Capturing the Politics and Poetics of Everyday Life....

Institutions are comfortable with feminism as long as it remains polite, predictable, and procedural. The moment it questions power, it is re-coded as hostility. Drawing from encounters in gender sensitisation programmes and Internal Complaints Committees, this reflection examines how feminism is repeatedly misheard—not because it is unclear, but because it is inconvenient. When Feminism Is Misheard as Hostility There are moments when society makes a deliberate mishearing of feminism. Instead of recognising it as an ethical and political framework concerned with dignity, justice, and quality of life, feminism is reduced—conveniently—to male-bashing . This reduction is not innocent. It is a refusal masquerading as misunderstanding. For decades, women have tried to correct this caricature. Yet some ears remain closed—not because the explanation is unclear, but because acknowledging feminism as a holistic critique of social arrangements would demand discomfort, self-reflection, and accoun...

This Is How It Began This space is dedicated to my father — who taught me that strength is not volume, boldness is not noise, and conviction often demands the courage to stand alone. Between 2010 and 2024, I learned how easily a self can be scattered— across care, caution, and the quiet weight of expectation. What appeared as duty slowly became erosion. I misplaced parts of myself to gendered scripts, to professional unease, to the soft, persistent hum of political silencing. Somewhere in that long drift, I ceased to be my father’s daughter. And then—almost without announcement— this blog began. What began in 2024 as a digital experiment has become something far more enduring. This blog is a relic I choose to carry with me through time—an archive of thought, dissent, hesitation, and becoming. There are moments when one’s thoughts arrive too early, too sharp, or too uncontainable for the world. In such moments, having one’s voice heard— unedited —can feel like an ordeal. This space exis...

What does it say about our universities when a legally mandated body meant to address sexual harassment is misnamed—confidently, publicly, and repeatedly—by those who claim expertise? In classrooms and seminar halls, acronyms circulate with authority, but authority without accuracy is a dangerous thing. This reflection emerges from a seemingly casual conversation with a former teacher that exposed a deeper malaise within higher education: a troubling indifference to legal literacy, a casual approach to women-centric laws, and an academic culture more invested in procedural comfort than ethical responsibility. At stake here is not a terminological error, but the hollowing out of justice itself. This blog is a continuation of my reflection on the Internal Complaints Committee (ICC) and the crucial role of the external member. Since I am relatively new to this digital space—and since thoughtful responses to academic writing are increasingly rare—I did not expect that my previous post woul...

What happens when an institution proudly announces that it has an Internal Complaints Committee—yet justice never quite makes it past the door? In recent years, ICC has become a familiar acronym in Kerala, especially amid public reckonings in the cultural and creative industries. But familiarity has bred complacency. The presence of a committee is increasingly mistaken for proof of safety, and compliance is routinely confused with accountability. This blog asks an uncomfortable but necessary question: when does the ICC function as a mechanism of justice, and when does it merely perform legality? By focusing on the most neglected yet decisive element of the POSH framework—the external member—this reflection exposes how institutions convert a transformative law into a ritual of silence, and why justice collapses the moment independence is compromised. The phrase Internal Complaints Committee (ICC) entered Kerala’s public vocabulary with unusual force in the aftermath of a series of ruptu...