As I witness this carousel of rape roll on, day after day, like everyone else I too am caught between two instincts. I want to celebrate the Hyderabad police, and join the chorus baying for the blood of rapists, in Parliament and on social media. But I also want to mull over the process of justice itself.

In Uttar Pradesh’s Unnao, the rape survivor, who was set ablaze while she was on her way to a court hearing, has died. This shows that after rape is committed, the fallout doesn’t affect the rapist as much as it punishes the victim.

Regardless of differences in opinion, Indians can agree that India’s rape problem needs stamping out. But the “celebration” after the encounter of the alleged rapists in the Telangana vet case neglects the fact that it’s not enough to merely punish the perpetrators. We also need to prevent the rapes from happening in the first place.

The Bhopal gas tragedy is not just a painful reminder of the price people can be made to pay for someone else’s ignorance or callousness, but also of the fact that a country is only as big as its last mistake. In this case, however, forgetting Bhopal, and what it ought to have taught us, may well be the biggest mistake yet.

It’s telling that most reports announcing the arrest of the 26-year-old victim's murderers don’t mention the names of three non-Muslim suspects, but they do prominently feature terms like “Prime Suspect Mohammed Pasha”. It fits the false narrative that some are trying to manufacture out of the tragedy.

A break from morning meetings, tax returns, bills, grocery shopping, and housework to go ride a bicycle in a park, play hopscotch with kids, or even read a Tintin or Tinkle comic book is probably the perfect way to unwind and forget the banality of adult life.

Over a year after India’s #MeToo movement, we’re finally confronting the complexities of consent. It’s the misconceptions surrounding it — that if a woman consents once, she is always “available” — that seem to dissuade women from publicly acknowledging that they might have consented to some part of an exchange.

Nithyananda, who has now been accused of kidnapping, already has rape charges filed against him. But he is hardly the first godman to have perpetrated heinous crimes while masquerading as a saviour of the masses. He is in the illustrious company of Gurmeet Ram Rahim and Asaram.

Benaras Hindu University’s newly appointed Sanskrit professor Firoz Khan should have been celebrated as the living embodiment of India’s diversity and tolerance. But “new” India would rather constantly complain about how Hindu culture is under threat from minorities, only to protest when a member of a minority displays expert knowledge of Hindu culture.

The lines between work and non-work hours have long been blurred, and that’s a bad thing. A three-day weekend in India would be pretty pointless unless the remaining four days are utilised well, and we stop glorifying long work hours.

It’s odd that the ongoing student protests against fee hikes in JNU are being viewed by most as an excuse for the students to sponge off the privileged taxpayer’s money. Especially in a country where qualifying for a tax slab is in itself a privilege that most would be happy to have.

Twitter decided to ban all political ads on the platform globally, advocating for a level playing field across parties and communities – at least on paper. But its blocking of accounts of prominent figures from India’s marginalised communities shows that the microblogging website appears to be reluctant to walk the talk when it comes to diversity and equality.

What is most shocking about the clashes between lawyers and police in Delhi is that an alleged dispute over a parking space has resulted in such widespread pandemonium. The public’s faith in these institutions will undoubtedly be shook after witnessing how easily order collapsed in Delhi over this weekend.

If there’s something that unifies us as a country, it isn’t food, language, cricket or hypernationalism. It is a shared belief that we have the moral right to poke our noses in someone else’s business, aka panchayat. Why else would we get so riled up if the person on the seat next to us in a theatre refuses to stand up for the national anthem?

House-hunting in Mumbai is nightmarish and it’s a near impossible task if you are a transperson. After being turned down by a dozen house owners in Mumbai, Neil Gaikwad, a 27-year-old trans man, finally found a flat in Saki Naka. But this was only after being humiliated – the landlady touched his breasts and asked him to show her his underwear.

In Delhi, there has been a massive fall in the sale of fireworks, and the air quality is the cleanest it’s been since 2015. In Mumbai, a report claimed that it had been the quietest Diwali in over 15 years. Not on social media though. It’s impossible for Diwali to go by without someone getting unnecessarily aggressive about their right to burst crackers.

#RIPSujith is a Twitter trend that will die out by tomorrow, while the circumstances that led to two-year-old Sujith Wilson's death will continue to prevail. Many people are shocked at the failure of the rescue mission, but the fact that a small child was playing next to a death-trap of an abandoned borewell is easily accepted as just another everyday occurrence in India.

We often forget that the decibel levels during Diwali do not take everyone’s comfort into account. My friends who have pets and babies always have a harrowing Diwali, as do those who suffer from respiratory ailments. There have always been valid reasons to stay away from Diwali, but our culture almost always fails to account for them.

“Ugh, adulting is so hard.” We’ve all heard some variation of this common complaint. It’s made so often that today, successful adulting has acquired a mythical status. Unfortunately, our time might be up.

Who is sticking up to policies against minorities? Nike. Who is taking the lead on climate change? Apple and IKEA. Companies around the world are putting their money where their corporate_values.pptx is. Morality and capitalism is the unlikely combination that we might not deserve, but sure as hell what we could use at the moment.

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.