillion, to the college. The journey was very pleasant, with Monkey Bridge over the Gomti River nearly empty - there was barely any danger of meeting with an accident along this stretch.

Today it is impossible to go over the bridge due to traffic jams, and two-wheelers and bicycles traverse it at their own peril.

Similarly, it is now impossible to cross Hazratganj Road in the evening since the automobile traffic is unbelievable - the lack of parking facilities exacerbates the problem. With all this traffic I am sure the quality of air in Lucknow must be really horrible.

A great city is known by its open and green spaces. I have visited famous cities all over the world and they are all characterised by beautiful parks and gardens. Unfortunately in India we do not value these things and with rampant corruption and an unholy nexus between politicians and builders many once-beautiful spaces are destroyed by ugly high-rise buildings. This has made most of India's cities unliveable. And Lucknow is no exception.

My memories of park-laden Lucknow are now only that, with the reality being very ugly. And I wonder what impressions will be left with the children growing up in this polluted, noisy city. How I wish they could have in future the green Lucknow that I grew up in.

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By Sambhav Sharma

Growing up I had to claim my safe space in a dominant straight/heterosexual culture. My sexuality has constantly been policed by the state, the mainstream literature, by the cinema of our times, by elders, by teachers, by moralists, by politicians. There are millions like me in this country, people who belong to the queer community. But then there are many other minority groups in India. What about you? Do you belong to one?

Today, you're faced with a feeling of oppression by your state. The state now tells you that Hinduism is above all the other religions and practices. You must practice its way of living. Recently, you read about a place called Dadri, Uttar Pradesh, where a Muslim man, the father of an Indian Air Force staffer, was killed by a murderous mob for the rumoured "crime" of eating beef, a meat that is banned in several states today. About a month ago or so, the government declared that watching porn is illegal (though that ban has been lifted now). Back then, when you logged on, you realised all the popular porn sites were blocked. It was not done with your consent. This is still a democracy, right?

"The freedom to be who we are and to express ourselves as we want to is likely to become a luxury that we won't be able to afford soon."

The RSS and other Hindu fundamentalist groups have emerged like wild mushrooms in every part of this country like never before. They are the religious police who are controlling many urban and rural spaces. This month, the Shiv Sena hit the front page news again. They emerged as the sole spokesperson for the state of Maharashtra as they imposed a ban on a concert of the legendary Pakistani singer Ghulam Ali, who was made to bear the guilt of what Ajmal Kasab did. This was followed by the ink attack on Sudheendra Kulkarni. Ashok Vajpeyi, a gifted poet, recently wrote a short note on why he returned the Sahitya Akademi Award. "These are very difficult times for literature, the arts, tradition and culture," he explained. "The plurality, accommodation and inclusion, openness, multi-linguality and multi-religiosity which have sustained and energised us are all under assault constantly.''

Does that make you feel scared of what's in store for all us? Do you feel angry?

Most of us are angry. More than 25 gifted writers have returned the prestigious Sahitya Akademi award to the state because they don't identify with the hostile environment created by our current government. Like me, and many other minorities, they too feel oppressed. As poet Ashok Vajpeyi wrote in his note, ''We are on the brink of a tyranny of uniformity and parochialism. Violence, murder, intolerance, bans are creating a fearful ethos. Being in a minority is almost a crime.''

That's how we, the minorities, have felt since the independence of this complex country called India. We're oppressed and discriminated against for who we are. It's been happening for a long long time now. But today, it's not just us the current government is going after. The BJP and the Prime Minister have made you a direct target and you should feel as angry as we do about the current state of affairs.

It's time for all us to come together and fight against the fascist government that we accidentally chose and are stuck with. Narendra Modi was sworn in as Prime Minister on 26 May, 2014, and since then we minorities have been thanking our lucky stars just for surviving one day at a time under this fascist government. We're not the only ones counting the days until the next election. This fight is not ours alone anymore. The current government is attacking the very idea of freedom in our lives and we need to wake up to this fact. The freedom to be who we are and to express ourselves as we want to is likely to become a luxury that we won't be able to afford soon. The irony is that we still call our nation democratic.

But all of us are in this together, whether we belong to the LGBTQ community, the Dalit community or just the general population.

It should also be very clear to us now that whether we are minority or not, those of us who feel our freedoms impinged upon have to come together to fight against this government that we are stuck with for the next few years. Our freedom is under attack and we need to reclaim it.

Sambhav Sharma is a young Indian LGBTQ rights activist who helped drive Queer Campus among students in Delhi since 2010. He is a translator and interpreter by profession. He writes, reads, travels and dreams of a better India, a better world.

A version of this post was first published at Gaylaxy

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Where do I begin? The romance is over. The buzz is out of the window. The marriage is a farce. This is the end of Part 1.

Everyone knows someone who is on their second round of love. Eat Pray Love Again is the new mantra. Empty nesters who look at each other and discover they no longer have a reason to stay together now that the kids are gone, women who outgrow their partners intellectually and financially, men who outgrow their women sexually. It's all happening, somewhere between turning 40 and the hair transplant.

Even our very own darling Shah Rukh as Raj in Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge may have had second thoughts, 20 years after he made us believe he was the perfect match for all of us. He was the ultimate boyfriend-turned son-in-law, turned husband (OK, the husband part is a question mark. We hope, but we don't know. The train had left the station when our heroine in her Manish Malhotra lehengas leapt on to it. So we actually have no clue what happened after the suhaag raat). Lets wait for the new Dilwale to find out if "Raj" is still the husband we all crave. Or did he lose the plot like so many others before him. All wives today are certainly not simpering Simran. Such types are as dated as Dalda Vanaspati.

"I actually know of women who have made Mr Rich, the third bakra, much older and loaded, pay off husband number 2 and banish him into comfortable silence..."

I am particularly fascinated by women who are the new serial wives. Their social growth curves are really steep, humbled only by the growth in their personal assets. There is actually a pattern to their progress. Most such accomplished women I know of, who have the unique ability to remain remarried, have started off very young and with simple men who worshipped them.

The First Love. It's the normal boy-meets-girl-in-middle-income-bracket. Raging hormones mingled with tears of pain and promises of everlasting romance. The Ally Mc Graw-Ryan O Neal type of Love Story. Except that this new woman doesn't die so romantically and leave the man bereft. She just exits. She may or may not have a baby with him, but if she does, chances are she will move on anyway and the granny will take over the mothering.

With, or most probably without baby in tow, she will seek and quickly find The Opportunity. The guy with a real job in a better social circle, some decent business connections and probably in a bigger city. This man is usually a tad brighter, and totally fascinated by this wanderlust woman who has had "such a hard life till now", but with the ability to make him feel like he is the only man in the room. He doesn't pay heed to his heart or head and marries her against all sound counsel and lives to regret it. After a couple of years of playing the wife, she finds him too ordinary.

Suddenly, it's over. Normally, there is very little alimony involved, and I actually know of women who have made Mr Rich, the third bakra, much older and loaded, pay off husband number 2 and banish him into comfortable silence so she can hang onto number three's large gold Rolexed arm at a party without guilt. Needless to add, this gentleman has since dispensed with his own gharwali who now tends to the offspring and even former in-laws in divorced bliss. It's hard to stay "pati vrata" with a pati who is always pataoing other ladies. Good riddance. She joins girlie travel groups and lives it up.

"Mr Rich normally lasts until the Viagra needs to come home along with the Sugarfree. And Madamji has convenient headaches and satsang appointments when that happens."

Mr Rich normally lasts until the Viagra needs to come home along with the Sugarfree. And Madamji has convenient headaches and satsang appointments when that happens. So he's OK with picking up floozies at parties and gold diggers in search of sugar daddyjis. By now our Madamji (no, not all are called Chatterjee or Mukerjea) has a guruji whom she hangs with and "heals" with. And a sympathetic potential husband number four is somewhere on the scene. The circle of love continues. Mr Rich will soon find himself a Ms Butt and Madamji will be on her way. The divorce will be fought until she likes the number of zeros in the financial settlement and little Ms Butt will pour herself into designer wear and starve herself to death for the rest of her active sex life to keep Mr Rich satisfied. Meanwhile, pending divorce, Madam will continue to be the resident MBA (marriage and bhog attender). Many fillers and facial peels later, she will discover God and Goa. And we will have another story to tell. Part 3 has just begun.

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On 28 September, India witnessed one of its most chilling murders when 50-year-old Mohammad Akhlaq was lynched in Dadri, Uttar Pradesh, following rumours that he and his family had consumed beef. While certain politicians are attempting to pass of the murder as an "accident", I believe that it is more accurately viewed as part of a well-planned conspiracy to foment trouble between two communities that had been living together peacefully until that point.

The state of Uttar Pradesh has witnessed multiple incidents of communal violence ever since the Samajwadi Party came to power, the worst being the Muzaffarnagar riots, where more than 60 people lost their lives and tens of thousands of people were displaced from their homes. The government's inept handling of the situation and the absence of action against the perpetrators has come under severe criticism, including from the Supreme Court. One of the accused is the BJP MLA Sangeet Som, who is a prime suspect for inciting the violence. He was charged for uploading a fake video that showed a Muslim mob brutally murdering a Hindu youth. The same Som is now being charged for making inflammatory speeches in Dadri, and accusing the state government for rescuing the "cow killers".

"[Modi] should take immediate steps to remove the demagogues from the BJP, before they not only sully his image but cause irreparable harm to the party."

BJP leaders, too, have made unfortunate statements that only aggravated the situation. Member of Parliament Sakshi Maharaj, who had once blamed Rahul Gandhi for the earthquake in Nepal, had this to say on the Dadri lynching: "If someone insults our mother, we would rather die than tolerate it... for us, [our mother] is Bharat mata, our biological mother and gau mata..." This statement came immediately after the party had reprimanded a few members for making controversial statements.

Azam Khan of the Samajwadi Party, in the meantime, went ahead and wrote a letter to the United Nations , highlighting the plight of Muslims in India and calling for the international body's intervention. Then there was All India Majlis-e Ittihad al-Muslimin (AIMIM) leader Akbaruddin Owaisi , who is facing charges for a speech in which he referred to Narendra Modi as a "shaitan" (devil). Intemperate speeches and comments designed to add more fuel to the fire are clearly the order of the day.

A group of academics who had visited Dadri on 2 October to understand what led to the incident came out with a report that described the sophistication of forces behind such communal violence. "It's all about low-intensity, high-impact communal violence that targets better-off Muslims, and puts a general sense of fear in the minds of others," stated the report. The group has also called for action against Union Culture Minister and MP for Gautam Budh Nagar Mahesh Sharma for inciting violence against journalists.

Amidst this widespread turmoil, all we have from the Prime Minister is a belated message of bland regret. It is difficult to fathom the reasons for Mr Modi's silence, and also his inability to rein in his MPs and ministers. Is there an invisible hand restraining him from speaking his mind? The longer this reticence continues, the more it will be construed as evidence of tacit approval of what is happening in the country. It is here that he should take a cure from US President Obama who strongly and emotionally condemned the recent college shooting in Oregon. Let us not forget that America is the most federal nation in the world, and the President has no say in law and order. But he does not use that as an excuse to brush aside important issues.

The Centre may indeed not have a direct role in the Dadri incident, but the Prime Minister could go a long way in assuaging the fears of minorities if he at the very least released a statement strongly condemning the killing of Akhlaq. Why don't we hear from him instead of the likes of Azam Khan, Owaisi, Sakshi Maharaj and Sangeet Som? While it's true that he recently had some repeat offenders reprimanded and made known his displeasure at their antics, he needs to go a step further.

The people of India have invested their hope and faith in the Prime Minster. He should take immediate steps to remove the demagogues from the BJP, before they not only sully his image but cause irreparable harm to the party.

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India's favourite drink lassi is delicious and can be made in different flavours. But it's not everyone's cup of tea. Lassi is famous due to its probiotic content and cooling effect, but the latest research proves that dairy products often contain antibiotics, hormones, pesticides and even mucus. According to this article in The New York Times , there is very little evidence on the benefits of milk on bone development and better health. Citing recent studies, the article asserts that "milk consumption may not only be unhelpful, it might also be detrimental." In addition, it's a myth that drinking gallons of milk can prevent osteoporosis and skeletal fractures. This holds true regardless of whether the milk you drink is organic, raw or from grass-fed sources.

Dairy-free milk is a far healthy option, and most varieties (such as the sesame milk in this recipe) are packed with nutrients, vitamins and essential minerals. They make a nutritious base for smoothies, shakes and even coffee. So I present to you a raw vegan version of mango lassi that is dairy-free, full of nutrients and tastes absolutely delicious.

Dairy-free mango lassi

What do you need?

1 cup mango, frozen

1 cup sesame milk

1 banana

2-3 medjool dates

½ vanilla bean

What do you do?

Using a high-speed blender, blend all the ingredients until smooth and creamy.

Benefits

Sesame milk is rich in calcium, manganese and iron. It's known to reduce inflammation, lubricate joints and improve blood circulation

Mango is packed with vitamin C, fibre, powerful anti-oxidants and anti-inflammatory properties.

Banana is a super-food that is known for its potassium and electrolyte content. It's a great fruit for muscle recovery, to heal digestive issues, to promote blood alkalinity and, above all, is a great source for natural energy.

Dates are packed with iron and essential minerals. They are a good source of quick energy and are a great way to add some natural sweetness to your drinks.

Sweet and aromatic vanilla beans are nature's way of calming your nervous system. Vanilla beans are known to improve digestion and to reduce depression and anxiety.

This recipe has been excerpted from the vegan cookbook Foods Alive by Smriti Kirubanandan

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"I want to have my own start-up," is the chant of every starry eyed student and every frustrated employee. The growth of multifarious companies in India like Flipkart, Snapdeal and OLA has made every B-school student dream of his own start-up to compete with multi-million dollar giants. The recent valuation of nine-year-old Flipkart at $15 billion makes it more valuable than the 50-year-old IOC (Indian Oil Corporation) Ltd, and several other companies, putting the online retailer in the top 20 firms vying for market capitalisation. Such hyped valuations of tech start-ups lead every aspiring entrepreneur to venture into the tech space over other domains like manufacturing, the service sector and so on.

But here is the million dollar question: Are these valuations justified? Right from Professors of Universities to CEOs of "Unicorn" start-ups to Angel Investors, everyone agrees that tech start-ups are overvalued. Traditionally, any newborn industry is overvalued and then comes into a consolidation phase. The IT industry, for instance, being comparatively nascent, is said to be valued much higher than any other industry. Take, for example, TCS (TATA Consultancy Services), the largest IT service provider and the most valued company in India. TCS is valued at around $80 billion, which is nearly five times its annual revenue, while it's making a profit of about $2 billion every year. The ratios are similar for other IT giants like Infosys, Wipro etc. These numbers may be justified for established IT companies for their prospective growth in coming years; however, it's a different ball game altogether for tech start-ups.

"[I]n the case of tech start-ups in India, the bubble is going to burst any time, because of the 'easy entry, easy exit' nature of this industry."

Flipkart, for example, made a revenue of almost $0.45 billion (Rs 2800 crores in FY 13-14), with a loss of 400 crores. On the other hand, four-year-old OLA is valued at $2.4 billion with a gross transaction value of $250-300 million. Flipkart has an ambitious target of GMV (Gross Merchandise Value) $10-12 billion by the end of financial year 2014-15 which is expected to push their valuation much higher.

Let us understand the concept of GMV to evaluate the companies better. Say, a USB drive worth Rs 500 is sold on Flipkart for Rs 400. Flipkart gets Rs 20 as commission. Here, the revenue of Flipkart is Rs 20, the transaction value is Rs 400 and GMV is Rs 500. Now, if Flipkart were any other industry, its revenue of Rs 20 would be considered for valuation. But, as it is a tech start up, the GMV is considered instead. This explains the over-valuations of tech start-ups. Is this an acceptable parameter? Definitely not! The fundamental objective of any enterprise -- of having a sustainable and profitable business model -- has been shattered by these so called disruptive innovations, just to gain market share at the expense of investors.

Flipkart is not the only fish in these troubled waters. The problem of not having a sound revenue model has started showing after-effects for several other companies. After the exit of Rahul Yadav, the controversial CEO of Housing.com, the media seems uninterested in the state of affairs at the site. According to the employees, the company is in a phase of restructuring and is planning to downsize by 30%. The company is also planning to shut down some of its non-revenue generating units in a year and will try to improve upon its productive verticals. Also worthy of mention is that many such start-ups are in a sorry state of affairs. According to a recent article published in Livemint about the operations of FoodPanda (an online aggregator of restaurants) in India, employees themselves have used loopholes in the company to fill their pockets.

"[T]he guileless investor's money is burning very fast -- faster than it may ever be recovered."

Grofers, an on-demand grocery delivery service, is rumoured to have raised $100mn in the last 10 months, thus increasing its valuation by 10 times. Freecharge, an online recharge portal, is valued at approximately Rs 2500 crore, primarily because of its 10 million customer base. There is a plethora of such examples in the tech space. Where are these investor-backed start-ups, which have no profits except on paper, headed?

To answer this question, let us briefly analyse the history of industry and business. An industrial revolution in manufacturing was at its peak in the 1800s, only to end up in consolidation in the early 1900s. An IT bubble started in the late 1980s, only to burst in the early 2000s. Historically, the rise and fall of every Industry has been a sine wave; a steady rise followed by an inevitably fall. It took innovations and sustainable business models that create value for stakeholders, to get these industries back on their feet. In our opinion, in the case of tech start-ups in India, the bubble is going to burst any time, because of the "easy entry, easy exit" nature of this industry. In the meantime, the guileless investor's money is burning very fast -- faster than it may ever be recovered.

Co-authored by Dilip Vedula. He can be contacted at: dilipsvaibhav@gmail.com

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With one hand firmly placed on my temple to press the throbbing vein, I popped a second pill in the bleak hope of numbing the pain in my head. The loudspeaker was still blaring. I peeped out of the window in the hope that the people dancing there would be tired by now. Alas! They were still going strong. The tune of the bhajan was from a popular number that involved a scantily clad woman gyrating to the beat, but the words were from a devotional song.

It is the "sacred" time of the year. And so a vast majority of people are at their religious best, shunning alcohol and meat, going to temples regularly, and holding jagarans. Now I am fine as long as the religious fervour is limited to their personal eating and drinking habits, but it is the night time prayers (on a public address system mind you!) that completely gets my goat. When I say night, I mean right through to the wee hours of the next morning.

"I am a firm believer in God, but I also believe that prayers don't need to reach a certain decibel level for him to hear them."

At 9 in the night, the loud speakers came alive, and refused to die down thereafter. Set to tunes borrowed from "Jalebi Bai" and "Tinku Jiya" to the relatively older "Khaeekey Paan Banaras Wala", bhajan after bhajan belted out from the loudspeaker. A pandal had been put up bang in the middle of the road with bright psychedelic lights and a mother of all loudspeakers. I could see women clad in the brightest and shiniest possible saris dancing (more like jumping) away to the torturously loud beats.

Don't start with the brickbats yet! I am a firm believer in God, but I also believe that prayers don't need to reach a certain decibel level for him to hear them. A silent prayer goes a longer way than the blaring speakers in the middle of the night, but a big chunk of people completely disagree with that line of thought. For them, the louder you are, the happier the Lord, and if it is to the tune of a pulsating movie song -- you've just earned brownie points!

At 1 in the night, when my migraine got worse, I decided to try our good old Haryana Police. So first, I googled for the phone number of the nearby chowki. It wasn't listed so I took down the number of the nearest station. For a few seconds I stared at the number, contemplating whether or not to call. We've all heard stories about sleeping or drunk policemen, right? What if I got shouted at for calling about a ridiculously trivial issue, or worse, what if gaalis were hurled at me? But then it was past midnight, and my only quiet time of the day getting snatched from me was becoming less and less of a trivial issue. I finally dialled and got through. I half expected a sleepy voice to answer the phone (if at all), and then tear me up for disturbing him over such a minor thing. So why did I call? Well, if I ain't sleeping, you ain't either! Anyway, I nearly fell off my chair when I was greeted with a "good evening"! It was like calling a credit card BPO with the only difference being that the Hindi was in a heavy Haryanvi accent! I quickly recovered from the shock and stated my problem.

His response, though very polite, was, "This issue pertains to God. We can't do anything. And anyway, your area doesn't come under this thana."

"So can you give me the relevant thana's number?"

"O ji kya karoge? Bhagwan ka mamla hai (What will you do? The issue involves God."

"We all know that 'religious matters' are best left untouched, yet [the police] tried, in the dead of night, to address the problems of a crazy, middle-aged woman..."

I hung up and almost felt guilty. He made it sound like a case of me versus God. I buried my head under a pillow, trying desperately to catch some sleep. At 2am I gave up. As I sat up and popped another pill for the now worse headache, I wondered if indeed nothing could be done in "matters of God". With sleep elusive and head throbbing, I reached for the phone and called up a few more police stations in the hope that they would have the local chowki's number. A good thing was that every time the phone was picked within a ring or two and a respectful voice answered. But none of them had the number! Finally, one of the guys was nice enough to give me the control room's mobile number.

Before calling, I peeped out of the window yet again to see if the fervour had died down a bit but they were still wildly dancing to a bhajan which sounded like "Jhumka Gira Re". I clenched my teeth and glanced at the clock. It was 3am. I dialled.

After another round of explaining the mudda (issue), the distinctly Haryanvi voice first admonished me for not knowing the local police station's number. An apology was in order. What he said next surprised me more.

"You don't worry. We will send the PCR to check."

Have you ever heard of a police car reaching anywhere on time or reaching at all? Thanks to our movies, the police are seen in a not-so-glorious light. Exactly eight minutes later I heard a pin-drop silence. I rushed to the window and sure enough there it was! A white gypsy with blinking red lights. They apparently told them to lower the volume a bit, which they did -- for precisely 30 seconds after the policemen left. And the eardrum-tearing levels were back.

Although the migraine is still there, I feel good. Not because I succumbed to religious fervour but because our police department actually reacted to my concern which was trivial if you compare it to the crimes described in the first page of the newspaper, or for that matter even the eighth. They not only heard me but tried to help. We all know that "religious matters" are best left untouched, yet they tried, in the dead of night, to address the problems of a crazy, middle-aged woman who just randomly called them in no hope!

"God doesn't need loudspeakers and drum beats... and definitely not to the tune of 'Saadi Gali Aaya Karo'. The only mythological character I remember waking up to drum beats and loud noises was Kumbhkarana."

Coming back to the devout singers, I might be hurting some sentiments here but I find the entire idea ridiculous. I see the very same people duping others, not extending a helping hand and kicking that stray puppy on the road. And yet they sing, confident in their piety. They sing and dance, and feel good about themselves for having held such an opulent ceremony. The same money could have been quietly used to feed some hungry mouths or cover some naked bodies but that would have gone unnoticed in the heavens above. After all, God, according to them, notices only loud displays.

As for the bhajans, it is 3.30am, and they are still singing and dancing in the false hope that the Gods will be forced to bless them. I sincerely doubt that. All it is going to yield is a couple of annoyed neighbours, tired limbs and hoarse throats. Religion is a way of life, not an emotion on display. The simplest path to getting prayers answered is not asking for anything. As long as we are grateful for what we have and as long as we keep our conscience clear, we don't need to sing at unearthly hours to get into Divine good books!

God doesn't need loudspeakers and drum beats. The only mythological character I remember waking up to drum beats and loud noises was Kumbhkarana. God doesn't need noise and definitely not to the tune of "Saadi Gali Aaya Karo".

Originally posted at: Random Thoughts

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In 1893, Swami Vivekananda travelled from India to Chicago by boat to take part in the Parliament of Religions. His opening line, "Sisters and Brothers of America", continues to echo throughout the world as the embodiment of interfaith, intercultural harmony and love. It also, many believe, catalysed a foundation of great love and fascination between India and America. At that time, the Parliament was focused on fostering peace through dialogue and understanding between the world's religions. It was the first official interfaith dialogue.

Today, 122 years later, the Parliament of Religions just concluded in Salt Lake City, Utah, after a five-day programme, which, according to the organisers, included 10,000 people from 80 nations and 50 religious traditions.

"Pujya Swami Chidanand Saraswatiji, the co-founder of the Global Interfaith WASH Alliance, emphasised, 'We have built enough temples. Now we must build toilets. Meditation and sanitation must go hand in hand.'."

In addition to the incredible expansion of the Parliament and the pervasive presence of hashtags and urges to "follow" one another, there has also been another great change.

Today, the definition of peace has expanded.

In 1893, "peace" mostly meant an absence of violence, peaceful dialogue, and, ideally, an open acceptance of one another. Today, more people perish every year from lack of clean water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) than from all forms of violence combined. The total number of annual deaths due to terrorism, war, communal violence, domestic violence, drug-induced violence and other crimes pales in comparison to the number of those due to lack of WASH.

Today, the threat of climate change hangs heavy over our heads. Hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, drought, record heat waves, and acre after acre of desiccated fields and dry riverbeds are the new normal.

This Parliament was, in many sessions, focused on a shift from prayer to action. Rather than exhorting audiences only to love one another or to live together peacefully, the leaders at this Parliament emphasised in myriad languages, myriad contexts and myriad themes that we must ACT and SERVE for each other.

His Holiness Pujya Swami Chidanand Saraswatiji, the co-founder of the Global Interfaith WASH Alliance, from Rishikesh, India emphasised, "We have built enough temples. Now we must build toilets. Meditation and sanitation must go hand in hand." In India 600 million people still defecate in the open, with the approximately 300 million women having to wait for the cover of dark to relieve themselves in dignity.

The Global Interfaith WASH Alliance, the world's first initiative to engage the planet's many faiths as allies in efforts to create a world where every human being has access to safe drinking water, improved sanitation and proper hygiene (WASH), organised three major programs at the Parliament. One of these flagship panels, hosted in cooperation with UNICEF, focused specifically on "Worship to WASH," as the shift in emphasis required by the world's religious leaders. The panel brought nine renowned interfaith leaders all the way from India to speak to the Parliament about why they have shifted their focus from worship to water, sanitation and hygiene and why others should follow suit.

Imam Umar Ilyasi, president of the All India Imam Organisation emphasised: "On behalf of almost 500, 000 imams of India, we stand together with the Global Interfaith WASH Alliance in this crucial measure and we will work for water, sanitation and hygiene to save the children of our world."

Maulana Luqman Tarapuri, regional president of the Global Imam Council reiterated, "I pledge to bring all Imams together to spread and share the vital message of WASH with our communities and in our homes."

"Today, the definition of peace must also include ensuring that our brothers and sisters of every colour, culture, country and creed have access to healthy food to eat, clean water to drink, sanitation and hygiene."

Said Acharya Lokesh Muni, president of Ahimsa Vishwa Bharati: "I pledge to inspire and motivate the entire Jain community to join GIWA and walk to share and spread this message."

At another session focused on "Climate Change and You" the Indian leaders were joined by Rev. Michael Bernard Beckwith, the famous founder and director of the Los Angeles-based Agape Spiritual Ministries, a frequent guest on TV shows including Oprah, Dr Oz, and Larry King, as well as Rabbi Yonatan Neril, executive director of the Interfaith Center for Sustainable Development, Jerusalem.

Rev. Beckwith shared: "If everyone takes baby steps every day, beginning with a revolution of our forks, it will make a mighty and lasting difference. Let us not only just have a sustainable relationship with our planet, but rather let's have a blissful one, leaving behind footprints of beauty."

Imam Umer Ahmed Ilyasi and Imam Luqman Tarapuri both expressed their full commitment on a personal level as well as on behalf of their large organisations and all of the imams to work together for this great cause, to mitigate climate change through our choices, through our actions and through our decisions. They both said they would take this message back to their communities and their congregations to bring about a great change in the Muslim communities of India and the world. They pledged to bring all of the imams together to pray, to preach and to work to protect and preserve the planet.

Traditionally religious leaders are focused on helping their followers attain salvation, or liberation, or moksha or nirvana or heaven after death. Typically, religion focuses on helping us remove the ignorance which keeps us separate from the Divine. This is wonderful. Meditation, prayers, spiritual practice are crucial if we are going to be, as Pujya Swamiji famously says, "in peace not in pieces."

However, the emphasis, the glorious emphasis over and over from the leaders of every religion was, "The body is a temple. Life is sacred and must be preserved."

At this Parliament, the definition of peace has expanded. It is no longer enough for religious leaders to exhort their communities not to kill each other with bombs, guns or missiles. Today, the definition of peace must also include ensuring that our brothers and sisters of every colour, culture, country and creed have access to healthy food to eat, clean water to drink, sanitation and hygiene. To permit a billion people on this planet to sleep hungry and about 15,000 children to perish from starvation every day, to lose approximately 1800 children every day simply due to lack of water, sanitation and hygiene, to look away while 1.8 billion people live in extreme poverty is as deplorable as launching grenades in each other's houses of worship.

The theme of the Parliament was "Reclaiming our Humanity". The leaders emphasised that humanity does not exist in a vacuum. My humanity is inextricably linked with yours.

Many people, particularly in America, are disillusioned and disenchanted with religion. I frequently hear people say, "I'm spiritual but not religious," which, in most cases, translates as "I believe in the Divine but I am done with organised religion." Religious leaders have, indisputably, led their followers to bloodshed at times. At times they have indoctrinated and even brainwashed their followers. They are famous for dogma, for thick lines between right and wrong, for manipulation and guilt-induction.

"As faith leaders we emphasised, perhaps for the first time in history in such a collective number, that our meditation is not only meant to be for our own bliss and our own peace."

However, at the Parliament, thousands of the world's highest and most revered leaders of every religion from the indigenous to the Abrahamic, from the traditional to the new-age, stood on stages and urged crowds of the thousands to not only accept the other, but to actively, enthusiastically, indefatigably serve the other. Or, as Rev. Beckwith emphasised "To realize that there is no other. The other is self."

In our panel on "Shakti and Prakriti: The Divine Feminine and Mother Earth," spiritual teacher and author Marianne Williamson reminded us that a mama bear or lion may be perfectly gentle and loving until and unless you mess with her babies! Similarly, most of us may practice compassion and acceptance but none of us would tolerate someone messing with our mother! In the same way, she exhorted the audience to stand up, take action and stop accepting the rape, the abuse and the destruction of our Mother Earth and our Mother Nature!

As faith leaders we emphasised, perhaps for the first time in history in such a collective number, that our meditation is not only meant to be for our own bliss and our own peace. Our own joy, our own bliss is not the end goal. The end goal is that, through our meditation, through our connection to the Divine, we should be free of everything that blocks us from being a clear, clean vessel for the Divine's work on Earth. We should, ultimately, see the Divine in everyone and everything and therefore, automatically, reach out our hands and serve them."

With nearly 85% of the world's population belonging to a faith, a shift of this kind in doctrine is monumental.

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Josh Radnor, most famously known for playing the affable 'Ted Mosby' in the cult TV sitcom, How I Met Your Mother, truly came into his own as an artist in the last few years. He's made two films as a writer-director (Happythankyoumoreplease won the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival and Liberal Arts received much critical acclaim), he's starred in the Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway play, Disgraced, he's written pieces for The Huffington Post, LA Times Magazine and Indiewire, among others, that exude positivity, and has also given inspirational talks the world over. He was in Mumbai recently for one such talk, where he used his fame as an example to speak about why we need to be 'contagiously good' with kindness.

In an exclusive hour-long interview, he spoke about why he believes so strongly in kindness and hope, and discussed acting, writing, direction, and of course, How I Met Your Mother (HIMYM).

You wrote a wonderful piece in The LA Times Magazine on the importance of being kind. It's interesting that you are using your fame to talk about not any big, worrisome issue or cause, but about something as elementary as kindness.

I think that there's a kindness deficit going on everywhere, in some way. I think we're hurting a little bit, and a simple word or a kind gesture from someone can really alter the course of someone's day or someone's life. Because of that, I feel that we underestimate the power of kindness, and how every word, thought and action is consequential. I think I also wrote in the piece that unkind words were kind of like air pollution.

It's almost like people writing mean stuff on the internet... they don't realise that it actually goes somewhere and affects people emotionally. Words have a kind of charge or a heft, that what comes out, goes around, and you can feel it.

So well, even if I worked in finance or the Silicon Valley, I'd still be talking about kindness. It may have something to do with growing up in the Mid-West, which is a nice place (chuckles), but I think, more than that, it's about how when I'm kind, I feel good, and when I'm not, I don't feel good. So, in some ways, being kind is like a beautifully self-serving thing, because I would rather feel good about myself and what I'm contributing to the world, rather than just being reckless and serving my ego all the time, which, I find exhausting, you know.

We've seen how you've carried these ideas into your writing and direction as well, but the roles that you're taking on as an actor after HIMYM are all complex in their own ways. Is there a line that you draw about the kind of roles you take, so you stay true to your philosophy artistically?

Yeah, certainly. But it's not about not choosing a, say, violent role, it's more about how I may not respect what it's saying to the world. I think we become the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. I know this in my life that I want to be careful about who I say I am. So, I feel like, if we say we're greedy, horrible, angry creatures, we become that, and I'd rather not be that. I don't want to participate in things that make me feel bad about humanity, or that perpetuate certain lies about who we are. I'm certainly interested in playing complicated people but I turn down a lot of stuff that I feel like, is... (chuckles), assaultive of our better nature.

josh radnor

Like I said in the other Huffington Post piece that we spoke about before the interview, there are so many other people who are on the case of how horrible we are, and I just feel like, as a creator of things, I want to take people through the dark woods of the Joseph Campbell stuff, but I want people to come out of the other end, emerged and transformed, and awakened to some new aspect of themselves that they didn't know before they went on that journey.

In the same Huffington Post piece, you wrote about how there is snobbery about films with so-called 'lighter' ideas, like kindness, and how the darker stuff is always seen as more real and 'sophisticated'. Do you face that challenge whenever you try to make something similar?

Oh all the time, all the time. I mean, it's interesting because, both my films were applauded at Sundance, and embraced in the world, but there's a certain kind of critical snobbery that takes over. I always ask myself that question: why do we consider that which is dark 'sophisticated', and I think it has something to do with this suspicion that underneath everything, we're actually bad. I was talking to a friend the other day, and telling him how I think, it's the exact opposite; at our core, at our core-core, at the deeeepest base, I think we're divine. I think we're good. And I think there's all this other stuff that's on top of it that we need to get rid of, so we can get back to that core principle.

I just feel that it's a different way of conceiving of the world, and conceiving of the uses of art, and what, I sometimes think, are the misuses of art, which reinforce these ideas that we are these terrible, horrible, Darwinian creatures who just are wired to maximise self-interest. I just think that's a lie. I feel it's actually brave in such a cynical society to tell stories where people are risking the charge of being called 'sentimental', which I think is ridiculous, because in today's age, if the critic feels something, if they feeeel something, if they get provoked emotionally, they call it 'sentimental' (chuckles).

But I go to the movie so I can feel something, so I can transform myself, right? So I think that there needs to be a distinction between sentiment and sentimentality. Sentiment is great, it's a full feeling. Sentimentality is something manipulated, it's a lie. It's a false, cheap cliché. I feel like I don't make those kind of movies, because I'm trying to make something real and honest and have the characters experience something that makes the audience feel something. I try not to apologise for that, although maybe I just did apologise for that (laughs).

I try not to, though (chuckles).

In both your films, there's always some wisdom being passed on by someone older to someone younger, and sometimes, the other way around. How did this become a theme for you? You're also doing this in your own life now with your talks and columns.

Someone pointed out to me after Liberal Arts that all my films have mentorship in them, and they were right. There's a whole web of mentorship in them, and I think it's because I had very good parents, I had very good teachers, but also because I like learning. I like learning from people. And people have said things to me at very tender moments that have altered the course of my life. And, because of that, I find it to be a very dramatic moment, when someone has just the right words that you need to hear and it's almost as if, you know, God has taken over their mouth and is speaking to you. You know, they are speaking to you what you need to hear. So I've really loved the teachers I've had. And I really love the opportunity when I can be a good friend or a mentor to someone, and that's certainly a theme of what I do. But there's also another theme.

josh radnor

You know, it's interesting, I spoke at Cambridge the other night and I read this article someone wrote about it. She was a little glib and dismissive of one particular thing that I said. Someone had asked me if I had any advice for college students, and I essentially said what I had said in Liberal Arts, which is that this is the only time you get to do this, and if you don't appreciate it now, you're going to be haunted by the fact that you didn't. The writer used a term like a 'tacky cliche' and I was kind of thrown by it, I thought, 'No! It's a cliché because it's true!'

If you aren't present in this moment, you're going to be nostalgic and you're going to realise that you weren't awake for one of the most special times of your life. I was telling my friend this the other day, that I'm not like a sunny optimist all the time, I actually battle some real melancholy, but I'm trying to (chuckles) stay on the side of working towards transforming rather than getting stuck in some rut... or (pauses), a feeling of hopelessness. I mean, that's maybe the worst feeling... hopelessness. So be grateful, you know. And that's what both the movies are about — pay attention to your life and be grateful.

That's also possibly one of the things that Ted Mosby taught the audiences. I loved Ted and found it amazing how he was probably the only sitcom character I've seen whose 'quirk' is empathy. He cared, felt and had compassion. And that seems to be something you've brought to the role.

I used to feel like he was closer to me when I started, because I was trying to find these points of identification with him, but as the show went on, I started growing in ways that the character was not. So I've used this before — I've just said that he was like my annoying younger brother (chuckles). Like we're definitely related (grins), and he sometimes drove me crazy, but at the end of the day, I loved him, because he was such a great guy.

You know, my acting teaching at NYU used to say that a character is a 50% meeting of you and 50% of the character. So there was 50% of the stuff that the writers were doing and 50% was stuff that I was bringing to it. And then, the writers start paying attention to who you are, and then they write that in, so it becomes like this weird, interesting dialogue between you and the writers, about this character. You know, for instance, Jason's character, Marshall, was envisioned, and you'll notice in the pilot, that he's afraid to open the champagne bottle. But then they got ahold of Jason Segel, who's not afraid of anything (chuckles). So they started making him a different character, because they suddenly had the actor. So similarly, I don't feel like Ted, but I lent Ted a lot of myself, if that makes sense.

Did any of the ideas perpetuated by Ted or the show shape who you are as a person?

Ted... not quite, no (chuckles). I mean, maybe I'm being dishonest with myself, but I think he was a better example of a friend than he was as a romantic kind of a guy. I mean, he gets so much credit for being this great romantic, but sometimes I think he was actually crazy, and a little obsessive, in a really unhealthy way. Like a lot of people cite this ninth season speech, where he talks about love, you know... 'Love means doing anything for a person, no matter if it kills you', and I think, like, 'No! It doesn't!' That sounds like insanity, calm down (grins). But I thought he was one of TV's great friends; he was a really loyal person.

As for the show, well, I think the biggest thing that it gave me was that it taught me to be publicly vulnerable. Because it's a very hard thing for a man to be that vulnerable in our society, and some people don't want to see that, and others are longing to see that. So, it taught me a certain kind of emotional bravery that I don't know I would have had had I not been forced to every week. And I remember that same acting teacher at NYU thought that I was an incredibly, technically proficient actor, but he thought that I didn't I wasn't connected to my emotional life. And I couldn't think of a better teacher for that particular thing that I needed to learn than HIMYM.

I want to end by asking you a fan question, which you may have been asked already a hundred times. It's been over an year since HIMYM ended, do you look at the ending differently now? Do you feel it could have ended in some other way?

(Chuckles) Yeah, I mean, I wasn't the creator of the show, I didn't write the show, so I was serving the show as an actor, and I know, certain people act like I, (laughs), you know, had something to do with it or wrote that, and I obviously didn't. But I also stand by the vision of it and I think, ultimately, the show will age quite well. I think it'll be interesting how we feel about that in 10 years versus right now, and I think some of the sadness people felt was just sadness about the show ending. It's just hard to let go of something that you love like that. I also think if you look at it from a kind of meta perspective, it's like the whole pilot episode was not about the mother but about 'Aunt Robin'. So the DNA of the whole show was in that pilot episode. 'I thought we were talking about Mom?' 'No, we're talking about Aunt Robin!' That's what the whole show was.

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"Travel is as much a passion as ambition or love" - L. E. Landon

The meaning of travel has evolved from being a simple means of communication to a risk and often a journey of self-discovery. Travel has always been both the cause of and the inspiration for discoveries through the ages. Despite not being cheap, travel continues to top the wish lists of most people. And it is women who seem to have been bitten the hardest by the travel bug as seen from the findings of the Ginger Bucket List Study, our survey of more than 1000 people from different parts of India. We found that for our respondents travel currently holds precedence over money, career and relationships.

We all know what a bucket list is; we've made many ourselves, each time adding a new thing to accomplish on the list. Such a list is an honest expression of one's self that spells out priorities and personal desires. Keeping aside the circumstantial limitations, it pretty much summarises that which is of utmost importance to a person. It is a chart of goals that one seeks to complete before "kicking the bucket".

"[M]en continue to tread on the path leading to dependable careers and satisfactory lifestyles while women are gradually seeking self-actualisation through unconventional life-goals."

The Bucket List Study seeks to understand individual bucket lists - of men and women, of Millennials, of Generation X and of Baby Boomers in India. The aim is to analyse the preferences and behaviours of Indians in terms of life achievements. Are we moving away from material assets to experiences or do we prefer less money and more memories? Is it "self-worth" that our buckets are calling out for or are we still about the "net-worth"?

Our findings suggest that women in India are disrupting norms and perceptions to ring in a new sense of self-accomplishment that reverberates in a new era. The study unearthed an evolving cultural zeitgeist of gender roles, where men continue to tread on the path leading to dependable careers and satisfactory lifestyles while women are gradually seeking self-actualisation through unconventional life-goals. And travel sits high on her list!

She has no qualms in admitting it too. She has moved up the vocational ladder, mastered the balancing act between work and home and is shifting her focus to a long-ignored and highly deserving aspect - herself.

Contradicting the popular belief that women would give to their families and careers over travelling, the majority of the Indian women surveyed voted travel as the topmost dream to be fulfilled with 35% votes for rank one. Relationships came in as the least most important life goal on their bucket list with 34% votes for rank four. At the same time, career came in second after travel, with 34% votes for rank two, followed by money with 43% votes for rank three.

Cinema has played no small role in pushing travel to the top of bucket lists. The 2007 Rob Reiner movie The Bucket List, about two cancer patients who race around the world, packing in experiences, led to mass acknowledgement of the importance and relevance of doing things that create experiences. Then there are recent Bollywood films like Yeh Jawani Hai Deewani (2013) and Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (2011) that celebrated wanderlust, freedom, love and, above all, life. As people took to stating their life goals and creating bucket lists, they delved deeper to figure what's most important to them. The Ginger Bucket List Study shows that this generation is unified in believing travel and relationships to be the most important goals in life.

We live in world characterised by an all-pervading feeling that there is never enough time. Busy either at work, or doing chores at home, or even socialising with friends, people are constantly running against time to prioritise things. While setting goals for a successful corporate life is a mantra preached by management gurus, creating a bucket list can help you identify meaningful goals that make your life richer -- so as to retain passion for both life and work. What might look like one random entry on your bucket list may turn out to be that one life-altering moment you were waiting for.

Things on a bucket list are there for a reason. Unlike your New Year's resolutions, this list is meant to be acted upon. And if you have carefully jotted down all the things you want to achieve before the sun sets on your life, the list will actually prod you into action. You will make time for it. You will be inspired to redesign your life so that you work towards fulfilling all the things that are closest to your heart. Striking off something from the list upon completion promises a sense of great accomplishment.

Although women are coming out strong with their desire for travel, there are a million dreams that could make your life worthwhile if realized. Write a book, trek the mountains, go bungee jumping, help someone or become a CEO - simply because you are unique. Go ahead and fulfil your bucket list if you've got one ready or create one if you haven't already and celebrate life. Who knows, it might turn into an inspiration for the world.

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