How Early is Too Early?

AT THE PRESCHOOL that I run (where I also teach), there’s a certain action song we sing that goes like this:

Cook like mummy,

Yum, yum, yum, (repeat thrice)

Let’s have fun together!

Drive like daddy,

Knit like grandma,

Cough like grandpa….

…and by the time we come to “Be like teacher, Shh, shh, shh!” I’m ready to pop a vein.

The Presence of a Uterus

By Sridala Swami

Seven years ago, I attended a wedding reception that I will never forget. A few months previously, I had just had a baby and this wedding was one of the first occasions when I was going out with the new arrival. It was quite traumatic for me: all I wanted to do was meet friends and enjoy a few conversations; instead I had to worry about feeds, secluded rooms and diapers.

There were three of us at a table – my (then) husband and I, and an old college friend who was independently a friend and colleague of the husband. U and G started to talk while I tried to calm a cranky child unused to so many people, or to loud music and noise. The conversation between them was animated and mostly about work.

Policing Change: A Personal Perspective on Violence Against Women and Children

By Anasuya Sengupta

A well known TV news channel in English had a Women’s Day special recently, asking the question ‘Do we still need feminism?’ As someone who has worked with the Karnataka police for the past few years on issues of violence against women and children (and is a feminist), I found it startling and disturbing, that so many participants on that talk show – including a senior woman police officer from Punjab – had no sense of the extraordinary moment of crisis we are in, as a country, as a ‘civilisation’, as a community of human beings.