hopscotch

  Learning to live again    Not every teenager has fond, rainbow tinted growing up experiences. They have been ignored deliberately, their peers unwilling to come to their aid, or speak up for them.   These teens for various reasons – their physical attributes, medical condition, economic background or gender identity – become ‘the other’. Simply because the larger, ‘normal’ society doesn’t know how to deal with them. Paro Anand’s short story collection, The Other, nudges us to not to sweep away the unpalatable truths under the carpet. But to take note and bridge the divide. The nine stories delves into the not so happy emotions and feelings that the teenagers confront with and at the end offers a workable solution. Sanjana picking the boy with the pee-bag as her first choice to act in a fairy tale does wonders for his confidence; parents suggesting their daughter to call a helpline number in case of violence against females is a corrective action. And what...

One Lives on Hope... History is omnipresent, even if we make it a habit of  "moving on with life." It seems easier to keep your head low, buried in sand, and avoid acknowledging conflicts and crisis situations. But history, the socio-political times that we live in, shape us knowingly or unknowingly. It has ways of creeping in, tip-toeing in the form of biases, prejudices that positions us in the social hierarchy and pushes us to take a stand. How many of us are able to stand up for others, how many of us can change the course of river to what it rightfully was and how many of us can come to the aid of those who meant us no harm, and yet ended up paying a heavy price? Is it easier to rise above trauma and heal? It is; if we have empathy. Sucharita Dutta-Asane's collection of short stories, These Tongues that Grow Roots, turns around the subjects of bleak headlines -- of war, naxalism, pandemic, lonely senior citizens, dying lakes, eve-teasing and feeling of being hunted -...