Dheeraj Kalgutkar

  “ A 25-year-old Hindu man was allegedly strangled to death in Rajasthan’s Dausa district for trying to stop three men from applying colour on him during Holi celebration”. Every year on Holi, we hear news reports of molestation and non-consensual touches. Year after year these stories have become so widespread and familiar that now we have got subconsciously wired to simply ignore them and move on with our lives. “Holi hai!” (It’s Holi!) is a cry that is shouted, and like clockwork, anyone would come, apply colour to you and proceed further to the next person. Implicit in that cry is, all is well, or all goes on Holi. But in recent years, incidents of communal nature have added themselves to the long list of Holi complaints. Protecting law and order is the job of the police. A murder by a murderer can be stopped in two ways: either you control the situation such that the murderer does not get the opportunity to commit the crime, or you do the murder yourself, leaving the...

Yesterday, while I was having dinner with my mum, a sudden sound, loud one that was only a whisper a while ago startled us. It was from our neighbors, the middle-aged couple just next to our home who daily bad mouthed one or the other living being had zeroed on my dad today. They were doing all sort of gaali-galauz to my father over a piece of land that lay between our homes. Every fortnight there will be quarrels over who owns it. In fact it will be fueled when someone places some thing on that piece of land; history will be evoked, dead forefathers will be brought from the grave, the battle will be on. But now they had crossed the line (did they?) by foul mouthing my dad... And thus began a battle at night that will end past midnight with a hoard of spectators around! Pause a bit. Now imagine if something similar happens to you, that your neighbor starts to bad mouth about your home, your people. Won't you be agitated? Won't you go fight them? Or will you keep quite? ...