Exactly a year ago, at this time, I was rushing home from my grandpa’s funeral to get my dad admitted to a hospital before Bangalore ran out of beds.
A day later I was scrambling for an oxygen cylinder, pooling my family’s savings in case we had to buy it in black.
A day after that, the then Chief Minister caught COVID and there wasn’t a bed in the hospitals close by.
It’s been just a year and we’ve forgotten how terribly the Karnataka government failed us. How ambulances were turned into makeshift beds to to provide oxygen to people.
The ones that weren’t in the hospital were queued up outside crematoriums, ambulance drivers waiting hours for the solitary dead body in their vehicle to be cremated before they went to get the next one and return to the same crematorium.
@dansiddiqui 's death feels so personal to many of us even though we didn't know him personally. I think this is, in large part, because of his photos. Not just what he shot, but how he shot them. Thread 🧵
All his photos clearly showed who was in power and who wasn't. This famous photo of his doesn't show a Muslim man being beaten up by thugs. It shows a rabid mob beating a Muslim man. What this means? The subject of the photo is not the man. It's the mob.
His photos of migrant workers showed them with dignity. It reminded me of one of the first things I was taught. "Shoot people at their eye level. Don't look up to them or look down on them. Show them for who they are"
To everyone who is saying “there is no clear north-south divide, we have lot of similarities” ofc we have similarities and differences. As any group of people in the world share similarities and differences with one another esp with geographic proximity (1)
Most people in North-Central India don’t understand how racist they are to South Indians, both as a society and as individuals.
Our culture & history has always been looked at as inferior, erased or mocked/misrepresented. Here are some basic, glaring differences b/w North-South
1. Names: My great grandfather’s name is T.K. Suchindran - Thanissery Kumaran Suchindran. My actual name is P.V. Vaishnavi - Peruvamba Vadakkanchery Vaishnavi. A lot of our names are name of village or district/father’s name/maiden name and at times suffixed by caste name.
For all the vadaks who’ve asked me “why you madrasis don’t have a family name” here is your answer.
TW: sexual abuse
When I was sexually assaulted at 14 I cried my way back home got a fever & stayed in bed for a week.
When I was flashed at 15 after a board exam, I walked away and tried to focus on my next exam instead of thinking of the gross things I saw.
When I was sexually assaulted at 18 I kept quiet because I willingly slept next to the guy, even though I objected to everything he did to me the whole night.
When I got sexually assaulted at 19, I was confused. He was someone I liked but I didn't like what he did to me. Maybe..
...he didn't know what he was doing? Maybe he touched me accidentally, even though I moved away from him and he came up to touch me again? So I didn't tell anyone, even my best friends, for the next three years.
Given the way the current government is handling the pandemic, activists and individuals from various human rights and health organisations have written an open letter to the 74th World Health Assembly. Please read, endorse and share
We are only in our second wave and we are devastatingly low on medical resources, beds, vaccines and pretty much everything. We have more waves to endure and the next one will harm children more. We need the pressure and help from international communities to make it through