In today’s India, you don’t need to be extraordinary to get trolled or killed — you just need to be sincere and doing your job. Apart from high-profile examples like Kafeel Khan’s, you needn’t look far to see what happens when citizens do the right thing: Aarey forest activists in Mumbai being lathi-charged, and farmers arrested for requesting higher land compensation.

As a person named Parita, I feel inclined to point out that it isn’t too much to expect our parents to give us simple, common names that have meaning and which everyone can pronounce. Forget Kias and Tias, if you want to be truly radical in 2019, call your kid Pooja or Rahul.

The lines have been redrawn. Dissent is sedition and criticism is treachery. What was once a benign avenue for freedom of expression has now become another battleground where people fight over the right to dissent.

From climate change to the Kashmir lockdown, many of the world’s problems happen because we, collectively as a species, have lost the ability to see things from someone else’s perspective. Perhaps it’s time we realise a little empathy goes a long way.

Scientists have been trying to get their message out about climate change through research papers and summits for years now, and nobody took note. Perhaps this so-called “theatre” by Greta Thunberg – sailing to New York and an impassioned speech at the UN – is what we need to wake up and smell the dying planet.

As the case against Chinmayanand gets murkier, it is reminiscent of the way the rape allegations against Kuldeep Sengar, another former BJP leader, unfolded last year. The two might have been expelled by the ruling party, but both these cases prove that the road to justice is long, hard, and bumpy… and often, the reward at the end might be a double-edged sword.

Chennai techie Subhasri Ravi died in an accident after a hoarding announcing the wedding of a councillor’s son collapsed on her. It once again raises the question of the purpose of political banners. Are they just tools to appease netas?

Buying a new car and then a house have been ultimate #lifegoals for our parents, but millennials prefer to rent. Our generation does not want to be tied down to anything, be it a treadmill or a trousseau. And the renting culture offers us that flexibility.

As Anupriya Lakra is being held up as an inspiration to girls in Odisha and beyond, let’s not forget to honour her parents, too. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of Lakra’s journey to breaking barriers as a pilot is the faith her parents had in her unorthodox decisions.

My family traces its roots to Narayangunj, in present-day Bangladesh. And identity is that minefield that I am forced to negotiate every day. I am a part of “us” our government claims to protect today, there is no saying when I will find myself on the other side.

Yet another journalist has been arrested in UP. His crime: He took pictures of children mopping the floor of their school.

BJP's Chinmayanand, accused of rape by a 23-year-old law student from UP, has now been arrested. But how would the young woman’s story shape up in the absence of the video she uploaded, which went viral?

I see a beggar limping toward our car and shut my eyes. My six-year-old shouts, “Mama! That man has only one arm and leg!” Then she asks me a dozen questions about how he survives and why we can’t help. I don’t remember the last time I felt like she did in that moment.

For someone used to the frenetic pace of Mumbai and Delhi, Kolkata is a black-and-white film playing out in slow motion. In a world obsessed with youth, pace, and beauty, Kolkata, hobbling on her arthritic knees with all her fine lines, silver hair, and a patchwork jhola bag of stories, is an acquired taste.

Those of us who grew up in the ’70s, consumed by the nine-to-five work culture, slogged throughout our youth with our eyes set on retirement. It’s hyped up as the ultimate destination. But when we actually get there, we’re ill-equipped to handle it.

Eyewitness footage and a video confession was not enough to get the Alwar district court to convict the six men accused of lynching Pehlu Khan in 2017. The verdict was based on “serious lacunas” in the police probe, and it’s not the first time that police incompetence has prevented courts from meting out justice.

What could have been a simple response to accusations of provoking nuclear war became a turning point in the Priyanka Chopra career graph. With a tweet and a speech, Chopra’s former detractors now see her as a nationalist champion who put a Pakistani in her place.

Malala Yousafzai added another incredible achievement to her already impressive list – uniting India and Pakistan (or at least their Twitter trolls). After Yousafzai called for a “peaceful resolution” on the Kashmir issue, she ironically received hate from both sides.

The Bali family is not the first group of Indian tourists to embarrass themselves while on holiday, and they certainly won’t be the last. Our reputation seems to precede us; Indian travellers rarely feature in the lists of best-behaved tourists.

Now that food apps can deliver lunch faster than it takes us to cross the road, and all the bars seem to have broken the button that reduces the volume of music, leaving the house has become too much of a task. Going out is no longer worth it.

While the doctors’ protest in Bengal has highlighted the abuse faced by medical professionals, the rest of India’s service industry is also wounded on a daily basis by the gruffness of the average Indian client — a species that prides itself on its lack of respect for the provider.

CM Mamata Banerjee and resident doctors at Kolkata’s NRS Hospital are locked in a standoff. While the country’s medical services are stretched thin over a nationwide strike of doctors, it is important to understand why violence against medical professionals is spiking in India.

One can understand our need to condemn the murder of a three-year-old girl in Aligarh. What is indefensible though, is the readiness of a group of individuals to use a national tragedy as an opportunity to hawk hatred among an already emotionally volatile public. It’s almost as if the victim doesn’t matter. All that matters is inciting hostility in the name of religion.

I wasn’t born during Tamil Nadu’s anti-Hindi agitation in the ’60s, but I do know enough to say the imposition was a source of vexation for my grandparents, my parents, and now me. The knowledge of Hindi has always been equated with national pride. And efforts to make the language mandatory once again, accords it a ranking above all other regional languages.

Students from marginalised communities come to cities like Mumbai with the hope that these are places filled with open-minded people free of prejudice. But Dr Payal Tadvi’s suicide brings to light the struggles of students from SC/ST categories in our educational institutions, where reservation is a pejorative word.

The #MeToo campaign’s biggest achievement has been to educate men in the magnitude of abuse and harassment that women face, something that should have been obvious to men all along. Will this tale have a happily-ever-after?

When women attempt to name and shame their aggressors, they are asked to follow due process. When they do follow due process, as the former Supreme Court staffer did in a detailed affidavit on allegations against CJI Ranjan Gogoi, the process is long and tortuous. As most women know, due process is code for being on trial themselves.

Men exercise power in sexual harassment cases not by fighting the charges levelled at them, but through counter-charges that invalidate complaints made against them. Only days after the allegation against Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi by an ex-SC staffer, there was a parallel discussion on how he had been framed as a part of a larger conspiracy to “deactivate” the CJI’s office.

Generations after the British packed up and left, we continue to swoon over a British accent, dream of watching a cricket match at Lord’s, and consider Colin Firth as a legit avatar of Mr Darcy. A fair bit of the English-speaking urban Indian population are embarrassingly obsessed with the United Kingdom and its royal family.

Throughout history, women have been publicly shamed for any number of reasons, from adultery, witchcraft, smiling, walking, even existing. We shamed “aunty ji” for her comments, for her clothes, her appearance, her accent — even though we’re aware that public shaming has never been a tool of those who know better.