Rocks and Flowers

When I was 14 I lost my Dad to the last stage of throat cancer. My parents had travelled to his birth country, India, for his treatment on the day of my birthday and returned two months later. On the day they returned, my father was admitted to the hospital urgently and unfortunately due to his nearly, if not totally, inexistent white blood cell count (after all the chemotherapy he had been through), he succumbed to his disease. I will never forget that day. Quite cheesy, but it has been engraved in my brain ever since. In the morning, my brother and I had just received our school results and surprisingly (for it never happened again) I was first in one of my favourite subjects. I was impatient to see my father’s reaction when I would show it to him on his hospital bed but by the time we had reached there, it was too late. From then, it was quite a blur. I remember my Mom, brother and relatives crying, me trying to comfort my Mom, having to text my close friends of what ha...

Some months back, in a span of not even 14 days, various sex tapes were released on social media. They were not only displayed for the public eye to see, but were also shared over a thousand times. Online pages with over a hundred thousand followers posted so many articles on this subject with, shockingly I must say, a slightly blurred screenshot of the video clip itself as the main image just to attract more and more viewers. For a while, my newsfeed had become an eyesore. For several days, it was filled with memes and statuses mocking and demeaning the authors of the video clips. Ultimately, I even wanted to deactivate my social media accounts because I was so disappointed with my own generation. I thought that we were the promising future of this world but here we were, giving so much importance to a couple of people having sex rather than to more serious issues affecting our own country. The mentality of our own people through the comments they wrote disgusted m...

Being born a girl comes with a huge package of rocks and flowers. Why? Simply because you have a vagina and a pair of breasts. Some may not agree, but do hear me out and make your own opinion at the end. Vagina. One word. Biologically quite simple in structure and function but socially? Quite the hassle. The first deal of the package would be, without doubt, periods, also known as the menstrual cycle. It is a simple process through which massive internal bleeding occurs inside your abdomen and your uterus spews out gallons of blood for 6 days straight and if you are lucky enough, this may last for only 5 days maximum. To top it off, you are awarded with hours and hours or maybe even days of cramps and contractions where being knocked unconscious is more appealing than being subject to such amount of pain. Cool, right? The second deal of this same package would be the privilege of being sexually harassed. You see, when you have a vagina, you are automatically awarded with...