The Artist

  Recently the A.I generated pictures of Taylor Swift were all over the internet. These pictures were generated to show Taylor Swift being molested in public. Her clothes were edited off her too. This caused an outrage that brought an issue we have been shoving under the rug for quite some time: the attempts to take control over women’s bodies. After Taylor Swift’s pictures circulated online, this became a topic of discussion and it was revealed that a fourteen-year-old girl, Mia Janin, from London had committed suicide after her male pupils had generated compromising photos of her. To make matters worse, a few months ago, there was a Telegram A.I capable of editing the clothes off women and girls. It was spreading around like wildfire. Seeing corporates being so invested in the development of A.I, I seriously doubt whether they would ever address this issue. This is matter that requires some serious attention. A.I poses many threats such as displacing jobs etc., but more t...

  The choices made by women are often scrutinized twice as much as men’s and more often than not their choices receive baseless ‘criticism’ that are more rooted in sexism and misogyny than an objective observation. The standard is male. Women can think as men, act as men and understand men but to men it is very difficult to understand women. To most men, a woman still remains an object of mystery. Since, they do not understand women they try to fill the blank called women with what they think a woman is. In other words, a woman is unknown as a woman but is known as a caricature of a woman to most men. This is precisely the reason why female authors can write male characters but male authors struggle to write female characters. One stereotype I would like to address is the stereotype of a hysterical fangirl. People are fans to various things such as movies, music, sports etc., and sometimes they are fans of a particular celebrity or a player. Fandoms are made up of men and w...

One of the most beautiful things to have in life is a family but it is also the biggest hurdle one has cross in life. Family gives life, family protects and family nurtures but it also supresses the Self. Whether one likes it or not, one’s identity is infused with one’s family. Children learn from their parents, consciously and unconsciously, and the identity of the parents strongly moulds the identity of the child. The family, therefore, becomes a part of the child’s being. This might sound harmless and, to a certain extent, it is harmless but things can go awry when the identity of the child starts suppressing the individuality of the child. It is true that we humans have multiple personas but out of all of them our strongest persona is the one tied to our family. To give an example, we are the son/daughter of Mr and Mrs. so and so. This information is recorded in all of our documents. The persona of a son/ daughter is the strongest persona one has because they have to carry it...

  On a Sunday evening, my friends and I visited the cemetery in St. George’s cathedral. We knew that we weren’t allowed to enter that place. Nevertheless, we went ahead. We saw many types of graves; some were built with marble and some had nothing more than a rusty cross marking the place of rest. The graves were aligned perfectly. It was my second time visiting a cemetery – as I am a non-Christian I don’t get to visit them on a regular basis – and I felt very calm. It was a pleasant afternoon and it was the perfect place to take a walk. My friends and I never understood why people harbour a prejudice towards the dead. Dead people were once living people – like you and I – who had hopes, dreams and ambition. They were just people. As we walked further, we entered the part reserved for the English. Those graves were different from the ones we saw earlier. They were made of stone with intricate carvings in it. Some of them had cracks in them but they had withstood the test of tim...

  There are days where you can barely get up, much less write something. What should you do on such a day? Your mind is filled with ideas, waiting to be expressed, but your body shuts down. Eventually, you give in to the temptation and go back to sleep. But when you sleep, your ideas haunt your dreams urging you to let them out. So, you wake up and take your pen but the ideas will not come out and you lack the motivation to force them out. The greatest enemy of the author is not a critic but writing slump. I have been an unfortunate victim of writing slump multiple times. On the bright side, however, I have learnt how to battle it out. Here are a few steps which would help you to get over your writing slump. 1.      Listen to good music for a few minutes. As you listen to it, mull over the scene where you stopped writing. Imagine in it and enact it in your head. Music sets the mood and helps you to picture the scene quite easily. This would, more or less, give ...

Everybody has their own answer to whether there is any meaning in life or not. Most people believe that there is one. ‘Why were we made?’ This question has haunted humanity for ages. Different religions offer different answers but the baseline has always been the same; that we are here for a purpose higher than merely existing. While we live we must make sure that we lead a life that gives us a blissful afterlife. I am not going to give an answer to this question. I find man’s urge for meaning far more fascinating than the answer itself. Where did the urge to find meaning come from? Is it because we feel alienated in this world? After all, man is the only creature with a conscience. This conscience is a blessing and a curse. There is this world and there are species living in it. They go about their lives completely unaware of the cruelty that surrounds them. They kill and get killed. Unlike animals, we cannot suffer in ignorance. When humanity attained a sense of self and the ...

  Her small head contains an infinity of perfection. The world flies into her head and gets conceived there. She patiently bears it and shapes it thoughtfully and carefully. She nurtures it in her head for several days until the shapeless world acquires shape. Faces receive characters, characters receive names, names get recognition. Recognition breeds familiarity. One night, she silently types the world she had shaped. She pauses and presses backspace. A while later, after ruminating upon her choice of words, she continues. She pauses again. No amount of words could capture the perfection in her head. Words cut off the limbs of her creation to accommodate it. Her perfect creation was born imperfect. She contemplates whether to have it unborn and perfect or born and imperfect. Then she remembers it. Parvati created a perfect boy from the sandal paste of her body. He was born in her head first then was brought to life by her hands which shaped every part of him with great ca...