Beautiful Initiatives

USA's Former secretary of state Madeleine Albright once said, “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women.” I wonder if there is a special place in heaven for women who help other women? If it is so, then Sheryl sandberg, Nandita das, Sunitha Krishnan have their corner offices booked there already. :) 

 Let me explain how...

• Lean In

 

 Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg‎'s  bestselling book Lean in  is in her own words " sort of a feminist manifesto, but one that I hope inspires men as much as it inspires women." we hope so too, Sheryl. In this book, she has talked about issues that a 20-something female just starting out her career, a housewife, a 40ish career woman will find equally relevant. It tells women that you can't expect perfection from yourself in every role, but you owe it to yourself and coming generations to not give up half your life in order to accommodate social norms; and men that a woman from dual income household does not owe it to the husband to bear so much domestic responsibilities that it appears to her like a 'second shift' and men need to, not as a charity but a duty take up half the domestic responsibilities.If you need further convincing read this.

• Dark is beautiful
  
  
   

Nandita Das recently joined Dark is beautiful, an awareness campaign. Launched in 2009 by Women of Worth, the campaign challenges the belief that the value and beauty of an Indian woman is determined by the fairness of her skin.It has long been a norm in India,especially north India to consider fair as beautiful,which has been reinforced by fairness product ads following the same storyline (of protagonist being able to realize their dreams/get a job/get a gf or bf,only after getting fair using the said product).As such,It is an exemplary action(Dark is beautiful campaign) that will greatly help bring about a change in traditional attitudes, perceptions and definitions of beauty.  

• Prajwala
  
  
  
   Prajwala is an anti-trafficking organisation that helps trafficked children and women, rescues and rehabilitates them. Dr Sunitha Krishnan the co-founder of prajwala, herself a survivor of gangrape by eight men at age of 15,has rescued more than 3000 females in about 18 years since she started the organisation.Watch the Tedtalk given by her in 2009 at Infosys Campus, Mysore to see for yourself, her intense resolute determination.
   
• Project Unbreakable Grace Brown 
  
  Grace Brown now 21, started Project Unbreakable at the age of 19.It is an online photography project featuring pictures of rape survivors holding a poster quoting their attacker.Its mission is "to increase awareness of the issues surrounding sexual assault and encourage the act of healing through art".   
  Update: Grace Brown wrote this article for Huffington Post recently
  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/grace-brown/why-i-stopped-talking-about-what-happened_b_5186175.html
  I'll keep on adding anymore such rays of sunshine i come across.If you know of any such project/organisation/campaign please let me know in comments i would like to include it too.

   "So when you spot violence, or bigotry, or intolerance or fear or just garden-variety misogyny, hatred or ignorance, just look it in the eye and think, 'The good outnumber you, and we always will."  -Patton Oswalt

I am back; Just not yet !!

This blog post is solely dedicated to the readers who have asked me in past few months, as to why I am not coming up with anymore posts.To be more precise,this blog post is a response to a friend and quite a dedicated reader asking me, ‘have you disowned your blog?’truthfully,I have tried to write in last two months.last to last month,I wanted to write about how one could make better decisions in life based on principles of economics..sunk cost,hidden cost fallacy et al.last month I was totally going to write a blog post titled “how to choose the perfect method to commit suicide according to your personality type”..but I chucked the idea considering the readers who would be influenced most,would probably not stay with me for long time. :P So here I am,writing about how I can’t write.yes,yours truly is complicated and silly like that.

I am failing at writing and I am failing gloriously.I am nowhere near how I want to write.Sometimes I am able to write a sort of something,but then it just keeps on sitting there on the pages of notebook,staring at me with blank eyes,lackluster due to lack of further editing.I want to get into this black of ink the white of my words such that they express exactly how I feel and think. I want to write something so riveting ,that it amazes even me,and I am honestly trying to get there.Until I achieve that,there is not much point writing original posts on blog,but I have thought I would be sharing some thoughts,quotes and words from some famous writers and philosophers every week.after all,the blog should not feel ignored.

To end this post,I would like to share a small paragraph from the novel “Black Boy” by “Richard Wright”literature world isn’t still in agreement on considering this novel an autobiography or a work of fiction but anyhow, at one point in novel, this is how Mr.Wright explains his failed attempts at writing during his early years :-

"My purpose was to capture a physical state or movement that carried a strong subjective impression, an accomplishment which seemed supremely worth struggling for. If I could fasten the mind of the reader upon words so firmly that he would forget words and be conscious only of his response, I felt that I would be in sight of knowing how to write narrative. I strove to master words, to make them disappear, to make them important by making them new, to make them melt into a rising spiral of emotional stimuli, each greater than the other, each feeding and reinforcing the other, and all ending in an emotional climax that would drench the reader with a sense of a new world. That was the single aim of my living."

Dreamers And Realists

“There are dreamers, and there are realists in this world. You’d think the dreamers would find the dreamers and the realists would find the realists, but more often than not, the opposite is true. You see, the dreamers need the realists to keep them from soaring too close to the sun. And the realists… well, without the dreamers, they might not ever get off the ground.”
-voice over by Cameron Tucker (punkin chunkin,episode 9,season 3), modern family

If You Forget Me (Pablo Neruda)

I want you to know one thing. You know how this is: if I look at the crystal moon, at the red branch of the slow autumn at my window, if I touch near the fire the impalpable ash or the wrinkled body of the log, everything carries me to you, as if everything that exists, aromas, light, metals, were little boats that sail toward those isles of yours that wait for me. Well, now, if little by little you stop loving me I shall stop loving you little by little. If suddenly you forget me do not look for me, for I shall already have forgotten you. If you think it long and mad, the wind of banners that passes through my life, and you decide to leave me at the shore of the heart where I have roots, remember that on that day, at that hour, I shall lift my arms and my roots will set off to seek another land. But if each day, each hour, you feel that you are destined for me with implacable sweetness, if each day a flower climbs up to your lips to seek me, ah my love, ah my own, in me all that fire is repeated, in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten, my love feeds on your love, beloved, and as long as you live it will be in your arms without leaving mine. (my fav poem by Pablo Neruda)