What would I say to Young Mungo?
Sometimes, you desperately want to enter a book to warn a character you have grown to love in the short time that you have spent together. Or to convince them to leave their story and go home with you to yours. That’s what happened to me when I got to know young Mungo. I was…
The man from Kabul – straight from the heart
A childhood story read in adulthood gives rise to new perceptions about reinforcing stereotypes about Hindus and Muslims
Me freelancer. You…?
At the end of the ‘work year’, or more accurately, at the beginning of the ‘great holiday’, is perhaps is a good time to reflect upon how some things have gone. Not evaluate. Reflect. In this spirit, one experience, which clearly brought to the fore that twenty years in the Netherlands haven’t (yet) eliminated the…
The long toes index
A Dutch intercultural trainer came up with a country-wise scale to measure the tendency to feel offence. He called it ‘the long toes index’. And guess which people, according to him, most easily felt that their toes were being stepped on. Indians. Oversensitive. Easily hurt. Insulted. On the other hand, I do hope he also…
Questions that hurt
The BJP regime arrested and incarcerated three students for protesting against an act by which the citizens of India had to register themselves according to whether they are Hindu or Muslim. The objective was to mark Muslims as foreign to Indian soil.