In a shocking statement, the Supreme Court today asked a government employee seeking protection from arrest whether he would marry a woman who has accused him of repeated rape. Whom are we protecting here? Definitely not the survivor.

Nomadland won big at the Golden Globes – best drama and best director, making Chloe Zhao the first Asian woman to win the award. The film is about a middle-aged woman forced into a life on the road after her husband’s death and subsequent shutdown of the plant he worked for. Life, the film tells us, can be looked at with the serenity of contentment, with the plausibility of lesser goals.

Opposing same-sex marriage, the Centre argued that marriage, by definition, should only take place between a biological man and woman. But mythology and ancient texts are replete with stories of same-sex unions. And let’s not forget the temples of Khajuraho.

Refusing to grant leeway to a man who attacked his wife for not making tea, which led to her death, the Bombay High Court said, “A wife is not a chattel or an object. Marriage ideally is a partnership based on equality.” Sadly, this idea of the wife being the husband’s property is all too common in India.

The sleepovers that my childhood best friend organised were American pop-culture paradise – we watched rom-coms and discussed boys over a feast of pizza, coke, and ice-cream. But that’s not what they were all about. Our talks steered toward periods and acne and the “burden of our boobs”. What we did not know at the time was that we were creating our first, original feminist safe space.

India’s parents boast a longer record in muzzling dissent than any authoritarian government in the world. What can’t probably be done with bureaucratic persecution, Indian parents will tell you, can be done with a shed of the tear, the wail of a mother who is suddenly close to death or the animated dejection of a father.

I have been on enough all-girls vacation trips to know that planning is a science, negotiation is a skill, and a sacrificial bargain is a must. Not causing minor inconvenience to the people at home (and at work) is a priority. And everyone seems to be in on this game of reminding women of the price of our freedom and fun.

Oh Bebo, you might not know it yet but we’ve already named your second baby Aurangzeb. Lucky you. We mostly tell women whom they should marry, but you get a special privilege. We are here to tell you what you should name your newborn.

We’ve had our share of laughs over the Shweta call but we are also privy to its darker side. After all, there is a real person involved – the girl Shweta was discussing. And while she thankfully remains anonymous, the conversation reveals how men talk about their partners, often to other women, when they are not around to speak for themselves.

Drishyam 2 is a convincing sequel and once again Georgekutty’s Mohanlal does everything he can to shield his family. We see a vulnerable side of the classic criminal mind. The film’s climax can be underwhelming but that doesn’t stop you from rooting for GK and his family with as much vigour as you did earlier.

It would not be wrong to say that in Chameli, Basu Chatterjee gave Bollywood a heroine much unlike any that had been seen before. Amrita Singh’s Chameli doesn’t sit around and wait for things to work out on their own. She gets out there and takes charge. She is nothing if not a staunch feminist.

The Delhi High Court has pulled up TV channels for “sensationalism” in reporting the Disha Ravi case. It’s yet another media trial, where WhatsApp chats are being scrutinised. The coverage is reminiscent of a few months ago, when Rhea Chakraborty was vilified after the suicide of actor Sushant Singh Rajput.

Priya Ramani’s victory has given us all hopes, but I cannot shake the feeling that she succeeded in proving herself innocent and the man who assaulted her still is free. So it seems there will be other times when women will be forced to prove their innocence.

Goa’s “F**k COVID” brand of tourism grows on you. My indoctrination into this alternate universe was gradual. At first, I’d jump like a startled deer every time I felt someone breathing down my neck. Two days later, I had stopped counting the number of hands that had touched the ladle to scoop out cut papayas and watermelon from the fruit platter at the buffet.

My mind kept coming back to the first words uttered by Priya Ramani after she was acquitted in the defamation case filed by MJ Akbar. “Me, the victim, had to stand in court as the accused.” What we are celebrating effectively is the fact that a sexual harassment survivor wasn’t convicted of defamation.

Journalist Priya Ramani’s acquittal must be celebrated for what it prevented, as dire as that might sound, and not for what it might change. MJ Akbar should have known he had already lost in public memory, what he assumed he could win by squeezing it out of a court. It’s a lesson, perhaps other men can take that no parade of power beats the quiet grace of introspection.

After a two-year fight, a Delhi court today acquitted journalist Priya Ramani in the defamation case filed by former Union minister MJ Akbar, whom she accused of sexual harassment. The win belongs as much to Ramani as to her incredible lawyer Rebecca John and the hundreds of women she has, by virtue, represented the dignity of.

You don’t need fancy equipment, hundreds of cameras, a huge crew, and big bucks to create good content anymore. All you need is OPPO Reno5 Pro 5G. Even director Imtiaz Ali swears by it.

I was 17 when psoriasis, a chronic skin condition that causes itchy patches, arrived unannounced, putting me in a permanent state of discomfort. Perfect strangers would ask me what I had on my elbows, leaving me mortified. I refused to take a seat on public transport because I didn’t want people to avoid sitting next to me, or worse get up if my skin showed.

In the age of Zoom, a curated book collection is what defines your “shelf-worth”. You must make sure a few good titles can be read clearly – A Hundred Years of Solitude (by either Kafka or Garcia Marquez, I forget who), Barack Obama’s A Promised Land. Do take good printouts after downloading these covers from the internet and paste them over your volumes of ribald Khushwant Singh’s Joke Books.

The trailer of Netflix’s The Big Day promised an opportunity to sneer at ostentatious displays of paisa pretending to be celebrations of pyaar at the OTT Indian wedding. Instead we get a sugar-coating of “women empowerment”.

Disha Ravi’s is not the first sedition case against a youth activist in the country. And it certainly won’t be the last. It has become almost implicit that if you dissent publicly, you won’t be tolerated.

There’s not just one way to love in the public domain, and no one makes the rules. There is enough misery around; everyday we wake up to a world so tumultuous that it gets taxing to find happiness. If all it takes to be temporarily distracted from our impending doom is this one “greeting card” event then it’s truly no love lost.

Bittu is a touching story of friendship between two school girls in a village. The film which has been shortlisted for the Oscars has no big stars. Instead, director Karishma Dev Dube went to local communities and government schools in the rural areas to pick her cast.

This Valentine’s Day, spend less time on your phone and more time with your sweetheart. You don’t need to spend precious time deciding which rom-com to pick because we’ve done it for you.

The Silence of the Lambs isn’t just about Dr Hannibal Lecter. Its protagonist is actually Clarice Starling, a young FBI agent-in-training played by Jodie Foster. The film tells the story of how Starling tracks down a serial killer and saves a woman from becoming his next victim, even as she fights sexism at the workplace. Hannibal is just her sidekick in the whole shindig.

The most vivid memory of my childhood is my father smashing a cup against the wall. I was only nine then. Little did I know that his angry outbursts would go on to define my childhood.

Editing a profile on the Koo app includes all standard fields, but a desi touch is missing. What’s the point of our very own microblogging site if we don’t have a field for “Shaadi ka kya socha hai?” and “Salary kitni milti hai?”

A hefty sum of ₹1000 crore was allocated to the Nirbhaya Fund which would be actively used toward the protection of women. Now almost a decade on, not much has been done for women’s safety, and sadly, the funds have been underutilised.

Hollywood star Armie Hammer’s alleged cannibalism fetish caused another meme fest on Twitter, but the accusations of assault made by multiple women should make us question why we are so afraid to call out abuse, when it is masquerading as kink.