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...