Posts

Showing posts from June, 2021

Bill Cosby Walks Free - a Sad, Infuriating day for Sexual Assault Victims

Image
“Finally!! A terrible wrong is being righted - a miscarriage of justice is corrected!” so read Phylicia Rashad’s tweet today. Ms. Rashad, known around the world as the smart and poised Claire Huxtable from “The Bill Cosby Show” was reacting to the news that her costar and convicted sex offender, Bill Cosby’s guilty verdict has been overturned and that he is being released from prison.  What Ms. Rashad fails to comprehend or give a f@$# about is the fact that Cosby’s verdict is not being overturned because he has been found innocent, but rather because of a technicality in the judicial system that disallows the use of some of his own incriminating testimony, to be used to obtain a conviction. None of this changes the fact that Cosby is guilty of assaulting multiple women. Sixty women have accused Bill Cosby of rape and other sexual misconduct, spanning a course of over forty years (from 1965 to 2008 according to Wikipedia). What about justice for them?!! What about the wrongs committed

Arranged Marriages and Dowry - When Marriage becomes more about Money than Love

Image
Daughters are referred to as “ paraaya dhan ” in Hindi, which translates to “someone else’s wealth”, because according to Indian culture, a girl’s parents are merely her temporary caretakers until she’s ready to be handed over to her “permanent” or “real” family - that of her in-laws. When an Indian woman is married, it’s implied that she ceases to become a member of her own family and joins her husband’s family. Traditionally, she will live in her husband’s home, with his parents, where she will cook, clean and take care of the elderly and children in the family for the rest of her life.  If there is any monetary exchange between the families in such a situation, anyone with half a brain would assume that it would be from the groom’s family to the bride’s, for handing over the daughter they raised. But it baffles my mind that in the Indian society, it’s the other way around. In addition to a beautiful, smart, and educated woman, the groom’s family are also given an enormous amount of