Dheeraj Kalgutkar

  Image courtesy: The Hindu       From what I know and can remember Muslim girls in school (not all but some of them) have been wearing hijab (or headscarf) for ages now. It was just another piece of clothing that never bothered us, to the point that we never even noticed its existence. I even know of girls and even teachers who would arrive at school in niqab (or burqa, black outer clothing like a rain-or-sun-coat) and then they would remove it before entering a classroom. Again, this wasn’t a point of conversation or of difference. The only time I have been thinking of these clothing choices and the faces of friends that wore them is now. Now when many schools in Karnataka (and even in Madhya Pradesh, another BJP ruled state) have banned young girls (and even teachers) from covering their hair with a cloth also referred to as wearing hijab . It all started with Hindu kids sloganeering and hooting – all of a sudden – as Muslim kids passed before them. O...

Photo by Nick Karvounis on Unsplash   The perennial excuse of our maid after taking an unannounced holiday which has become ever so often now is that she did come in the morning and rang our doorbell but we did not open the door for her. For long both of us who stay in the house have believed this excuse. Not because she did and we did not. Simply because we thought of letting it pass, giving her the benefit of doubt. There have been days like today when my friend was up since 5 AM due to some exam of his and know for sure that there was no doorbell ringing, but over the months he too has learnt the art of letting it go. “Aunty plays with us” is our constant topic of conversation. And in this game of her, she has been winning all this while. She didn’t come today morning too. And naturally, we had our usual “Arey yaar, ye aunty aaj bhi nahi aayi (Oh man, this maid didn’t even come today)” conversation and went out to have breakfast. On our way back in the dark parkin...

Strange how a hi turns to casual flirting and that flirting turns to being sweet and being sweet turns to wishing we were together, together at this very moment. Strange how people who are far far away from us say hi on social media, dating sites, and things go up. We know there are scarce chances of our meeting, we know distance is a killer but sometimes with some people, these barriers just don’t make sense. It feels like something is better than nothing at all. We may not meet in future or maybe someday our paths will cross but right now, the way our hearts feel reading each other’s texts; that’s special. That’s strangely special. The happy-smiling-curl our lips draw when reading those texts is more special than the ones we have in the midst of a crowd of friends in any room. For some time now, I have tried to understand it, deduct answers to why, but so far, there are no specific answers I can come up with. We know, long distance hardly works, especially if you have never m...