by Mridu Khullar Relph
-India-

Banav Bibi is not a Bangladeshi. She wants everyone to know this. She shouted it to the policeman who accused her son of being an illegal immigrant, arrested him, and beat him up. She said it to the rich madamji in one of the homes from which she picks up trash, when she was accused of stealing and not allowed to enter. And she told the jamadarni, the neighborhood head of the waste collectors, who hired goons to run her out of the area.

If they want proof, they can look at her identity card. "Bangladesh is an entirely different country," she says. "They have a different way of talking. We are from Calcutta, which is in India."

by Mridu Khullar
- India / USA -

In December 2008, Binghamton, New York, became one of just six cities in the United States to enact laws protecting against weight discrimination. The others are San Francisco and Santa Cruz (California), Urbana (Illinois), Madison (Wisconsin), and Washington D.C. The only state in the country to have such a law is Michigan.

Sondra Solovay, an attorney based in Berkeley, California, says fat people are often victims of discrimination and abuse in employment, social settings, places of public accommodation, and among their peers. She belongs to a growing community of people who describe themselves as "fat activists" who routinely fight the bias against heavier people and push for anti-discrimination laws. In a nod to the gay reclamation of the word “queer,” they're also reclaiming the word "fat." Says Marilyn Wann, a San Francisco-based activist, "If we claim it with pride, nobody can use it against us."

by Mridu Khullar
- India -

The male vice-principal of a woman's college in Gwalior, India physically assaults fellow female faculty members and students by grabbing them and throwing them against walls. Kalpana Saxena, 37, publishes accounts of women affected by his behavior and he is immediately transferred, ensuring that he will never work in a woman's college again.

A six-year-old girl playing in an empty field is raped by a local dhobi (Hindi for a person who launders clothes for a living), and eventually dies as a result of her injuries. Sandhya Kaushik, 26, chances upon her story and finds that months later, the rapist still walks free. She writes about the details of the case and the girl's family is able to renew their fight for justice, this time with the media on their side.

by Mridu Khullar
- India / USA -

A theatre troupe consisting of unemployed job seekers, hawkers on the streets of Kolkata, India, and people who've been told they have no prospects in life, come together each evening to sing, dance and hone their acting skills.

Earning little more than Rs. 100 (US$2) per show, they perform in small theatres, villages, local parks, even on the roadside.

Their movements are perfectly coordinated, their dramatically delivered dialogues impressive. And it's only when you see the ropes placed strategically around the stage to demarcate the boundaries that you begin to question, that you look closer and realize—almost all the performers in the troupe of Anyadesh are blind.

by Mridu Khullar
- USA/India -

A few days ago, after weeks of avoiding it, I finally watched Slumdog Millionaire.

The reason I'd put it off for as long as I had wasn't because as a journalist from India currently in the Bay Area, I felt the pressure of giving a long, insightful critique of the film to my non-Indian colleagues. Nor because of the controversy and debates that would inevitably require me to pick a side and try to explain away the complexities of India, which clearly can't be explained away.

It was simply because having endured some awful movies about India in the past, I didn't want to watch yet another foreigner's misrepresentation of something he didn't understand.

by Mridu Khullar
- India / USA -

For five years, Jitender Kumar was unable to find employment. He gave interviews every week, was rejected constantly, and sank into depression as sources of income dwindled and he became increasingly dependent on his parents for financial support.

Mr. Kumar is 33, married, and has two daughters. He is also an amputee with no left leg.

by Mridu Khullar
- India / USA -

With her signature short hair, perky voice, and aggressive journalistic style, Barkha Dutt, 36, ushered in a new age of journalism in India. Compassionate yet firm, her war reporting from Kargil made her a household name and a role model for young journalists around the country.

But in the days after the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India, that killed at least 171 and injured over 200, Ms. Dutt has faced criticism from thousands of Indian viewers for her work during the almost 60 hours that Mumbai was under attack.

by Mridu Khullar
- India -

5:49 pm: The local Western Railway train pulls up at the Churchgate station in Mumbai. People on various platforms rush from one corner to the other, preoccupied with getting to their next destination on time. I'm possibly the only person who's taken a moment to stand and look around at the swarm of fleeting bodies around me. I board the train.

by Mridu Khullar
- India -

According to the National Coalition of Health Care in America, in 2007, total national health expenditures were expected to rise 6.9 percent—twice the rate of inflation. Healthcare spending is 4.3 times the amount spent on national defense. And although 47 million Americans are uninsured, the United States spends more on healthcare than other industrialized nations.

It is no wonder then that scores of American citizens are heading off to foreign shores for their healthcare needs.

by Mridu Khullar
- India -

Couples in India are finally figuring out that hours of horoscope-matching sessions followed by measures to correct planetary positions make not a good marriage. Urban educated twenty-somethings of today are ditching the priest's grass mat and heading to the counselor's leather couch.

Pre-marital counseling, a concept that has so far been alien to Indians, is making an entry into the psyche of the young middle-class. Counseling of any sort has traditionally been seen as a "western idea," and something that is not part of the Indian culture. Formal and professional pre-marital counseling is looked upon even more skeptically by a generation of parents who met each other no more than once or twice before their own arranged marriages.

by Mridu Khullar
- India -

• Tibetan writers are using literature and new languages, Chinese and English, to share information about Tibet's struggle for freedom with a wider audience.
Photograph by Sirensongs. •

Their language of choice—Tibetan, English, and surprisingly, now even Mandarin.

“Although the exile Tibetan community [in India] has been very effective in providing a high level of cultural production in religious areas, it is inside Tibet that Tibetan intellectuals and artists have been able to make achievements in secular culture, such as poetry, literature, music, painting, and some forms of scholarship, despite the difficulties they face,” says Dr. Robert Barnett, Director of Modern Tibetan Studies at Columbia University and author of Lhasa: Streets with Memories.

The writings of these poets and essayists have transformed over the past decade from musings about an exotic culture and history, to more real issues of human rights, political policies, and memoirs of people loved and lost. The Tibetan writers of today, regardless of their genre, seem to write with an agenda: to spread the word about the declining situation of the Tibetan freedom movement to readers both inside and out of China.