Enjoy the heat!
By Amita Kanekar Popular Essays
The government’s job, meanwhile, seems to be to increase the heat, given that whatever is happening in Panjim can be found, with small variations, all over Goa. Among the many homes and other buildings earlier demolished or sliced through at the altar of roadworks there was one of the earliest Catholic shrines of Goa, more than four centuries old, which just disappeared overnight. The latest casualty was the beloved Khapreshwar temple at Porvorim’s Voddakode, along with the old vodd (banyan tree) for which the site is named – uprooted despite mass protests. Is this how a democratic government is supposed to respond to legitimate and nonviolent citizens’ protests: with police deployment and threats of lathi charges and arrests? Click here to read in detail.
As for the latter, the government imagines that their divide-and-rule policy, of putting up statues of Hindu icons everywhere, along with new Hindu temples and now aarti-ghats, and continuously misrepresenting Goa’s colonial history, will distract Goans from current realities. Is it so difficult to understand, especially in this sweltering weather, the environmental madness that has been unleashed on us; and how all this wholesale destruction of fields, forests, hills, orchards, rivers, and wetlands, this actual wiping out of Goa at breakneck speed, is going to affect us in the future?
(First published on O Heraldo, dt: 16 March 2025)
Marriages in India are like extortion markets
In a video, Challa recounted her brother, an assistant professor at a Hyderabad engineering college, married a woman from Rajahmundry in 2019 which lasted just for 10 days. The wife misbehaved with the parents-in-law, spoke foul language, and did not let her husband into his own bedroom. She often threatened suicide. Ten days later she left her matrimonial home and filed a 498 case (Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) that deals with cruelty against a married woman by her husband or his relatives). The FIR was filed without their knowledge or any investigation.
The case has impacted Challa’s career. Despite her stellar academic background—an alumna of IIM Ahmedabad and IIT Gandhinagar—and with previous work experience as a Vice President at Goldman Sachs, she admitted she was unable to find a job due to the pending criminal case.
The video sparked an outpouring of reactions on social media, with many netizens criticising flaws in the arranged marriage system and sharing similar experiences.
Jagoran 