Really Social

  A year of living and traveling between Delhi and Gurgaon quietly revealed how identity, silence, and everyday struggles shape the lives of many people in ways the wider world rarely notices There are many struggles people carry quietly, challenges that others rarely see or understand. One very practical example I have observed during my year living and traveling between Delhi and Gurgaon is the experience of the Muslim community. Across the world, many Muslims live with an invisible pressure: the constant expectation to prove their patriotism, to show that they are not extremists, to defend their identity again and again. It is a burden that others seldom have to carry.One moment that stayed with me happened in the metro. I saw a young woman walking out of the train carrying a kirpan, a ceremonial dagger traditionally worn by Sikhs. It made me pause and think about how differently symbols and identities are perceived. In India, discussions about identity often reveal deep layers ...

 I accidentally watched Madathy (2019), and it didn’t feel like a movie—it felt like a wound being gently but firmly opened. The film doesn’t scream. It doesn’t sermonize. It walks—through the lives of the so-called untouchables, through women’s bodies turned into sites of control and pleasure, through nature, animals, silence, and suppressed rage. The donkey, the wild, the land—every metaphor exposes how society treats those it deems “lesser.” It covers women with dignity and exposes men without mercy. What’s striking is what the film doesn’t fully touch—the brahmanical canvas—yet even without naming it directly, the rot is unmistakable. Madathy protests reality simply by showing it as it is. And then I look around today. We claim the cow is sacred, yet fellow human beings are killed in its name. Does our ministers welcome foreign delegates with cow dung and cow urine rituals? so I ask: If it is culture when performed for power, why is it violence when questioned for humanity? Ind...

  My name is Deepak. Mohammed Deepak. This should be the idea of the new India—where identities can coexist, not collide. Where being Hindu, Muslim, or both in name and spirit is not treated as a crime. But today’s reality tells a different story. In Nainital, a young woman recently stood up to protect minorities from Hindutva violence. Elsewhere, an elderly Muslim man was attacked over something as trivial as the word “Baba” on a textile board. When violence erupted, a gym owner stepped in to stop it. When asked his name, he said, Mohammed Deepak . That moment—an act of humanity—should have ended the violence. Instead, it worsened it. This is the tragedy of our times: truth invites punishment, compassion provokes anger, and standing against extremism is treated as betrayal. The culture being normalised by BJP and Hindutva fringe groups is not strength—it is fear dressed as power. It is unethical, shameful, violent, and deeply against the very values of Hinduism it claims to ...

  Midnight Freedom and Morning Amnesia 🇮🇳 The plan was simple. Last night, over half-sleepy promises and leftover optimism, my roommate declared, “I’ll bring the items in the morning. We’ll cook together.” A democratic decision. Consensus achieved. Constitutionally binding. Morning arrived. Nothing happened. No vegetables. No groceries. No roommate urgency. Just silence, broken only by the distant sound of patriotic songs and my stomach filing a non-cooperation movement. It was Republic Day. And that’s when it hit me. Why Midnight? Why did India got its freedom at midnight? Not at sunrise, when the nation wakes up fresh and hopeful. Not mid-morning, after chai and civic sense kick in. But exactly at midnight , when half the country is asleep and the other half is wondering whether to stay awake or postpone enthusiasm till morning. Standing there, hungry, staring at an empty kitchen, I suddenly felt I understood the leaders of 1947. They knew us ! A Historical Pause (Because Sati...