Bura na maano holi hai!!

• I LOVE Holi! I love the colours, the gujiya, the fun and the frolicking with family and friends. However I HATE the eve teasing, the fact that every lout on the street seems to equate this festival with license to feel up women at will. And while the police force makes the usual noises about how they are making adequate bandobast to ensure that women on the streets are safe, experience has taught me that self help is usually the best help. So here are a few tips which may help you have a fun AND safe Holi
• Move around in groups: Single women are always viewed as soft targets on Holi so make sure that you always move around in large groups with family and friends
• No is not a dirty word: In fact it's a very useful one to use when you don't want some stranger pawing you with his dirty hands. If you are uncomfortable with strangers or even casual acquaintances with a none too friendly glint their eyes playing holi with you just say no. If they pout there is always that old chesnut (that eve teasers usually use on Holi) to fall back on "Bura na maano Holi hai!"
• At a party be very careful of what you eat or drink: Bhang is often mixed in your pakoras,gujiyas,thandai etc and if you are knocked out or high you are very very vulnerable. Keep a centralised police number in your city (in Delhi it is 100, 011-100 from cell phones ) on speed dial on your cellphones. This has helped me out in a dire emergency on two occasions.
• Carry pepper spray with you: The modern woman's best friend! Just use it responsibly so that you don't end up temporarily blinding a friend by mistake!

Wish you are your families a fantabulous holi. May the holi ke rang truly be the colours of joy.

Caught in the cross-fire

I had hit Delhi Haat yesterday to sample some of my favourite momos with fruit beer after a long long time(why long?that's a story for another day) and yet avoid the weekend crowds and the accompanying dangers of being jostled around by asweaty mass of humanity. As I was preparing to enter the Haat I stopped dead in my tracks on seeing the photograph of an emaciated young woman with a steel claw instead of a hand.The picture was on a poster for an exhibition of photographs inside and I decided to have a dekho while I was at the heart. I spent a truamatic 15 minutes at that exhibition and yet I'm glad I went.

The exhibition titled "Caught in the Cross fire" highlighted the plight of civilian casualties of armed conflicts and the illegal trade in arms.Though I'll admit that the presentation could have been better, the photographs themselves were outstanding.Spanning the work of photographers across two decades and almost all the continents, they ranged from the startling to the heart-rending.

Though all the photographs were eye openers, those of children, some no older than 10 or 11, enrolled as child "soldiers' by guerilla 'armies" were especiallydisturbing. One particularly poignant one was of a young girl, not more than 15-16 who was enrolled as a child soldier in Uganda.She was wearing a London school sweatshirt when chances were that she hadn't probably seen the inside of even a primary school and would probably be dead long before her 18th birthday- the age at which any one of us would have enrolled in university.

The exhibition is currently on in 16 countries across the globe.In New Delhi it's on at the Delhi Haat till the 15th of October.Please do visit if you can.Alternately visit

http://controlarms.org

and please do sign the petition.