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

A math problem. A lunch-table question. A moment that exposed how deeply gender stereotypes survive—even in higher education. This reflection examines how gender blindness, institutional power, and misplaced ideas of “strength” quietly undermine feminist ethics. When Gender Sensitisation Meets Gender Blindness This reflection emerges from my engagement with the academic community—not as an abstract theorist, but as the Director of the Centre for Women’s Studies, working at the uneasy intersection of policy, pedagogy, and lived experience. I was asked to curate a short-term Gender Sensitisation Programme for faculty members from Arts and Science colleges. What unfolded during that week was both revealing and unsettling. During one session, a resource person cited a seemingly innocuous example from a school mathematics textbook: Ravi buys five spinning tops; Maya buys eight bangles . The point was straightforward—how early educational materials naturalise gender roles by quietly align...

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...