Ripples In A Teacup

  A nine-judge bench of the United States Supreme Court has ruled 6-3 in Dobbs v. Jackson that the right to abortion is not a constitutionally protected right. By overturning the ruling in Roe v Wade which had enshrined the right to abortion for nearly five decades in the United States, the Supreme Court gave back to individual states the freedom to legislate on abortion. It is expected that a number of states, especially those with Republican legislatures, will put in place or reinstate laws that either make abortion illegal or make the process of getting an abortion very difficult. This process had already begun in the form of trigger laws designed to be effective if Roe V. Wade is overturned. I am outraged by the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson . In a country where people have so much freedom to buy firearms, why don’t women have the right to have an abortion? Until the foetus is delivered, it is not a separate being and does not have rights that are distinct from the w...

Living in India, I consider Europe to be the ‘cold continent’, where summers are cool and winters frigid. This snowy vision of Europe melts away on hearing that temperatures in both Spain and France have broken records, hitting 35C and is expected to reach 40C in some areas. Firefighters have been battling wildfires across Spain as the country faces its warmest early summer in decades. In the UK, temperature records have been broken and it was more than 28C on Wednesday and 29.5C on Thursday. Climate change is real. Climate change is here. Let’s wake up and do something before it is too late. Or is it already too late? 

 Today is Juneteenth. Juneteenth marks June 19, 1865, when Union Army Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger rode into Galveston, Texas, and issued General Order No. 3, proclaiming that the enslaved African Americans there were free. "The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free," the order read. "This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor." Two months before Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger issued General Order No. 3, Confederate General Robert E. Lee had surrendered to the Union Army at Appomattox Court House, Virginia which marked the end of the Civil War. Two-and-a-half years earlier, President Abraham Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which expectedly didn’t have the desired effect in areas under Confederate control...

I just read this chilling BBC report of how Nepal is preparing to move its Everest base camp because global warming and human activity are making it unsafe. The base camp is located on the Khumbu glacier, which is rapidly thinning. The exposed ice is melting, causing rocky debris to fall, and destabilizing the glacier.  "We surprisingly see crevasses appearing overnight at places where we sleep," said Col Kishor Adhikari of the Nepali army, who was staying at base camp while leading a clean-up campaign "In the morning, many of us have this chilling experience that we could have fallen into them in the night. Cracks on the ground develop so often, it is quite risky."  This frightening change has been attributed to global warming.  A leading member of the committee that recommended the base camp move, Khimlal Gautam, said the presence of so many people at base camp was contributing to the problem. "For instance, we found that people urinate around 4,000 litres at...

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve felt outraged on hearing of yet another woman being attacked solely on account of her gender. However, each time I hear of ‘another’ incident, I resolve to do something about it and yet nothing happens. Will venting on my blog about this new incident in north-eastern China help anyone? Most probably not, but I can’t help myself and so please bear with me.  Three women share a meal at a restaurant in a restaurant in the Chinese city of Tangshan, which lies 180 kilometres to the east of Beijing. A random stranger (incidentally a “man”) walks up to them and seems to have a quick word with one of the women and also places his hand on her back. The woman pushes him away. The man strikes her immediately. His companions drag the woman outside and beat her up. Her companions are also brutally assaulted. You can watch the horrible video here. Why did that man attack that woman? I don’t know. Was he annoyed that she was an independent woman who see...

  I live in a rather old house. Vines have crept up its blackened, decayed sides and twisted themselves into an intricate maze. Blood red roses grow on large sprawling bushes in a wild, maundering fashion. At night, the moon throws an ethereal, almost ghoulish glow over the landscape, casting parts of it into soft, muted shadow. The dead trees outside sway melancholically in the gentle breeze. My friends called me crazy for buying this dilapidated mansion. It is far from town, and completely isolated. The neighborhood is practically deserted. The truth is, it was offered to me for almost nothing. The original owners left in quite a hurry. They seemed frightened, speaking of “strange happenings” and “mysterious voices”. People really do get into a tizzy over nothing. Frankly, I’m not the crazy one for accepting a deal as good as this.  I’ll admit, when laid stark and bare in the cold light of day, my residence appears unseemly. The cracked, peeling paint is the only sign of its...

Recently I started reading about food shortages across the world, caused in no small part, by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Apparently, after a few decades of plenty, we are staring at an impending global food shortage . Ever since I can remember, I’ve been told that I should never waste food. There are so many hungry, starving people in the world and they’ll be so glad to have the food that you are wasting, I’ve been told time and again.   I’ve always been a fussy eater who hated almost everything I was expected to eat, with the exception of chocolate. Maybe my gullet is smaller than normal (I’ve never measured it, mind you) or maybe I lack some enzyme on my tongue which causes food to taste good. I’ve also had to contend with the fact that many of my classmates and friends have restrictions placed on the amount of food they can eat. Every time I heard my parents’ dialogue about there being so many hungry, starving people in the world who’ll be so glad to have the food that I...