Miffed's Scribblings

Today at a time when free speech and independent thinking are disappearing in India, certain media persons face hate, insult and repeated often daily death threats. Despite the traumas they continue to fight back. In 2011, the United Nations named journalism as one of the most dangerous professions in the world. Since 1992, 47 journalists have been killed in India alone, according to Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a non-profit organisation that campaigns for the right of journalists to report the news without fear of reprisal. The alarming frequency with which journalists are being attacked gives rise to a number of disturbing questions. Why do attackers —politically motivated or otherwise —believe they can get away with attacking journalists? One reason could be the absence of a deterrent and a lackadaisical justice system.  According to international non-profit Committee to Protect Journalists, not a single journalist’s murder in India had been solved over...

Dear Ma, It’s been 8 long years without you, No matter how much I try, I know you still won’t come back. I still remember the day you left, I didn’t know how to react. You died on a Friday evening, we had you placed under a tree in that graveyard. I still remember you saying “Dying is part of life." I miss you. I wish you were here. I can tell you a mom is irreplaceable for a child. When a mom dies, her child is no longer whole. The loss makes it hard to breathe. That child flails in the wind like a cottonwood seed. A piece of fluff that gets knocked about the world by the wind. Sometimes I landed on solid ground, sometimes I landed in a pond and almost drowned. But I’m still here. I survived. In the year after your death my dreams plagued me whether they were about your death or when they fooled me into thinking you were still alive. The waking up and again remembering you were dead was the hardest point of each day. I searched for many things to fill mysel...

There is no force more powerful than a woman who is determined to rise. Glass ceilings, Patriarchy, Gender pay gap, Sexist workplace policies, and just male privilege — a lot of challenges dot a woman’s path to success, but many have taken on the mantle to power through them all and succeed against all odds. Here’s a success story of women empowerment, led by a distinguished father of the Jesuit province that changed the lives of many in the rural areas of Sonitpur. Father Oscar Pereira belongs to the Jesuits of the Bombay province, he came chiefly to start social work for the whole of the northeast through the Jesuit organisation.  The initial start began with promoting the Self Help Groups (SHGs). Within a year the organisation was recognised by the Government. Currently, it is funded by Caring Friends, Mumbai (Through Action North East Trust, Bongaigaon ), and Assam Investment Advisory Society. ) Oscar Pereira’s journey to Balipara and the subsequent steps taken to establi...

Over time, the things we use the most become dull. For example, we are prone to happiness. Who wants unhappiness? Do we invite unhappiness? No one does. We are predisposed to want happiness all the time. So we overuse our senses- physical and emotional to saturate ourselves with happiness. Eventually, to make ourselves happier, we need more and more stimuli coming from within as well as outside. It’s overuse of our senses, internal as well as physical. What happens with pain, misery, and sadness? Nobody wants them. If at all they come our way, we ignore them as if ignoring them will make them go away! Since we don’t use them, whatever little miseries may come our way becomes really highlighted. Happiness is made dull by overuse whereas sadness becomes extremely sharp through underuse. It cuts us like a razor. The more we avoid it, the more every little bit of sadness or unhappiness drives us crazy. “With expectations too, when we have greater expectations from our loved ones, it ...

Talking about Ambubachi, it is a celebration of the annual Mensuration of Mother Earth. Since mensuration is a natural part of the reproductive cycle, it is a phenomenon unique to girls. However, it has always been surrounded by taboos and myths that exclude women from many aspects of socio-cultural life. In India, even a mention of this topic has been taboo in the past and even to this date. Culturally in many parts of India, mensuration is still considered to be dirty and impure. Further, in the Hindu faith, women are prohibited from participating in normal life while menstruating. This year, The Ambubachi Mela started on June 22nd in Kamakhya temple, Guwahati. Almost 10 lakh devotees are expected to visit the temple during this atmosphere time when the Goddess is said to be going through her yearly menstrual cycle. The festival of Ambubachi seems to eulogise womanhood. It is meant to redefine female strength. But to what extent is it true, is something debatable. The paradox...

Mental health problems are more common in people living alone regardless of age and sex, says a study. "The prevalence of common mental disorders was higher in individuals living alone than in those not living alone in all survey years," the study noted. For the study, published in the journal PLOS ONE, the researchers used data on 20,500 individuals aged 16-64 living in England who participated in the 1993, 2000, or 2007 National Psychiatric Morbidity Surveys. Whether a person had a common mental disorder (CMD) was assessed using the Clinical Interview Schedule Revised (CIS-R), a questionnaire focusing on neurotic symptoms. The study found that the prevalence of people  living alone in 1993, 2000, and 2007 was 8.8 per cent, 9.8 per cent, and 10.7 per cent. They found a positive association between living alone and common mental disorder. In different subgroups of people, living alone increased a person's risk for common mental disorder by 1.39 to 2.43 times, the...

Students, please take note. Increased stress during examinations is associated with eating a poor- quality diet including less fruit and vegetables and more fast food, say researchers. The research, published in the European Journal of Nutrition, suggests that students have difficulties eating healthy food and find themselves adopting bad eating habits, leading to stress. Stress has long been implicated in a poor diet. People tend to report overeating and comfort eating foods high in fat, sugar and calories in time of stress. Looking at the eating habits of students during exam periods confirm this stress induced dietary deterioration hypothesis. The results are based on an anonymous online survey of 232 students ( aged 19-22 years) recruited from Ghent University and other Universities in Belgium. The researchers investigated the relationship between exam stress and change in dietary quality, and whether these associations were modified by psychological factors such as eating...

A strategic way to deal between organizations and their public or private sectors is known as Public Relations. This also refers to maintaining the communication process between an organization and its public. A Public Relations officer manages clients for press conferences, writes speeches for company leaders, writes content for social media releases, manages the reputation of the company during times of crisis, etc. The main perspective of a Public Relations Officer is to inform the public, customers, investors, stakeholders, or other people related to the company. Maintaining Public Relations for an organization is a phenomenon that has a historical root. The propaganda was started by the United States, United Kingdom, and Germany during the world war to criticize enemies. Most historians believe that it was first stated in the United States by Ivy Lee and Edward and was later spread internationally. Many American companies with Public Relations departments spread this practice to E...

Introduced by the United Nations General Assembly, World Press Freedom Day is annually celebrated on May 3rd every year. This day celebrates the importance of freedom of the press and raises awareness for the same. The agenda of this day is to remind the government to respect and uphold the right to freedom of expression which is represented under Article 19 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In the year 1991, an African journalist devised a principle that is universally called the Windhoek Declaration. It is a statement of press freedom that includes the flexibility of a press release. This principle states that communication and expression through various media, including printed and electronic media, especially published material should be considered a right to be exercised freely. This declaration is a call for the government to strengthen press freedom and ensure the safety of the journalist during their work hours. World Press Freedom Day was announced of...

Schoolbooks mentioned something called barter as the most primal form of transaction, before the invention of currency. This is something that I generally do not get to see nowadays if I exclude the answers exchanged with the people sitting beside me in certain exams. I am sure it is true for most other people too. That is exactly why I have been trying to visit Jonbeel Mela. But one or the other way my efforts go in vain. I’ve always heard my elder brother preaching about Joonbeel, and how it reflected the way of life people are accustomed to. How the economic ways are different and unique from that of us. To be frank it was my brother and his photographs taken at Joonbeel that made me more attracted towards it. For the uninitiated, Jonbeel Mela in Assam is a yearly fair where people from different ethnic groups gather and exchange goods without using any money, just like their ancestors used to do. The exact year of start is probably not known but it is a tradition that has been ca...

"Ye PUBG wala hai kya?" Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked a mother who raised concerns about her son being too involved in online games during the "Pariksha pe Charcha 2.0" event on Tuesday, 29th of January 2019. The ground reality is that online, multi-player games have taken over the millennials big time in India, sending the earlier individual mobile games like Candy Crush, Temple Run, Clash of Clans, etc. into oblivion. Youngsters in smaller towns and cities can now be seen playing two such battlefield Internet games- PlayersUnknown Battleground (PUBG) and Fortnite- as smartphone penetration increases in leap and bound (there are nearly 430 million smartphone users in India now). These "survival of the fittest" games where mobile users fight each other in real-time using virtual warfare techniques, have eclipsed single-player mobile games, say industry experts. According to a report by the Mobile Marketing Association(MMA) and Kantar IMRB in a...

She is at once amongst the most known and most mysterious of American cultural figures. Emily Dickinson was a constant summons to me to think about language and its preciousness. And not only its preciousness but its power. For many years one of the most fascinating mysteries of American literature has been the personal life of Emily Dickinson. The first time when I read Emily, I was astonished with the kind of lifestyle she had. The themes in her poetry were something beyond its reach to her readers back then. The major poets of her day wrote epics, long pieces that tell a story. While these poets looked outward writing about history and culture, Dickinson wrote lyrics, and poems about the inner life of thoughts and feelings. Her themes and messages were considered too dark and gloomy at first but as of today, she is one of the most read and researched poets in the world. I always wanted to write something about Dickinson. During my college days, I hardly gave a thought to it and ...