When will the tide turn?
By Pawan Dhall
Both photographs in this article were clicked during an event organized on April 18, 2018 by Maitree, a pioneering women’s rights network in West Bengal
By Pawan Dhall
Both photographs in this article were clicked during an event organized on April 18, 2018 by Maitree, a pioneering women’s rights network in West Bengal
By Pawan Dhall
Morning newspapers are all about marvelling with horror at the survival challenges we as a deeply unequal society throw at our girls and women. And then I marvel some more...
By Pawan Dhall
Death doesn’t have to be something morbid. Especially if one considers what Rabindranath Tagore said about death being ‘completion’ and not the ‘end’ of life (or so I remember from...
By Sayan Bhattacharya
When I was asked to write the 'Varta' editorial for this month, I was in a fix. How does one write about yet another year ending and another beginning?
By Pawan Dhall
To pee or not to pee – in a public toilet! Till this day any decision in this regard has sometimes to be taken even before I have left home.
By Pawan Dhall
Three of the articles in this issue of 'Varta' talk about the continued hardships faced by transgender and intersex people in India. All jab us in the eye at how far...
By Pawan Dhall, Rudra Kishore Mandal
Fortunate is the editor who gets to compensate the lack of inspiration for his 50th editorial with a thank you note!
By Pawan Dhall
A new media acquaintance wondered what the focus of this issue’s editorial would be. He was sure I would write about journalist Gauri Lankesh's murder. Well, he wasn’t wrong.
By Pawan Dhall
Freer, hardier, sexier! How about that as a motto for achieving a better life for everyone? A motivation where the contest is with our limitations in becoming a more just...
By Pawan Dhall
Four taxi and two private car trips, five bus trips, as many train rides (above and below ground) and six flights – in all I undertook 22 point-to-point journeys on...
By Pawan Dhall
Adarsh Gay Bhakt, Sanskari Homo, Adarsh NRI Homo . . . a quick search on Facebook will take you to some of these posts that have been doing the rounds...
By Pawan Dhall, Anupam Hazra
Sumana Pramanik is a young trans woman who lives in the Nadia district of West Bengal. Keen on a legal gender identity change, she approached a First Class Magistrate for...
By Pawan Dhall
Recurrent and vivid dreams of water have fascinated me since years, perhaps even childhood. I see water in my dreams as blue, black, transparent; still, moving, flowing; peaceful, playful, terrorizing,...
By Pawan Dhall
Civil rights champion, political activist and poet Irom Chanu Sharmila may have lost in the recent Manipur Legislative Assembly elections. But all is not lost. Perhaps her defeat was expected,...
By Pawan Dhall
So the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Government of India has launched an adolescent health resource kit that includes information on sexual and reproductive health, mental health, violence, substance...
By Pawan Dhall
I think I’m passing through a happy hours phase. No, not for guzzling beer or cheap Internet services; rather this is about being invigorated by the arts in all their...