Two poems
By Lalit Narayan Miscarriage A curtain of rain separates My verandah from the hospital. On any other day a hundred Silent patients would pass through The OP clinic. Each of them Allowing us doctors to listen Feel, touch and question them. The warmth of their fever would Make us uncomfortably hot. Today the air is chilled downpour wet. Water roars in the stony river. Five nurses, Gi and I sloshed

Becoming Woman
ALL I KNEW WAS that this non-profit group called MARAA was organising some sort of performance on gender and sexuality. A friend told me about it and even offered to pick me up. Work lay unfinished on my table, but what the hell, I decided, I could always catch up later. And that’s how we found ourselves at Jagaa, which calls itself “a community space created to serve the arts, technology and social change communities in Bangalo

Single in the City
By Ramapriya Gopalakrishnan Leafing through pictures mailed by a friend, I find one of me on the beach laughing uninhibitedly with my hair streaming in the wind, and I smile to myself thinking ‘this is so me.’ I am a single woman in her thirties, have never been married and have no ‘special relationship’ with any man. Yes, at times, I do long for companionship and romance but for the most part, I revel in my single. I enjoy the time and sp

Two poems by Tammy Ho Lai-Ming
To Get Myself Some Water ~Translated from Ellen Lai’s ‘Grassland’, written in Chinese Our love toils about one period. On the bloody and lusty grassland You transform me into your self-pitied crippled rabbit. When you finally discard everything you have That is inside your permanently bulging equipment, You turn your back And ride towards the flat horizon On a white horse Whose tail is momentarily dyed pink. Your horse clip-clops on the flatland. Your horse remains no more. I am still bleeding, and my inner thighs are sore. I hop to the muddy river

The Women’s Reservation Bill – Empowerment or Besides the Point?
By Martin Lehmann-Waldau The Indian parliament recently showed intense activity to promote women’s representation in decision-making bodies. Some months back, a bill was passed that reserves a staggering 50% of seats for women on the panchayat level. Currently under review and soon to be debated in the Lok Sabha is the Women’s Reservation Bill that promises 33% of seats in Parliament to women. To give an international comparison: the current German Parliament has 32.1 % women in Parliament (1980: a mere 9 %). In Germany, a legal quota system