Special counsel Robert Mueller’s redacted report on Russian election meddling reveals new information about the rumored “pee tape” allegedly featuring President Donald Trump.

According to the report released Thursday, there were tapes, though it’s unclear whether they featured Trump at all, much less the future president watching “prostitutes” perform golden showers in a hotel room during his 2013 trip to Moscow for the Miss Universe pageant, as has been rumored.

While Mueller’s report doesn’t say definitively whether the pee tape is real, it reveals in a footnote that there was a Russian businessman working with then-Trump attorney Michael Cohen to hold the “flow.”

According to the report (emphasis ours):

On October 30, 2016, Michael Cohen received a text from Russian businessman Giorgi Rtskhiladze that said, “Stopped flow of tapes from Russia but not sure if there’s anything else. Just so you know...” Rtskhiladze said “tapes” referred to compromising tapes of Trump rumored to be held by persons associated with the Russian real estate conglomerate Crocus Group, which had helped host the 2013 Miss Universe Pageant in Russia. Cohen said he spoke to Trump about the issue after receiving the texts from Rtskhiladze. Rtskhiladze said he was told the tapes were fake, but he did not communicate that to Cohen.

The scandal made a splash after a dossier on Trump and his associates, compiled by British spy Christopher Steele, went public in 2016. Since then, there’s been no proof of a pee tape, though American lawmakers and even Russian President Vladimir Putin have hinted that there might be similar compromising information out there.

Trump, meanwhile, has long denied the allegations set forth in the Steele dossier. He was, however, pretty pissed about them, according to Mueller’s report:

The President-Elect expressed concern to intelligence community leaders about the fact that the information had leaked and asked whether they could make public statements refuting the allegations in the Steele reports.

Priyanka Chaturvedi, national spokesperson and convenor of the Congress has quit the party.

Chaturvedi wrote submitted her resignation letter to party president Rahul Gandhi in which said she was sad the Congress’ call for “safety, dignity, empowerment of women” was “not reflected in the action of some of the members of the party”.

Chaturvedi has asked to be relieved of all her roles and responsibilities in the party immediately. 

Her resignation comes a day after she took to Twitter to express her disappointment over Congress reportedly reinstating members of the party who had misbehaved with her.

Chaturvedi had said on Twitter, “Deeply saddened that lumpen goons get prefence in @incindia over those who have given their sweat&blood. Having faced brickbats&abuse across board for the party but yet those who threatened me within the party getting away with not even a rap on their knuckles is unfortunate.”

Chaturvedi also dropped her ‘AICC Spokesperson’ role from her Twitter bio.

ThePrint had reported sources as saying on Thursday that the incident took place in September when Chaturvedi went to Mathura and was threatened by men close to Congress’s Mathura candidate Mahesh Pathak

PTI reported unnamed Congress leaders as saying the action of rescinding the suspension was taken on the recommendations of Congress general secretary for West Uttar Pradesh Jyotiraditya Scindia. 

Priyanka Chaturvedi, who quit as the Congress spokesperson on Friday, said took to Twitter to confirm the news saying she was writing her resignation “with a heavy heart” and that she quit because the party’s call to action was not reflected by some of the members of the party. 

“In the last few weeks certain things have convinced me that my services are not valued in the organisation and that I have reached the end of the road. At the same time I also feel that the more time spend in the organisation will be at the cost of my own self-respect and dignity,” Chaturvedi wrote in the letter addressed to Congress president Rahul Gandhi. 

NDTV reported that she is likely to join the Shiv Sena. 

Chaturvedi pointed out that misbehaviour by party members against her was ignore by the party in the name of needing “all hands” during elections. “What saddens me is that despite the safety, dignity and empowerment of women being promoted by the party and has been our call to action the same is not reflected in the action of some of the members of the party,” she said. 

She said the ‘indignity’ meted out to her was the final factor in her deciding to quit. 

Chaturvedi had taken to Twitter on Thursday expressing her sadness over Congress having reinstated the members who she had accused. “Deeply saddened that lumpen goons get prefence in @incindia over those who have given their sweat&blood. Having faced brickbats&abuse across board for the party but yet those who threatened me within the party getting away with not even a rap on their knuckles is unfortunate,” she had said on Twitter. 

ThePrint had reported sources as saying on Wednesday that the incident took place in September when Chaturvedi went to Mathura and was threatened by men close to Congress’s Mathura candidate Mahesh Pathak

PTI reported unnamed Congress leaders as saying the action of rescinding the suspension was taken on the recommendations of Congress general secretary for West Uttar Pradesh Jyotiraditya Scindia. 

MUMBAI — The Indian Psychiatric Society (IPS) has written a letter to the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), arguing that the posters of Kangana Ranaut and Rajkummar Rao-starrer Mental Hai Kya depict mental illness in poor light.

In a letter addressed to CBFC Chief Prasoon Joshi, the IPS said it takes objection to a “number of issues”, as the movie, backed by Ekta Kapoor’s Balaji Motion Pictures, seems to violate many section of Mental Health Care Act, 2017.

“We take serious objections to the title of the movie which is discriminative, stigmatising, degrading and inhuman in projecting mental disorders and persons who suffer from mental disorders,” the letter read.

“We strongly demand the title to be removed with immediate effect preventing further damage to the modesty of mental health service users,” it added.

The IPS said every citizen of the country is governed by the Mental Health Care act 2017 and it is a legal obligation to be aware about the mental health and reduce stigmas associated with it.

It also asked material from the film which violates the act to be censored.

“The Central Board of Film Certification being a quasi-judiciary body makes it more legally bounded to set an example to the citizens and be guardian of rich Indian heritage and culture.

“We also demand to censor any sequence that is violating the rights of persons with mental disorder. We presume this letter as a legal warning to any such events, currently or in future, subjective that comes under the purview of CBFC,” it added.

Representatives of Balaji Motion Pictures remained unavailable for comments .

Terror-accused Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, the BJP’s Lok Sabha candidate from Bhopal, claimed on Thursday that former Mumbai Anti-Terror Squad chief Hemant Karkare was killed because she had cursed him.

In a video of her address to BJP workers on Thursday, she is heard saying, “I had told him you will be destroyed, and he was gone in less than two months.”

After she makes the claim, BJP workers around her are seen clapping.

Karkare was killed during the 2008 Mumbai terror attack along with senior police officials Ashok Kamte and Vijay Salaskar outside the Cama Hospital when Ajmal Kasab and his partner Abu Ismail opened fire at their police van, Indian Express reports.

He was the first officer to investigate the Malegaon blasts which took place on 29 September 2008, in which Thakur is an accused, according to NDTV.

Six people were killed and 101 injured in the blast. 

The BJP scrambled to undo the damage caused by its candidate’s vitriol against a man considered a national hero, saying they wouldn’t “do politics” over Karkare’s sacrifice.

Out on bail on health grounds, Thakur had been discharged by a court on charges under the stringent Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) in the 2008 case, but is still facing trial under other criminal provisions, including the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.

The announcement of her candidature has caused controversy and dismay, being the first known instance of a major political party giving a ticket to someone accused of terrorism. Many commentators have rightly pointed out that the BJP would have raised hell if any other political party had done so.

While Thakur and other BJP leaders have claimed she was given a “clean chit” in the case, she is still under trial in the case and is accused of murder, attempt to murder, criminal conspiracy and of promoting enmity between different groups on ground of religion.

On Thursday, the father of a Malegaon blast victim moved an application in court asking for Thakur to be restricted from fighting the current election and to be directed to attend court proceedings regularly.

Having sex means mentally preparing yourself for all manner of potentially messy situations. One possibility? A condom getting stuck or lodged inside you after intercourse.

While your first instinct may be to panic, staying calm and knowing what steps to take is a better response. HuffPost asked experts to share what you should do if you ever find yourself dealing with a stubborn condom.

If it’s stuck in your vagina and you think you can reach it ...

It’s probably difficult, but the first thing you should attempt to do is relax, said Alyssa Dweck, a New York-based gynecologist and author.

“If you tense up your vaginal muscles, it’s going to be uncomfortable to insert your finger and try to get it out,” she said.

Dweck added that you may even want to get into a warm shower or bath to help relax your body. Then, after checking that your hands are clean and your fingernails aren’t too long, use an index finger to feel around and sweep the back wall of the vagina. When you find the condom, try to hook your finger into it and pull it out, Dweck said.

Whatever you do, don’t use any tools like tweezers to reach it. With tweezers, as well as long, sharp fingernails, you could knick yourself. Since the vagina and vulva are very vascular, Dweck said, cuts in that area will bleed more. Your partner can absolutely assist with this, so long as they follow the same hand maintenance rules. 

If it’s stuck in your vagina and you can’t reach it ...

Once again, don’t panic. Dweck said it’s possible that the condom is bunched up closer to your cervix and out of reach of fingers, or it’s lodged in one of your vaginal fornices, which are pocket-like structures near your cervix.

This is a fairly common occurrence, and Dweck said she finds herself “fishing for condoms frequently” at her practice. During daytime hours, you could call your gynecologist to see if they can squeeze you in, but an urgent care center would be equipped to handle a condom retrieval as well.

The procedure would be somewhat like a pap smear, Dweck noted. A doctor would use a speculum to open your vagina and remove the condom with a small instrument.

If a condom is stuck in your anus ...

If you can reach it, the same rules apply as above, according to Joseph Frankhouse, a Portland, Oregon-based fellow of the American Society of Colon and Rectal Surgeons and leader of the Colon and Rectal surgery program for Legacy Health.

“Your first goal would be to see if using some fingers, you can find the edge and pull it out,” he said.

If that doesn’t work, your body has a pretty good backup plan. In all likelihood, you’ll pass it with your next bowel movement, and if not that one, probably the one after that, Frankhouse said.

And if it’s still in your anus ...

Since the condom itself doesn’t present serious health risks, Frankhouse said, you can give it another try with a gentle, over-the-counter laxative like Miralax.

And if it’s really, really not coming loose, your next step would be to see a colorectal surgeon or a gastroenterologist. “We can put a speculum in your bottom and we could see if it’s visible. It might very well be easily grasped and retrieved in that fashion,” Frankhouse said, “or one could use an endoscope or colonoscope to look in there and make sure everything’s OK and remove it.”

What you should do once it’s out.

You may need some tests or medication because of the risk of pregnancy or sexually transmitted infections. It’s possible some semen seeped out of the condom while it was inside you, Dweck said.

If you were having vaginal intercourse and didn’t use any form of birth control beyond the condom ― like the pill or an IUD ― you can take Plan B to prevent pregnancy, provided it’s within the 72-hour window.

While this is not especially likely to happen, a condom left in a vagina for a longer period of time can also lead to infections like bacterial vaginosis or yeast infection.

If you’re uncertain about your partner’s STI status, it’s never a bad idea to get tested. Dweck also recommended following a standard course of treatment: For potential gonorrhea, your doctor can give you a one-time shot of Rocephin. For chlamydia, a one-time dose of Zithromax can be administered.

“If someone is not immunized against Hepatitis B, then a shot or a vaccine might be helpful,” she added. If you believe you may have been exposed to HIV, then you may also need the antiretroviral PEP to prevent infection. Don’t delay ― it’s best to begin PEP within 36 hours and definitely no later than 72 hours after a possible exposure.

While this is not especially likely to happen, a condom left in a vagina for a longer period of time can eventually lead to infections like bacterial vaginosis or yeast infection, so being aware is key, Dweck said.

How you can prevent this from happening in the future.

Making sure the condom is the correct size is the first step, Dweck said, because a condom that’s too big is more likely to fall off.

Secondly, make sure your post-intercourse routine is on point. If you’re wearing a condom, you should grip the base of the penis firmly as you withdraw to keep the condom on you and not in your partner. If you’re not the one wearing the condom, don’t take it for granted that your partner has followed the best procedure ― it never hurts to do a quick visual and verbal check that the condom was removed intact. That way, you’ll be able to address any issues more quickly.

And finally, while there’s no immediate rush to pull out after sex, Frankhouse said that “an erect penis is going to fill the condom a lot better,” and as you lose your erection post-ejaculation, the risk of the condom slipping off increases.

Ultimately, keeping a level head and being aware of the risks and resources for help is the best way to get out of a sticky spot.

Sex Ed for Grown-Ups is a series tackling everything you didn’t learn about sex in school — beyond the birds and the bees. Keep checking back for more expert-based articles and personal stories.

“If I walked into a darshini in South Bangalore, I would be recognised,” says Shraddha Srinath, referring to the popular, no-nonsense vegetarian eateries that dot Bangalore’s streets. In contrast, in the upmarket JP Nagar café we were sitting in—the location was her choice—no curious glances or hushed whispers of recognition came our way. But Srinath seemed unfazed.

Much like the roles she has played so far, Srinath comes across as self-aware and practical in person. Ahead of her Telugu debut Jersey,which hit screens on Friday to positive reviews, she seems visibly excited, and not particularly nervous.

After all, this isn’t the first time she is trying her luck in a new industry. She has already made a mark in Kannada and Tamil films, played a second lead in Malayalam and more recently, made her Bollywood debut with Tigmanshu Dhulia’s Milan Talkies. The love story set in small-town Allahabad bombed at the box office but various reviews described her as delightful, superb and a find.

The roles Srinath has portrayed so far also point to a churn that the Kannada and Tamil industries are going through—for a long time, women were classified as either angel or vamp, and while Srinath hasn’t reached the Nayanthara league yet, even her standard romantic interest characters display a doggedness and spine that’s refreshing to watch.

It’s hard to believe that Srinath hasn’t been around for that long. While her big-screen debut, as the second lead in the 2015 Malayalam movie Kohinoor, didn’t open many doors for her, it was her lead role in U-Turn, a small-budget Kannada thriller, that got her noticed.

Srinath played Rachana, a journalist who begins digging into why drivers take illegal U-turns on the busy Double Road flyover in Bangalore. The odd choice of story soon plunges her into a murder investigation that rattles towards a spine-chilling conclusion. Directed by Pawan Kumar, whose crowdsourced debut Lucia was a first-of-its-kind Kannada thriller, U-Turn had been highly anticipated.

“I knew people would like the film. I didn’t know how many will be able to watch it,” said Srinath, who credits her almost meteoric rise to it. After its release, her phone rang off the hook and audition offers poured in.

“When I cast Shraddha in my film, she was the short-haired, curious eyed girl who was eagerly waiting for a film. She fit the character of the tomboyish Rachana, who I imagined with a similar sense of wonder when walking into something unknown, the kind Shraddha had,” said U-Turn director Pawan Kumar.  

The ‘Vikram Vedha’ effect

The buzz from the U-Turn trailer got Srinath her biggest movie till date—Vikram Vedha. In the unusual thriller, a twist on the Vikramaditya-Vetaal story, Srinath’s Priya was a focused criminal lawyer determined to do right by her client, even if if it meant thwarting her police officer husband. Despite sharing screen space with two male stars, Madhavan and Vijay Sethupathi, Srinath held her own.

MK Raghavendra, film critic and writer, is cautious in his assessment, though.

“If you look at her films, she is certainly not playing a feminist or (a role) that has gender emphasis, but usually only providing a more sprightly romantic interest. Vikram Vedha, for instance, is almost a male-male fantasy film in which the woman only has a small role. This means that her presence is actually only decorative, although her personality is different and she helps give the film more novelty,” he said.

This, however, is more a limitation of the attitudes that still rule Srinath’s profession, rather than her own abilities and ambition.

“The fact that I got selected says something about the need for on-screen women whom those off-screen can relate to. We have, for the longest time, seen women characters that were there to light up the screen,” she says.

Srinath didn’t accidentally land into acting. Trained as a lawyer, she worked in corporate firms for a while before deciding to move away. While dabbling in theatre as a student at the Bangalore Institute of Legal Studies, she knew this was where her heart lay, but taking the plunge seemed rash.

“The greatest learning I had with five years of studying law was that I had no love for law,” she muses over a glass of water, explaining that she wasn’t ordering any food because she now had to “eat right”.

So life became compartmentalised between her day job and rehearsals for small plays. A film she signed in 2015 didn’t hit screens, and then she decided to audition for U-Turn after seeing an announcement on the director’s website.

From an investigative journalist in Richie who uncovers the truth of a small-town murder to a school teacher in the comic thriller Operation Alamelamma, Srinath’s performances have been understated and driven by a strong character graph. 

She won’t let herself be called an ‘off-beat’ actress, perhaps conscious that any label can work against you in a capricious industry.

“It is very easy to get slotted in the film industry. I don’t have to sell my soul to do a commercial film, I can still find space to perform,” she says.

Director Kumar agrees, saying that her choice of roles has been interesting. “She started with U-Turn, which was the type of film actors would do after years in films. With the changing definitions of commercial cinema, it’s only the script that ultimately decides what works for the actors,” he says.

What next?

Srinath says her ambitions expand with every film she does and every industry she enters.

“When I did U-Turn, I thought the script was king and it is all that mattered. Now I am concerned about who is directing and who the technicians are. They need to know the business. The intent to make a good film is different from actually making one,” she says. After her Bollywood debut, she admits she will also add a good marketing team to this list.

In Jersey, a sports drama directed by Gowtam Tinnanuri, she plays Sarah, the wife of cricketer Arjun, who is looking to make a delayed comeback (at the age of 36) into the sport.

“Everyone questions his decision and Sarah’s insecurities come into play too. Besides, the two have had a fairly long marriage and there is a household to run,” she says about the film.

“My character is very emotional and there were plenty of scenes for me to perform. To be able to select a film, I believe there has to be at least one breakout scene that gives me that opportunity. It has to excite me or make me nervous, one of the two,” she adds.

Incidentally this wasn’t the first Telugu film she signed. An untitled romantic comedy by director Ravikanth, and Jodi, where she stars opposite Aadi Saikumar, both signed in 2017, are set to release this year.

After 2018, when she didn’t have a single release, this year is packed as she flits from promotion to promotion. In Kollywood, too, she will be seen in the psychological thriller K-13 opposite Arulnithi and in Nerkonda Paarvai, the Tamil remake of Bollywood’s Pink, starring superstar Ajith in the role played by Amitabh Bachchan in the original.

Due to release in August, Srinath plays the role essayed by Taapsee Pannu in the Hindi version. Bring up the idea of comparisons and the pressures of a remake, and Srinath remains calm.

“I am looking at it as a new film. And the mainstream audience in Tamil Nadu isn’t big on Bollywood, so this will be a new film in that sense too,” she says. “Also, incidentally I have not watched Pink and that makes it easier. I was shooting when it released and the time I tried watching it with my family on TV, I found it very disturbing and didn’t go through with it,” she adds.

Besides these, Srinath has two upcoming films in Kannada too—a political thriller called Godhra (an intriguing title that she refuses to speak more about) and an action film Rustum, which will see her opposite Kannada superstar Shivraj Kumar. This, she hopes, will make her a household name in her hometown Bangalore.

Srinath tries not to let stardom go to her head. She handles her own social media channels, interacts with fans and shares daily updates about her travel and fitness schedule on Instagram. “As actors, stardom can mess with your head and becomes a burden,” she explains.

After navigating different film industries and languages almost every day for some years now, Srinath speaks Tamil and Telugu in addition to her mother tongue Kannada.

What has her experience so far been like?

“Save for a few small differences, they are all the same. Bollywood, I would say is far more compartmentalised, there is a department for everything and everyone knows their job. It was a bit of a surprise as earlier I have even worked on films where the director’s wife was shopping for my costumes,” she says.

Voting for the Lok Sabha polls has begun, with two phases completed. Delhi will go to polls on 12 May, the sixth phase. 

To vote, your name must be on the electoral role (here’s how to check). Once you have confirmed your name in the voting list, you should check your polling booth. Mobile phones, cameras and other such gadgets are not allowed inside the booth (here is how to vote).

Political parties are yet to finalise candidates for the seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi because hectic parleys are going on between the Congress and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) over seat-sharing and alliance.

AAP has, however, already announced candidates for all seven seats. The party has fielded Pankaj Gupta from Chandni Chowk, Dilip Pandey from North East Delhi, Atishi from East Delhi, Brajesh Goel from New Delhi, Gugan Singh from North West Delhi, Raghav Chadha from South Delhi and Balbir Singh Jakhar from West Delhi.

Meanwhile, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is “keenly watching” developments related to the alliance and has sped up its candidate selection process.

Congress on Thursday said the prospects of its alliance with the AAP are almost finished. AAP has “refused” to form an alliance with the Congress in Delhi alone, said PC Chacko, the All India Congress Committee (AICC) in-charge of Delhi.

The Congress had proposed a 4-3 formula for an alliance in Delhi, offering four seats to the AAP. It had opted for the Chandni Chowk, North West Delhi and the New Delhi seats for itself.

The AAP, however, said that if the alliance was limited only to Delhi, the Congress would have to contest in just two seats.

There has been an uncertainty over the formation of an alliance between the AAP and the Congress for a few months now.

The nomination process for seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi began Tuesday. The last date for filing nominations is April 23.

The BJP won all seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

This time, however, if the alliance between the Congress and the AAP is materialised, the saffron party will likely find it difficult to maintain its 2014 numbers.

(With PTI inputs)

Dodging two-wheelers and bicycles in the heart of Chennai city, 47-year-old Kannika Arumugam scurries across a road carrying a large pot. She pumps potable water from a hand pump on the other side of the street, provided by the government. This is to supplement the hard water from the bore well in her building, for which the landlord charges Rs 100 a month.

Kannika lives in a single-room house with a small kitchen, but three teenage children means she has had to rent another room next door. The narrow passage that leads to the entrance runs alongside the rear wall of a large building, blocking all natural light. With a single window that can be opened just a sliver, the lightbulb is on throughout the day.

For water, electricity and house rent, Kannika spends a minimum of Rs 6,500 a month, nearly 75 percent of what she earns by working as a domestic help in five houses. Her husband Arumugam, who fixes vinyl floor tiles for a living, does not have a regular income. Occasionally he gives small amounts of money, but Kannika bears most of the household expenses herself — including the school and college fees of her children. There are also unanticipated expenses for hospital visits, school projects and the like.

The sum of money she pays through the month, as interest or interest plus deposit, is a lot more than her monthly income. So she ends up borrowing to clear debts, stuck in a vicious cycle of loans and interest. 

The diversity of work done by the working class in urban areas make them invisible to policymakers. From a high-level perspective, the contributions of a domestic help, or a hawker who sells peanuts, or a designer who screen-prints business cards, are obscure. The contribution of a farmer who grows rice or vegetables to feed the nation, on the other hand, is more obvious. “Relatively, farmers have better access to formal credit because of [banking industry] norms,” says Meenakshi Rajeev, a professor at the Centre for Economic Studies and Policy, Bengaluru.

One of the reasons that so many low-income urban residents must regularly borrow money is that they’re forced to manage a multitude of small income sources, and the financial rhythm of each is different – wages are paid daily, weekly or monthly, depending on the job.

Kannika makes and sells household cleaning products to augment her income from domestic work, for example. In her area, men and women sell flowers, trade in recyclables, stitch clothes, bind books, and do many other informal jobs. Between cities too, the types of employment differ, based on the predominant industries in those areas – such as manufacturing, services or tourism.

In an attempt to ease the financial burden of people working in the unorganised sector, the government of India launched Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (roughly translated as ‘Prime Minister’s Scheme for People’s Wealth’, and commonly known as “PMJDY” or just “Jan Dhan”). This massive financial inclusion drive, which kicked off  in 2014, allows citizens to open a special account that does not require a minimum balance.

Jan Dhan account holders get a debit card and accident insurance of Rs 100,000. Payment of Rs 12 per year gives account holders life insurance of Rs 30,000. Previous financial inclusion schemes ran into problems with dormant accounts, so, to keep accounts active, the government uses them to pay welfare benefits such as subsidies for cooking gas and payment for rural employment. If the account is used regularly, the owner also gains access to an overdraft facility of Rs 5,000.

Critics of the Jan Dhan scheme, however, argue that it’s aimed more at the rural poor and that the urban low-income population is being left behind. “The Jan Dhan scheme may be active in rural areas, but not in urban branches,” said a senior staff member of a nationalised bank in Chennai. This was echoed by another staff member at a private bank in Chennai, neither of whom wished to be named.

The enormous diversity of income sources, rhythms and industries in urban areas resists a one-size-fits-all approach to financial inclusion like that offered by Jan Dhan. A diversity of solutions is needed, and they must be carefully crafted to work with the diversity of credit sources that have developed in these communities.

One of the Indian government’s policy focuses in recent years has been on improving the economic wellbeing of rural farmers, who voted overwhelmingly for Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the last election. But over this period rural-to-urban migration has increased, leading to a growth in the low-income population in towns and cities. Rental rates and demand for houses are both rising as a result, and the growing slums show that while cost of living has increased, the income of the urban poor has not.

In Chennai, nearly 29 percent of the city’s population lives in slums. Kannika’s neighbourhood, however, is not classified as one, suggesting that there are people in much worse situations. But still she sees no way out of her cycle of debt. Having a Jan Dhan account has not made any difference in her borrowing patterns – she loans money from two microfinance institutions and three individual creditors on a regular basis, as she did prior to having an account. The only benefit of having an account, she says, is that her cooking fuel subsidy is deposited automatically.

Jan Dhan accounts do offer an overdraft facility, but the bank where Kannika holds a Jan Dhan account said none of their customers had ever used the overdraft facility.

Similarly, most of the urban poor are unaware of the insurance cover provided by the account. Kannika, who cannot read or write, can perform basic financial calculations. But while the entries in her Jan Dhan passbook reveal an annual deduction of Rs 12 as her contribution for life insurance, she is aware neither of the insurance inherent in Jan Dhan nor of the deductions from her account for it.

It’s not just the customers that lack awareness of Jan Dhan’s features. Some of the banks that are the main drivers of the scheme are also not particularly clued-in. Staff I spoke to at two private banks and one public sector bank said that Jan Dhan is no longer active, so new Jan Dhan accounts couldn’t be opened, which is—of  course—untrue. While one branch of a public bank allowed the opening of a new Jan Dhan account, another branch of the same bank declined.

Meanwhile, Kannika’s struggle for financial independence continues. She rues the day, a few years ago, that she pledged her jewels to a local pawn shop that charged exorbitant interest rates which she wasn’t aware of. After she failed to meet the payment schedule, the shop appropriated the jewels. It was only afterwards that she learnt that banks also offer loans against gold.

Instead of Jan Dhan accounts, many of the urban poor – including Kannika – depend on microfinance groups, sometimes called “self-help groups”, to borrow money. These are based not on physical collateral, but on social collateral where group members encourage and monitor each other to pay interest on time. Kannika says that, on three occasions, the group had to cover the interest for two members who were unable to pay, because they didn’t want a defaulter tag, lest it affect future loans.

To borrow money from banks, these groups must pay exorbitant interest rates (between 24 and 28 percent) and processing fees. But Kannika says that she’s aware of this.

“I don’t mind, because they are only helping us. Unlike in banks and pawn shops, I don’t have to pledge jewels to borrow money,” she says.

However, even within these groups people can fall through the cracks. Sundari, a single mother, doesn’t earn enough working as a domestic help to pay her rent, electricity charges, and other costs. She borrows when she needs money, but with no avenue for additional income, she struggles to pay the interest, and was removed from a self-help group for repeatedly missing payments. Now she depends on pawn brokers instead. The ineffectiveness of the Jan Dhan scheme for people like Sundari is laid bare in the fact that the Madras Pawn Brokers Association has said that its business is not declining due to the introduction of Jan Dhan.

Samapti Guha, chairperson of the Centre for Social Entrepreneurship, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, agrees that Jan Dhan simply does not offer the right solutions for the urban poor. “For them state intervention is necessary,” she says. “Jan Dhan focuses only on accessibility, whereas financial inclusion has two more dimensions, namely, availability of financial products and usage of these products.”

She adds: “The nature of poverty varies among regions, states and households. No uniform solution can remove poverty.”

Some names have been changed on request.

Identities of the World is a series about financial inclusion and identity, published by Storythings in partnership with Experian. Visit identitiesoftheworld.com for more.

HYDERABAD, Telangana — As investigations continue into Hyderabad-based IT Grids (India) Private Limited, forensic analysis of recovered hard drives has revealed 2 crore Aadhaar records, this time from Punjab. This is in addition to the 7.8 crore from Telangana and Andhra Pradesh which had been revealed earlier this week.

Speaking to HuffPost India, IG Stephen Raveendra, who is leading the SIT investigating this case said that the police is examining all the recovered hard drives, but it appears that the voter related information collected for the Seva Mitra app used by TDP cadres was used to try and remove voters from electoral rolls.

Aside from this, he also raised concern about the origin of the data, as the recovered database contained many fields that could only have come from the UIDAI’s central database, the CIDR, or the State Resident Data Hubs (SRDH). “We are forensically examining the hard drives to trace where the data came from. But there are several columns of data that are an exact replica of the format used in the SRDH and CIDR,” he said.

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IG Raveendra’s statements, that an investigation is still on-going and that the police are still uncovering the scale of the data theft, are at odds with that of the UIDAI. The authority has already issued a blanket statement denying any possible hacks.

The UIDAI’s response to the forensic examination unfortunately falls in line with its knee-jerk denial of security issues in the past.

That this data was held by an IT company working for the TDP, which holds power in Andhra Pradesh, raises further troubling questions about data theft by the state. AP’s Real Time Governance Society has successfully centralised information about voters in the state through the use of government data, on-ground surveys, and used Aadhaar to bridge information. Such data could be used to manipulate voters, and sideline political opponents if misused.

“We are seeing the centralisation of information without accountability,” said Srinivas Kodali, a security researcher. This concentration of data, he said, made it prone to misuse.

Was this data stolen—or given?

“There are three main questions — did they have the data, where it came from, and what did they do with it? We know they have the data, of both states [Telangana and AP] and maybe more. The forensic lab is working on this but it is a huge database,” said IG Raveendra. Another source in the police said that a further 2 crore records have come up from Punjab as well, although the lab is still verifying this data.

IG Raveendra added that right now the police is working with only a fraction of the data that IT Grids likely held. “These are just the hard drives that we recovered from the raid, but we believe that more hard drives were there, and more data was also stored on AWS cloud, outside the country. We don’t know the scale right now.”

“We are still collecting evidence of where it came from. Whether they hacked a live platform, or if someone gave them a data dump. While the latter implies that there was collusion at some level, it might be better than the former scenario, which could imply that the security measures in place around the CIDR or SRDH have been compromised.

“The UIDAI is also very keen to get to the bottom of this, and we have asked them for IP logs to see if we can track any unusual activity and identify how the data was taken.”

However, the UIDAI has issued a statement on the matter denying that any data was taken from its CIDR. In typical fashion, the UIDAI has dismissed all reports, without revealing any details of an accompanying investigation.

The UIDAI said that it’s CIDR and servers are completely safe and fully secure and no illegal access was made to its CIDR and no data has been stolen from its servers. It said: “ UIDAI has filed a complaint on the basis of a report from Special Investigation Team (SIT) of Telangana Police that IT Grid (India) Pvt. Ltd has allegedly obtained and stored Aadhaar numbers of large number of people in violation of the provisions of the Aadhaar Act. Nowhere in the report, the SIT has found any evidence to show that the Aadhaar number, name, address, etc., of the people have been obtained by stealing them from UIDAI servers.”

Using stolen data to delete voters

The Seva Mitra app used by TDP workers used the wide range of data that the forensic lab has been able to uncover. This, in turn, was used to profile voters, and determine how likely they were to support the party. Leaving aside the source of the data for a second, this kind of surveying is common behaviour. But, according to IG Raveendra, what came next was a complex scheme to get people who weren’t supporters removed from the electoral rolls.

“They used it to do some profiling of voters. They were seeding it with Aadhaar linked information to profile voter data,” he said. “After that, you draw up a list, showing how likely a candidate is to vote for you. To do this, we think they were using an IVRS [automated voice calling — one of the many digital services political parties now rely on] to reach out to all the potential voters.”

“They would ask questions about whom you will support, and based on your rating, assign a score. They repeated this process to work out a list of people who weren’t supporting them, and then they filed Form 7 requests about these people, to have them removed. It’s a very complex scheme.”

Form 7 is an objection to a name being included in the voter list — it can be filed by anyone about anyone else. Once filed, the EC physically verifies whether the person has shifted, or is deceased, or is a duplicate, and if that is the case, removes the name.

But thousands of people in both states, as well as in the rest of the country, have been taking to social media to talk about how they’ve been robbed of their votes. In fact, cricketer Rahul Dravid, who was one of the people in the EC’s ads to exhort people to vote, found his name missing as well.

According to ToI, officials visited Dravid’s home to verify his presence, but could not meet him. “Our officials visited his house twice, but we were not allowed inside. We were informed Dravid is touring abroad and there is no message from him to include his name in voters’ list,” said Mathikere sub-division assistant electoral returning officer Roopa.

Rival parties, particularly the YSRCP, have been keen to bring up the issue. YSRCP leader and former Inspector-General of Police Rayalaseema Range, Shaikh Mohammed Iqbal, said: “The TDP, as a last ditch effort, is resorting to theft of private details of citizens and voters. During the Pulse Survey, they collected all the details of the people; be it their assets, their bank details and other details. They have illegally and unconstitutionally transferred to their company, IT Grid, which designed and runs the TDP’s cadre app Seva Mitra.”

However, at a press conference in Vijayawada, TDP spokesperson Lanka Dinakar dismissed the allegations as conspiracy to defeat the TDP in the elections. The UIDAI’s assertion that data has not been stolen, Dinakar claimed, proved that this incident was a conspiracy.

The actual details of whether or not IT Grids and the TDP manipulated voter rolls will depend on analysis from the election commission, which IG Raveendra said was yet to come. HuffPost India also contacted the election commission, at various levels from spokespersons in Delhi, to the CEO’s office in Hyderabad, and officers within, but did not get any response.

Voter deletion has become an extremely important issue in the 2019 elections, and as one police source pointed out, the theft of data to carry this out is very worrying. “The government does not own the data, it is the custodian of data. It belongs to the citizens, and every private company that is working with the government has to abide by regulations on the usage of data they gather. This is a gross violation.”

“What’s more, if you have your name deleted, you have the option of checking online, making a Form 6, and in one week, you can be back on the voter roll. But the poorest and most vulnerable people, for whom elections are much more significant, are also the ones most at risk here,” he added.

Mehandi Circus opens with an animated folktale about a princess, her prince charming and some knives, perhaps hinting that this film would be a modern day reinterpretation of this tragic story. When we get to present day, it also seems rather tragic. Mehandi, the heroine,  is bed-ridden, while Jeeva, the hero, is drunk and wasting away. From this point forward, Mehandi Circus is the story of love and loss, going back and forth between 2010 and 1992.

Written by Raju Murugan of Cuckoo (2014) and Joker (2016) fame, and directed by his former assistant Saravana Rajendran, Mehandi Circus effortlessly brings to life the Poomparai, Kodaikanal, of the early 1990s. Effortless, because much of the effort belongs to Ilaiyaraaja, whose music the film borrows generously to recreate that time. In fact, showing us that it’s deliberate, the film even reminds us that AR Rahman was just gaining fame and Harris Jayraj was not even on the scene.

But beyond the Raaja nostalgia and some interesting period set pieces, there is little to keep us interested in the love story of the lead pair. Jeeva, played stoically by Madhampatty Rangaraj, falls in love at first sight with Mehandi, played by Shweta Tripathi, who emotes more with her eyes than everyone else in the film put together. There is the meet-cute, they fall in love, sing duets — things we’ve seen a million times before.

By way of obstacles to the relationship are two fathers: Mehandi’s father (the head of a travelling circus troupe that she also performs in) challenges Jeeva to perform a highly dangerous circus stunt before he can marry her. Jeeva’s father, a casteist man, wouldn’t have any of it. What could have been gut-wrenching obstacles end up appearing like feeble inconveniences that could have overcome with little effort. When they are overcome a few years later, the final blow to their love comes in the form of a manipulating third-wheel. By now, we’re just exhausted by the inaction of the pair.

Of the two leads, Mehandi is easily the better written. Even though much of the story is told from the perspective of Jeeva and he has more screen time, Mehandi is shown to be a thinking, believing, complex woman. While Jeeva is dreamy and carefree, Mehandi is rooted in her legacy and cognizant of the all-pervading oppression around her. She has instincts, though Jeeva disregards them and even calls her “loosu”. Vela Ramamoorthy as the love-struck priest is endearing. RJ Vigneshkanth as the comical friend is anything but.

Much of Mehandi Circus is rather fatalistic and does little to make us believe that the pair have it in them to fight the odds. Jeeva has stopped living since 1992 and Mehandi has given up hope. “What can women do?” asks the voiceover at one point.

In that vein, the film doesn’t make the audience long for a happily-ever-after. We are half-expecting Jeeva to watch Mehandi die.

In fact, in one scene, the camera pans from Jeeva and Mehandi being beaten by casteist forces, to their hosts cowering in fear in their own home, to a letter that says “save the children”, to the photographs of Periyar and Ambedkar. It is like Saravana Rajendran is saying that even another thousand Periyars and Ambedkars can’t save this country.

On the other hand, the film takes a non-confrontational, nearly passive approach to the ideas it presents as objectionable. The casteist father merely gets ‘shoved’ aside, quite literally. The manipulating third-wheel simply disappears mid-way. And in a rather peculiar climax, the film doesn’t end on matters of love, but on that of honour and pride.

In short, Mehandi Circus is like that sweet old grandpa who likes to tell his story at every family gathering. It is an ordinary story, the audience has already heard the story, they know the ending, they are bored, they grow restless and want it to be over. But they’d never ask him to stop, because, well, he’s a sweet old grandpa after all.

The days of phones with cameras with huge megapixel numbers are well and truly back it would seem. After a phase in which phones were competing with each other when it came to megapixel counts (Nokia even took it all the way to 41-megapixels at one stage), it seemed that most brands were content to have devices with 12-16 megapixel cameras, and indeed were focusing on having more cameras.

However, judging by the phones launched over the past few months, the megapixel wars are back with a vengeance, with brands stumbling over each other to offer consumers cameras with massive megapixel counts. Indeed 40-megapixels and above seems to be the new normal as far as phone cameras go. If that sounds far fetched, just check out these phones that come laden with mega-megapixel cameras:

1. Xiaomi Redmi Note 7 Pro - megapixels on a budget

Rs 13,999

The Xiaomi Redmi Note 7’s release in China suddenly got people interested in large megapixel counts again. This was repeated in India with the Redmi Note 7 Pro, which comes with a massive 48-megapixel, half-inch sensor at a really affordable price. Read our review to know more.

It certainly offers very good image quality, allied with a 5.0-megapixel depth of field dual camera, although some of the comparisons with the iPhone and Google Pixel are a little far fetched. Still, at that price, and boasting a very good 6.3-inch full HD+ display and a powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 675 processor, with 4GB and 6GB RAM variants, encased in an all-glass and metal frame, and a massive 4000mAh battery,  the Xiaomi Redmi Note 7 Pro is the perfect starting point.

2. Oppo F11 Pro - Rising selfie but a star on the back

Rs 24,999

Boasting a 48-megapixel sensor in the back, and a pop-up 32-megapixel selfie camera, the Oppo F11 Pro is a beast. Oppo has taken care to highlight the low-light performance of the rear camera, which is combined with a 5-megapixel depth-of-field camera.

The images are impressively detailed, though the colours are a little over the top, and there are a lot of controls to let you make the most of the camera. The large 6.53-inch full-HD display with hardly any bezels (the camera is behind the display, remember) is a treat for viewing and editing images, and the Helio P70 is a competent processor, paired with 6GB of RAM here, ensuring a generally smooth performance. A large 4000mAh battery rounds-off matters.

3. Vivo V15 Pro - Megapixels and a lot more

Rs 28,990

Perhaps the best value for money phone for anyone looking for a device that has a high megapixel camera as well as a stackful of trendy bells and whistles, the Vivo V15 Pro pretty much throws the feature kitchen sink at you. There’s a pop up selfie camera (the world’s first 32 megapixel pop up camera, the company claims), an in display fingerprint scanner, a gradient finish design, a 6.39-inch full-HD+ AMOLED display, and a 3700mAh battery with support for dual charging.

The triple-camera arrangement on the back has a powerful 48-megapixel main sensor (the others are 8- and 5-megapixels). Like the F11 Pro, the rear camera’s publicity thunder has been stolen by the pop-up selfie camera, but it is capable of some outstanding high-resolution photography. Vivo’s camera UI can be a little confusing but a little patience will yield outstanding images.

4. Honor View 20 - Much more than the punch notch

Rs 37,999

The Honor View 20 made headlines for being the first phone to be released in India with a punch hole display — with the front 25-megapixel camera occupying a tiny dot in a corner of the large 6.4 inch full HD+ display. It also packed in some very high-end hardware, including a HighSilicon Kirin 980 chip and 6GB of RAM.

All of which ensured that it turned in a stunning flagship level performance that drew comparisons with the OnePlus 6T. One department where it however considerably outclassed the OnePlus was in the rear camera where it came with a 48-megapixel camera paired with a ToF camera for better depth of field shots. The AI did tend to oversaturate images a lot, making yellows and orange far more prominent, but in terms of detail, the phone delivered some very good photography, and was perhaps one of the first to come with a 48-megapixel camera.

5. Huawei P30 Pro - Megapixels, mega everything

Rs 71,999

A hundred megapixels in a single device? That’s what you get on Huawei’s new flagship, the Huawei P30 Pro. The P-series has been known for its photographic muscle and association with the legendary Leica brand, and the Huawei P30 Pro comes with a quad camera setup on the back with a 40-megapixel main sensor, a 20-megapixel ultrawide sensor, an 8-megapixel telephoto sensor, and a ToF camera for depth of field. Rounding off the figure to 100 megapixels is a 32-megapixel front facing camera. Read our full review to know more about the phone.

What you get from the rear cameras is staggering — 5X optical zoom, 10X lossless zoom, and a fantastic 50X digital zoom. Image quality is excellent, thanks to the Leica technology, making this perhaps the best camera phone in the market right now. Its others specs are very impressive too — a 6.47-inch AMOLED display with an in-display fingerprint scanner, a HiSilicon Kirin 980 chipset with 8GB RAM, and a large 4200mAh battery that can wirelessly charge other devices too. It is the most expensive device of this list, but it is also the most powerful.

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Melisandre (Carice van Houten) did not show up in the Season 8 premiere of “Game of Thrones,” but, fear not, the end of her story will surely be dark and full of terrors.

We last saw the seemingly young ― but actually very old ― red priestess in Season 7, when she urges Daenerys (Emilia Clarke) to summon Jon Snow (Kit Harington) to Dragonstone since he knows that the true threat facing the Seven Kingdoms is the Night King and his army. Dany then agrees to meet with Jon, and the rest is history. He bends the knee, falls in love and brings her to Winterfell to meet his sisters, the rather suspicious Sansa (Sophie Turner) and Arya (Maisie Williams), along with the Three-Eyed Raven, their brother Bran (Isaac Hempstead Wright).

But despite working with Jon at Castle Black and being the reason he is still alive, Melisandre was banished from the North at the end of Season 6 when Jon and Davos (Liam Cunningham) discover she had convinced Stannis (Stephen Dillane) to burn his own daughter, Shireen (Kerry Ingram), at the stake in the name of blood magic. 

“You’ve seen the Night King, Jon Snow,” she says, urging him to pardon her. “You know the Great War is still to come, you know the army of the dead will be upon us soon, and you know I can help you win that war.” 

Knowing full well her strengths, Jon tells Melisandre she’ll be executed if she returns, and so she makes it her final mission to bring ice and fire together before heading to Volantis. Before she leaves, however, she tells Varys (Conleth Hill), “I will return, dear spider. One last time. I have to die in this strange country, just like you.” 

When I sat down with the actress who plays Melisandre earlier this month in New York City, van Houten dodged Season 8 spoilers but did admit her character would return to Westeros. 

“I’m not in space, let’s say,” she said. 

As for whether she’ll perhaps resurrect Jon Snow once again, or possibly work with fellow R’hllor supporter Beric Dondarrion (Richard Dormer) to take down the army of the dead, van Houten stayed mum, only admitting that she was “surprised” with how Melisandre’s story ends.

Read on to see what else the actress had to say about the final season of the HBO series and the red woman’s part in it. 

How was the final table read for Season 8? 

It was a bit overwhelming. Everyone was a bit like, “This is so weird! This is actually the last time we’re going to do this.” So there was way more tension in the room than there normally was. Everything was sort of more loaded, I guess, and therefore everyone was a bit more wired or something. 

Did you flip through the script to find your last scenes? 

I did, of course. 

Were you surprised to see where in the script your last scene was? 

Ah, well, always surprised. Every year I have no idea where my character ends up. Yeah, I was surprised, in fact. In a good way. 

Are you satisfied with the ending?

Mmm hmmm. But, of course, you’re going to have some people love it and others not. That’s unavoidable, I think. The ending is the way it should end, as in this is what the writers [envisioned] ― the organic ending to their writing. I don’t think there’s a wrong or a right, really. It’s just what it is. 

Were you a fan of the books before you signed on for the show? 

No, I didn’t read them. I bought them all and I have them all in my house — I had them even on my nightstand for a while, but I just didn’t get to it. I just thought, “What if I get too caught up in it or too attached to certain things about my character that’s not in the show? Will I be disappointed?” 

So you created Melisandre on your own, really.

I guess so, yeah. It’s great because, of course, there are probably people who had completely different images of this character from the books, but there are some who told me I played her as they imagined her to be — and I thought that was really cool.

You played a similar character in the movie “Black Death.” Did that role get you the “Game of Thrones” audition?

I don’t know, I don’t know! I actually should’ve asked them. They must’ve seen that or something. 

Sean Bean was in that, too. A few “Game of Thrones” actors. 

That’s true. It must have something to do with that. Similar time and feel to it. 

So you weren’t in the Season 8 trailers, so is your storyline top secret? 

[Laughs] No … I’m just unlucky! 

Melisandre leaves Westeros after the third episode of Season 7, so what was it like to be back for the final season? 

Oh, I was happy ― because I wasn’t sure, you know? I thought, “I’m just banned now and that’s the end of me.” But it’s also a lot more of a relaxed shooting schedule, so I can’t really complain. But I was very happy to be back again. 

You removed your necklace and revealed your true age in Season 6. What was the point of that moment though, in your opinion? Because we haven’t really seen an explanation for it. 

No, true. I think it’s basically there to give her more of a sense of humanity — to make her fragile. And it’s not in there for nothing. [Pause] Yeah. 

You can’t say much more than that, huh? 

No. 

Also, it does sort of signal that perhaps she’s not afraid of death since she’s clearly lived so much life already? 

Mmmm, well, that’s a good point. Yeah, and also that she knows so much more. Mostly I think it gave her an extra layer and made her more complex, and you almost feel for her. 

Did you sense that twist was coming for Melisandre? 

I knew that from the beginning, but because it wasn’t coming up for so long, I thought maybe that was it. So I was really happy when that actually was going to happen, like, “Wow.” And also I was going to get prosthetics for five hours, yeah! [Laughs] 

Did you find the little moments for your character from each season connect in Season 8?

Sort of … [Laughs] 

Well, I know you can’t say much, but you are in Season 8, that we know. And clearly you’re not staying in Volantis the whole time, right? 

No, I do travel there but … 

Do we find out what you’re doing there? As we know, there are many red priestesses in Volantis and the Lord of the Light has many followers there, so it does make sense that you’re going back there. 

Yes … um … I’m so afraid to say anything!

I get it! But Melisandre was with Stannis for most of the show until his death in Season 5. We know you’re now in support of Daenerys …

And Jon Snow. 

So what did that experience with Stannis teach her? Clearly, you brought Jon and Dany together for a reason. 

I guess she probably sees herself more as a matchmaker at this point, bringing together the right people in the right place. Yes, steering people in the right direction because that’s more her job now. 

Yes, you tell that to Varys, who is similar in a way as he weaves in and out of all these character journeys. 

Yes. I don’t know if I met the most characters. I feel like I miss a lot of the worlds, in fact. 

The big players, though. 

True. But I would’ve liked for her and Cersei [Lena Headey] to meet up. I’m so curious what that would’ve been like. Although, with that, I’m spoiling something already. But again, I might be lying! You never know. 

Like Maisie Williams did on Jimmy Fallon? 

[Laughs] 

You and Maisie’s character, Arya, met up in Season 3 where you told her, “I see a darkness in you. And in that darkness, eyes staring back at me. Brown eyes, blue eyes, green eyes. Eyes sealed shut forever. We will meet again.” So will you meet Arya this season? 

True, but I think I’ve said other things that also didn’t happen? A bit like life — you think something is going to happen but not. [Laughs] But even that I can’t really answer. 

You did kind of predict her Faceless Men journey. 

True, but I also predicted that the wrong guy was going to be on the throne, so you shouldn’t take her too seriously! 

And then Gendry (Joe Dempsie), of course, you were one of the first to have some shall we say “contact” with him after you figured out he was the bastard son of King Robert Baratheon (Mark Addy). 

Contact, mmm hmmm, yeah. [Laughs] 

Leeches. 

Yeah. [Laughs] 

There’s a theory going around that Gendry could be the legitimate son of Cersei and Robert — the “black-haired beauty” she mentions in Season 1. 

I’ve heard about this. It’s a good theory, I like it. 

He was off rowing that boat for so long, but he came back in Season 7 to fight against the army of the dead. He’s back for a reason, no? 

You’re paying attention. You’re good at this … fishing. But I’m not going to give you anything! 

Well, I tried! In all seriousness, what has the show meant to you, and is it tough to say goodbye to it? 

Everything that’s good has to come to an end at some point, so to drag this out would not make the show better. It’s sad when things go, but it’s also good to sort of embrace that sadness because it makes it something important you’ve done for the last seven years. And then you move on again, that’s how life is.

But it’s a great icebreaker, this show, in whatever way — not only for jobs, but it’s easy to contact people. People know you and it’s just easier.

The only downside I can think of is I would want people to know that I have another side to me. It’s easy to get typecast, whereas this was, for me, a really out-of-character role. I used to play very emotional, even funny characters and this was the opposite for me. So to be known for it is sort of weird since that’s not my palette that I’m comfortable with as an actor, per se, so I hope I’ll be able to show some other sides. 

Lastly, will the shadow baby be resurrected for the final season?

[Laughs] That would be funny. The shadow baby thing, I was like, “What the fuck is this?!” Definitely memorable.

“Game of Thrones” airs Sundays at 9 p.m. on HBO.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

NEW DELHI — The BJP Friday distanced itself from Pragya Singh Thakur’s controversial comment that IPS officer Hemant Karkare died in 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks as she had cursed him, saying it was her personal view which she might have made “due to years of physical and mental torture”. 

“The BJP believes that Karkare died while bravely fighting terrorists. The BJP has always considered him a martyr, ” the party said in a damage-control exercise.

The party, which has fielded Malegaon blast accused Thakur from Bhopal in the Lok Sabha election, claimed she had suffered “physical and mental torture” for years in police custody that might have caused her to make such a statement.

The comment is her “personal view”, it added.

Karkare, who headed the Mumbai anti-terror squad, had died in the Mumbai terror attacks in 2008.

Addressing BJP workers in Bhopal, Thakur claimed Karkare died as she “cursed” him for “torturing” her in custody.

A young Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd once came across a book on Isaiah Berlin in the Osmania University library and picked it up because he thought the name was Ilaiah Berlin. He was surprised because he had never found names that sounded like his on the covers of books. In class, he was constantly made to feel like he was not as respectable as the other students because of his name. But that was going to change now.

“I looked at the name once again. I felt as if I were Isaiah, not Ilaiah.”

I like to imagine that this is the moment Kancha Ilaiah became a writer. When Gabriel Garcia Marquez read the first line of Kafka’s Metamorphosis, he almost fell off the bed because he had no idea writers were allowed to write like that (“When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin”). Marquez says he became a writer that day—that first line was like a permission for him to start writing.

For Dalit and Bahujan people who have never thought of themselves as writers, a permission like that can rescue them in ways that aren’t easy to understand.

“That day in my notebook, I wrote my name in full in the form that Isaiah’s name figured: Ilaiah Kancha, not just Ilaiah K. It sounded new. I jumped up and down amidst the book racks—a worthless name like mine is very much like that of a world-famous historian and philosopher.”

There are many such moments in Kancha Ilaiah’s memoir, From a Shepherd Boy to an Intellectual, that are powerful to anyone looking to sustain a life of reading and writing.

If finding Isaiah’s name released Ilaiah in some form, his mother was released from something similar when she decided that she was willing to risk Saraswathi’s wrath by sending both her sons to school.

′Getting free from Saraswathi’, easily the most exciting chapter in the book, narrates the story of how Ilaiah and his brother went to school despite their grandmother’s persistent warnings that Saraswathi, who didn’t like children of lower-castes going to school, would kill them. In hindsight, there is truth to this superstition because we very well know who killed Rohith Vemula.

“Saraswathi teaches the children of Bapanollu and Komatollu but she becomes a devil when it comes to our children. She will not allow our children to read and write. She will kill them. That is how my elder son died,” said Ilaiah’s mother.

Even so, there was nothing in the school that could hold his attention the way forests and fields did. “In the field-world, one does not focus one’s eyes on just one thing.” And that’s why, for some time in school, he could only stare at walls.

Staring at walls is possibly a situation that is as much an imposition of caste today as it was back then.

At a talk about Mahatma Phule recently in Bangalore, anti-caste activist Gowri recollected that as a science student, she had no idea how to follow what the teacher said in her “high-speed English”.

“I still don’t know what this Kinetic theory of gas means. I didn’t know how to ask and when I finally formed a question and asked, my classmates looked at me like I was crazy. After that I just shut up.”’

That is one kind of staring at a wall. Here is another:

A couple of months ago, I met a Dalit boy studying political science at a college in Bangalore who wanted to know how to ‘be’ in the classroom. He said that during lectures, all his attention is usually focused on forming a question for the lecturer, and framing it properly in English. Eventually, when he does ask it, he is so relieved and overwhelmed by the effort that he spends the rest of the time recovering from it. In the end, he hasn’t listened to the answer.

These are real problems for Dalit and Bahujan students on campuses today—this knowledge of how to just ‘be’ in spaces. After a point, there are things that even the most sympathetic teacher cannot give them—things like cultural capital, the courage to say ‘I don’t care what my classmates think of me’, and a way of simply surviving in an English-speaking classroom.

Another serious problem, just as relevant today, is the disconnect they feel between what they have heard and watched while growing up and what is taught inside the classroom.

While learning the alphabet, Ilaiah was very puzzled when the teacher said ‘Rruu for Rrushi’. This was accompanied by a picture of a saint with “fully grown knotted hair on his head with a beard and legs folded under him”.

Ilaiah had never seen a saint before and found it bizarre that he had to remember a letter in honour of someone he had never seen. He was just as lost when poems and lessons on Krishna were taught. Culturally, there was no connection between what was being done in class and where he came from.

For Ilaiah, a way out of this came when he fell in love with the English language. This allowed him to break free of all kinds of Saraswathis, and he was able to begin enjoying school.

Plenty of struggle, and some humour

There is some repetition in the book. The fact that English was/is deliberately kept away from lower-caste children comes up multiple times, often in the same manner. That Brahmin and Savarna intellectuals who opposed English in government schools and fought valiantly for Telugu-medium schools continued to shamelessly send their own children to English-medium schools is mentioned one too many times.

But Ilaiah’s gratitude for being given the opportunity to learn, to read and write haunts him—and by extension the reader—through the book. Some of these repetitions arise from this gratitude, and the sense of injustice that others like him are still kept away from opportunities that can come from knowing English.

While it’s true that some of these repetitions could have been avoided with better editing, what they do is show us the kind of loneliness from which Ilaiah is writing.

Not being taken seriously as an intellectual and a writer is something that Ilaiah has struggled with all his life. Within academia in particular, this is not hard to see. Scholarly networks rarely make room for Dalit and Bahujan intellectuals. Today, because of the internet and web 2.0—thanks to things like conference alerts, which make it less necessary for humans to interact with each other—it is probably easier to access machine-operated networks. But what happens before and after that depends on what privileges one might or might not have.

But it is not hard to imagine what it must have been like for a Bahujan man to write research papers, send it to conferences, write, take classes—and still maintain an anti-caste stance. On more than one occasion, students have walked out of Ilaiah’s classes because they didn’t want to be taught by a ‘Dalit’—while it’s clear that these students had no idea what the difference between Dalit and Bahujan was, they knew enough caste to figure out who was worthy of teaching them and who wasn’t.

Some of the saddest people I know within academia today are upper-caste. For a long time, these were the only people I knew. And they were so upper-caste that they were convinced that to be an intellectual , one has to look a certain way, speak English a certain way and conduct themselves in a certain way. In short, I had neither the right credentials nor the right caste to be called an intellectual. This was in 2015. A part of me believed it then. It is 2019 now and I don’t believe it anymore. But they haven’t changed and that’s why they are sad.

As I write this, I am acutely aware, once again, of the loneliness faced by Dalit, Bahujan and Adivasi people at their workplaces—if we can call it that—or wherever they are. Today, young Dalit and Bahujan people with some privileges are able to come to terms with their identities. Some are claiming it fiercely, and some are finding ways to negotiate with this. In a way, an attempt at a network of sorts is being made on social media to reach out, share and contribute.

But what this does is leave out a large chunk of older Dalit and Bahujan people who are being remembered lesser and lesser today. This could be the loneliness from which Ilaiah writes. Even so, the most rewarding thing about the book is that every time Ilaiah mentions his struggles, he also tells us how he overcame them. Much like Siddalingaiah in Ooru Keri, Ilaiah does not submit to victimhood, even if it is sometimes the only option left.

When I was growing up, my father often gave me pep talks on studies. He was always concerned that I was extremely bad at math and science. He’d sit me down and try to find out why I failed only in these subjects and passed with average marks in other subjects.

He didn’t think responses such as ‘not able to understand’, ‘very difficult’, ‘I like History and English more’ were rational because at the heart of his concern was the fear that I’d get left behind in class and that people like us don’t have the liberty to say ‘not interested.’ He kept telling me—’you should create an interest even if you are not interested. I didn’t know it then but what my father was and has been doing since then is making me self-reliant like him.

He rarely tells me stories of struggle in his past. Whatever little I know about that today is through my mother. What he did tell me, much like Kancha Ilaiah and Siddalingaiah did in their books, were stories of overcoming struggles.

Over WhatsApp one day, I asked my father what his student days in the engineering college were like. “The college which I’d joined was purely for merit students. I was only able to get a seat because I’m SC. When I joined, I found that everyone else had 80% and I only had 40%. I limped towards inferiority complex and after some days, I was engulfed in it. To come out of that complex, it took a lot of time and hard work but even then I was unable to reach their level and I finally came out as the last man in the race. I couldn’t do anything. I just had to accept the situation. If I resisted, it’d hurt more. I myself didn’t want any unnecessary advantage on the pretext of discrimination. I felt if I wrote proper answers, certainly it should fetch more marks. So I worked harder.”

I find this similar vein when Kancha Ilaiah says “Reading became a part of my suffering” and “my course was read, write and fight. I wrote this slogan on the walls of my brain”.

The vein is struggle and suffering yes, but also one of hard work—something that Babasaheb was able to show us in many ways.

“I have come to realize that excellence is achieved through devotion. My devotion does not mean retiring to a forest & meditating there. My idea of devotion implies extreme power of enduring suffering, and extreme power of working,” said Babasaheb Ambedkar.

And when hard work is not rewarded, Ilaiah turns to humour. Humour can be a great weapon against Savarna bullying.

When he started teaching at Osmania University, a colleague remarked ‘What bad days have come, even Ilaiahs, Yellaiahs, Mallaiahs also think of becoming lecturers in a university’ to which Ilaiah replies, “When we have taught sheep, teaching human beings is not at all difficult”

The colleague, realising that Ilaiah’s English was much better than his, keeps quiet.

In a chapter titled ’Choosing between Two Lusts: Life or Knowledge?’, Ilaiah tells us about his reading life and how the more he read and wrote, the more independent he became and how companionship and love became unnecessary after a point.

‘But since I could not change my body, I started living with enormous respect for myself: body and brain. I knew that my body works and my brain thinks from within that body. How to make my body work and my brain think was within my control, as I believed in self-respect and self-control. My reading in English of any book that I could get and practice by myself speaking English became a ‘lustful’ act.’

In the last scene of Captain Marvel, Brie Larson’s Carol Danvers says, “I’ve been fighting with one hand tied behind my back. What happens when I’m finally set free?”

It brought to mind a scene from one of the earlier chapters in the book where Ilaiah writes about swimming to school. During the rainy season, they had to swim across a river to get to school. They had to carry food packets with one hand so those wouldn’t get wet, and swim with the other. They swam with only one hand to get to school, the way so many Dalits, Bahujans, and Adivasis fight and survive. You should imagine what happens if we start fighting with both our hands.

NEW DELHI — A junior court assistant has accused Ranjan Gogoi, the Chief Justice of India, of sexually harassing her, and using his influence as the senior-most judge in the country to terminate her employment at the Supreme Court, and have her imprisoned under false pretexts when she refused his advances.

Her husband and one brother-in-law have been suspended from their positions as head constables in the Delhi police, while another brother-in-law has been terminated from his position as a junior court attendant — a job that Gogoi allegedly granted using his discretionary powers.

These allegations were first made public by four news websites TheWire.in, Scroll.in, Caravan and Leaflet, who published their reports this morning, on April 20, 2019.

Soon after these stories were published, a special bench of the Supreme Court consisting of Chief Justice Gogoi, Justice Arun Mishra and Justice Sanjiv Khanna was constituted on Saturday morning to dismiss the allegations as baseless. The judges, however, stopped short of passing a gag order on reporting the story.

“Independence of judiciary is under very very serious threat. I had to tell this from the judicial seat,” Chief Justice Gogoi said in remarks reported by legal news service Bar & Bench. 

 CJI Gogoi described the allegations as “unbelievable”. 

“I should not stoop low in even denying it,” he said.

HuffPost India has written to Justice Gogoi for comment, and will update this story when he responds. Separately, the four news websites that first published the story have carried denials by the Secretary General of the Supreme Court.

 In his denial to Scroll.in, the Secretary General described the allegations as “completely and absolutely false and scurrilous”, said the woman was employed at Chief Justice Gogoi’s residence office for a short duration as a matter of routine, and was dismissed from service as per procedure.

According to the response, the woman’s brother-in-law was dismissed because his “performance and conduct were not found to be satisfactory”.

The Secretary General has also drawn attention to police reports pending against the woman. HuffPost India has reviewed documentation showing these cases were mutually resolved between the woman and the opposing party.

The 35-year-old woman at the centre of this storm is currently out on bail and said she was making her allegations public as she feared she would be arrested afresh, and was worried for her personal safety and that of her family — particularly her young daughter.  

The immediate trigger for her decision to speak out is a bail-cancellation hearing scheduled for April 20, 2019. If her bail is cancelled, the woman told HuffPost India in an interview on April 19, she fears she might disappear into the depths of India’s legal system where it is not uncommon for undertrials to spend years in prison while their cases are heard.

The woman told HuffPost India that the alleged harassment occurred on October 10 and October 11, 2018 when she was assigned to work in CJI Gogoi’s office at his residence on 10 Tees January Marg in Delhi. A week previously, on October 3 that year, Gogoi was sworn in as the 46th Chief Justice of India.

Her allegations are compiled in a notarised 28-page affidavit, supported by an additional 108 pages of annexures, that were couriered to 22 Justices of the Supreme Court on April 19, 2019. In her cover letter addressed to these judges of India’s highest court, the woman writes that she fears her family will be further victimised, and that she is “left with no option but to appeal to your Lordships to take cognisance of this matter”. HuffPost India has accessed these documents.

“I am requesting the honourable Judges of the Supreme Court to constitute a special enquiry committee of senior retired judges of the honourable Supreme Court to enquire into these charges of sexual harassment and consequent victimisation,” the cover letter concludes.

Taken together, the affidavit and annexures detail an extraordinary account that, if true, comes at a time when the opacity of the Indian judiciary has prompted demands for greater accountability and transparency from an institution crucial to the vitality of Indian democracy.

Eager worker

On 2 May, 2014, the woman was appointed to the Legislation Section of the Supreme Court of India — according to Office Order 102/2014, a copy of which was provided to HuffPost India — as a junior court assistant.

At the time, the woman had no formal legal training; she had graduated with a Bachelors in Commerce degree from a Delhi college and had worked a few private jobs including at an Indian back-office for Bank of America, before dropping out of the workforce when her daughter was born.

“When my daughter was a little older, I saw an application for a government job,” she said. “I filled the form, and luckily I got the job.”

Once selected, she enrolled herself in a distance-learning law programme, and immersed herself in the work of the courts. Her Annual Confidential Reports (ACR), essentially a yearly appraisal, indicate she was good at her job. Her ACR for 2014-15 rated her performance as “Good”, while her ACR for the following year rated her performance as “Very Good.”

In October 2016, she began working in Justice Gogoi’s court, her affidavit states, two years before he rose to his current position as Chief Justice. In January 2018, her affidavit says, Justice Gogoi called her to his private chambers and commended her work and diligence. Thereafter, she said, Justice Gogoi took an interest in her career growth and occasionally tasked her with important assignments.

When she told Justice Gogoi that her family was conservative and did not want her to work, the woman alleges, he offered to speak with her husband.

On July 31, 2018, she said, Justice Gogoi invited her husband and her to his residence where he told them that the woman had a bright future ahead of her.

“He said (she) was very intelligent, and she can rise to a higher level,” the husband told HuffPost India in an interview. “I thought, he has seen her capability and so wants to help us.”

On August 27, 2018, according to a copy of circular No F 5/2018-SCA(I) appended to the woman’s affidavit, she was assigned to work in Justice Gogoi’s office at his residence.

The Secretary General of the Supreme Court, in his response to Scroll.in, has  termed her appointment as routine.

A little over a month later, on October 2, 2018, the affidavit alleges, she and her husband were invited to Gogoi’s residence for a social function. An undated photograph included in the annexures shows Justice Gogoi standing with the woman, her husband and her daughter.

The following day, on October 3, 2018, according to copies of formal invitation cards annexed with the woman’s affidavit, she and her husband were invited to Justice Gogoi’s swearing-in ceremony at Rashtrapati Bhavan at 10:45 am.

A week later, on October 9, 2018, office order 231/2018 states, the woman’s brother-in-law was appointed as a temporary junior court attendant at the registry of the Supreme Court for an initial period of two years.

The woman said the man was physically disabled, and was appointed to his position by Justice Gogoi to help her family out.

His appointment order, states, “Hon’ble Chief Justice of India has been pleased to appoint [Name Redacted] as temporary Junior Court Attendant in the Registry of the Supreme Court of India with effect from 9th October, 2018.”

The next day, on October 10, 2018, the woman alleges, Chief Justice Gogoi called her to his office at his residence and asked her what she would do for him in return. When she said she was extremely grateful for his help, she alleges, Chief Justice Gogoi touched her inappropriately in a manner that made her uncomfortable. The following day, on October 11, 2018, the woman alleges that he called her to his office at his residence again, once more asked her what she could do for him and forcibly embraced her, which she resisted by instinctively pushing him away.

Thereafter, the affidavit notes, Chief Justice Gogoi’s attitude towards her changed.

Eleven days later, on October 22, 2018, transfer orders show the woman was transferred out of Chief Justice Gogoi’s office to the Centre for Research and Planning with immediate effect.

Two months later, on December 21, 2018, the woman states in her affidavit, she was fired.

Sudden termination

The process began on November 19, 2018 when the woman was charged with expressing unhappiness at being assigned to a particular seat, and for missing a half-day of work on a given Saturday.

These acts, the registrar Deepak Jain wrote, “show a lack of devotion to duty, indiscipline and insubordination”. In her reply, she apologised for missing work on a Saturday as she had to attend a function at her daughter’s school. The school programme went on for longer than anticipated, and the woman couldn’t make it to work on time.

The registrar was not convinced. The woman was suspended and asked to appear before a panel of inquiry. On December 17, 2018, the day of her appearance, she was so stressed out that she fainted at the Supreme Court and had to be rushed to the Ram Manohar Lohia hospital. Hospital records, appended with her affidavit, establish that she was brought in due to a “sudden onset of hyperventilation”.

Meanwhile, at the Supreme Court that day, the enquiry panel continued proceedings in her absence. A record of the proceedings justifies their decision as follows, “the delinquent official neither appeared before the inquiry offer on 17-12-2018 nor she moved any request for adjournment. Therefore, the inquiry officer decided to proceed with the inquiry ex parte against her.”

Missing from this record is the fact that the woman — who had fainted — was taken to the hospital by an employee of the court. She was brought to the hospital, the medical report states, because the “Patient was found lying on the floor and not responding to any command with her eyes open and staring on ceiling.”

The Secretary General has termed her dismissal as “as per procedure” in his statement to Scroll.in. 

Intimidation

While the woman was fighting to keep her job, her husband was facing problems of his own. Delhi Police documents show he too was suspended from his post for allegedly running a gambling scheme, a charge he denies. He remains under suspension, as does his elder brother, who is also a police head constable. Meanwhile, his younger, disabled brother, who had been granted a position as a junior court attendant at the Supreme Court, was terminated from his position as well.

Her husband was also charged with inappropriately reaching out to the Office of the Chief Justice of India. This inappropriate approach, her husband told HuffPost India, was when he sought to reach out to Chief Justice Gogoi to try to save the woman’s job.

Just when it appeared that things couldn’t get worse, they did.

On March 8, 2019, the woman and her husband were in Rajasthan at their village when a team of police officers arrived to summon them back to Delhi where, the police said, she was wanted in connection with a complaint filed against her. The complaint, filed by a man called Naveen Kumar, who the woman said she did not know, alleged that — two years ago in 2017 — she offered to provide him with a job.

When the woman returned to Delhi and visited the Tilak Marg police station the following day, she was forced to spend the whole day and most of the night at the police station before she was arrested and produced before a magistrate. She was formally held in police custody on March 10, 2019, then in judicial custody on March 11, 2019, before she was finally granted bail on March 12 2019.

That bail is up for cancellation on Saturday, April 20.

The prospect of going back into jail, she said, as she broke down into tears, has pushed her to take this extreme step of going public with allegations against one of the most powerful men in the country.

“I really don’t want to go behind bars. I have a really small daughter,” she said. “He can do anything. He can just destroy my life.”

NEW DELHI —The Supreme Court held an extraordinary hearing on Saturday after a former employee of the apex court accused Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi of sexual harassment and persecution.

 A three-judge bench headed by Justice Gogoi was constituted after a sworn affidavit by the woman copies of which were sent to the residences of 22 apex court judges became public on Saturday.

During the hearing in CJI’s court No 1, Justice Gogoi said the allegations are unbelievable.

“This is unbelievable. I don’t think I should stoop low even to deny these allegation,” he said, adding, “There has to be bigger force behind this, they want to deactivate the office of CJI.”

The apex court registry in a notice earlier in the day said a three-bench headed by the CJI was being set up to deal with a “matter of great public importance touching upon the independence of judiciary”. The bench also comprised justices Arun Mishra and Sanjiv Khanna

The former employee has described two incidents of alleged molestation by Gogoi in her affidavit, both of which allegedly took place in October 2018, only days after he was appointed as the CJI.

Confirming that a letter by the woman has been received by several sitting judges. Supreme Court Secretary General Sanjeev Sudhakar Kalgaonkar said all the allegations made by the woman concerned are malafide and have no basis.

“No doubt, it is a malafide allegation,” he said.

Stating that it was leaving it to the wisdom of media to act responsibly on allegations of sexual harassment against the CJI, the court said the independence of judiciary is under “very, very severe” threat.

“After 20 years of selfless service as judge, I have bank balance of Rs 6.80 lakh,” he said.

“Nobody can catch me on money, people have to find something and they have found this: This is the reward CJI gets after 20 years of service,” Justice Gogoi.

He made it clear that he will preside over the CJI court and discharge his judicial functions without any fear.

“I have taken this unusual and extraordinary step of sitting in court today because things have gone too far,” he said.

Judiciary can’t be made a scapegoat, says CJI Gogoi.

I first started growing facial hair when I was 12, about two years after I began menstruating. I was taken to Boston Children’s Hospital, where I was diagnosed with PCOS, or polycystic ovarian syndrome. When I was diagnosed, I basically had all of the symptoms they were looking for except for multiple ovarian cysts.

As an adult, a spinal X-ray showed I have a dermoid cyst, which has teeth inside of it. These types of cysts are benign and basically harmless unless they grow large enough to twist and rupture. Some believe they are the remains of twins that were absorbed in utero.

It didn’t take long for my mother to subject me to a variety of hair removal methods. I was forced to put up with plucking, bleaching, depilatories and waxing. My skin is sensitive, and it hurt. By her reasoning, I was already a fat kid, and she didn’t want me to be made fun of, so the hair removal or camouflage was necessary. My opinion on the matter was irrelevant to her.

It had never even occurred to me to be self-conscious about my facial hair until my mother had worn me down and told me how worthless my natural body was. It was the same way with both the hair and my weight. I wanted a chance to just let the hair be, but my mother and stepfather bullied me so much that I developed deep anxiety issues. It would have made me laugh if it wasn’t so heartbreaking.

She claimed that everything she did was out of love and that she just wanted me to be safe and not be treated badly by my peers, but instead she was one of my first bullies and certainly the one who has done the most damage to me over the course of my life. Sometimes I would cry and beg her to just stop. I actually had daydreams of running off and finding a circus where I could be a bearded lady in relative peace, because a part of me knew that there was nothing wrong with my body and no one had a right to mistreat me.

I left home at 15, after my parents learned that I was queer and went ballistic. It was just the last straw for me. We had a complicated relationship because I was still a kid who hadn’t had a chance to learn how to grow up, despite being forced to grow up too quickly. I kept in touch for far longer than I should have, though we would sometimes go long periods without communicating.

Even away from my mother’s forced depilation and my stepfather’s mocking because I wasn’t feminine enough ― he even mocked me as a teenager for not shaving my legs or armpits ― it had already been deeply ingrained in me that allowing my facial hair to grow was shameful. I could ignore them when it came to my body hair. I was attracted to women with body hair. There were plenty of them in the punk and riot girl scenes. I could see how that was just a bullshit patriarchal standard of beauty. But they got to me early with my facial hair.

Even when I was living on the street, I’d find a bathroom to shave in, or I would lie down with my head in my best friend’s lap and she’d pluck the hairs for me. That was one of the most intimate, kindest rituals that I have ever shared with anyone.

My mother actually never really explained PCOS to me. It was like this dirty secret. I was prescribed birth control pills at 12 to help regulate my periods and lessen the hair growth. I knew that my hair growth was caused by my hormone levels being off, but that was it. And I was constantly made fun of for being fat, by my family and even strangers, but I don’t recall anyone ever explaining to me as a teenager that this different hormonal profile I had was the reason that it was incredibly easy for me to gain weight and nearly impossible for me to lose it unless I was literally starving myself or exercising for eight hours a day.

I didn’t truly know or understand what was actually going on with my body until I went to see an endocrinologist in my mid-20s. She diagnosed me with PCOS once again. Now I knew that there was a connection between my hormonal profile, my weight issues and so many other symptoms that I deal with on a regular basis. The next time I talked to my mother, I was excited to share with her the fact that there was actually a name for what I perceived as the thing that was wrong with me. She simply said, “I know. That’s what they told us at Children’s Hospital.”

The shame, pain and rashes that came along with plucking and shaving my face went on for nearly 26 years. Because it was ingrained in me so early on that my natural hair was not OK, I shaved my face daily, or every other day. The rate of growth fluctuated based on whether I had access to health care and hormones. If there was a knock on the door and I had to answer it unexpectedly before I’d showered, I would be horrified. My heart would jump into my throat, and I’d start panicking. If I had to risk running into people to get the mail or run to a corner store for something, I’d wear a scarf wrapped around my neck. Even then, I’d be completely paranoid and anxious that the scarf would slip or someone would see my stubbly sideburns. I felt like everyone around me could see and was staring at my facial hair.

Along with other trauma that I experienced at a young age, this high level of anxiety led me to self-medicate with alcohol for over a decade, from when I’d left home until I was in my mid- to late 20s. I just couldn’t handle the immense pressure that I felt to hide natural pieces of myself. I will be eternally grateful to my spouse for gently convincing me that I was better off without the booze and helping me to make a lot of progress in dealing with my trauma through honest self-examination and just allowing myself to process experiences and emotions that I’d swallowed and buried for years.

I was about to turn 38 when I finally stopped shaving and allowed my beard to grow last fall. I’d first tried nearly a year prior, but between food sensitivities and medication side effects, I was shocked that my first attempt was really weird and scraggly. I tried to just be proud of having tried, but I was pretty heartbroken to start shaving again.

When I’d adjusted my diet to accommodate my food sensitivities and stopped taking the meds I was prescribed, which were giving me awful side effects and also lessened the hair growth, my second attempt was much more successful.

I was very quickly amazed by how confident I felt, just being myself and not caring what others thought. All I had to do was stop shaving and let go of the shame that had been instilled in me at such a young age. I didn’t think that it would happen so quickly or effortlessly. It’s amazing how human beings flourish when we are allowed to simply be our authentic selves.

I started actively seeking out and connecting with other bearded women. Many of them talk about how they embrace their beards as part of their femininity, how their facial hair is in itself feminine. I have so much love and respect for all of them and their messages, and I’d always admired the few women I encountered who embraced their facial hair the way that I’d wished I could when I was younger. But that didn’t resonate with me at all. I started thinking about my literal androgyny and about how I’d always embraced androgynous people and concepts. I began to think of myself as nonbinary, but I was afraid to say it out loud.

I was afraid that people I loved and respected would think that I was appropriating an identity that didn’t belong to me, simply because I wasn’t only female ― but no part of me had ever felt male. Instead, I range from female to androgynous and places in between, depending on the moment. I am a trinity of female, androgynous and genderqueer. Realizing this and sharing it with others has made me feel like I’m being truly open with myself and the world for the first time, and it feels amazing. All I had to do was stop hiding a piece of myself that I’d felt forced to deny since I was a child.

Recognizing and embracing my own identity has been so powerful. Even though I cut ties with my mother seven years ago, I have made a chosen family over the years. Their love and support for me don’t waver based on how much or how little facial or body hair I have. They don’t criticize me for my weight or for chasing my dreams that don’t fit society’s narrow definitions of ”normal” or ”acceptable.”

While most people have been really lovely, some people have been positively awful, of course. It’s usually men who stare angrily at me, visibly trying to figure out what I am and whether I am somehow a threat to their identity when I’m just standing in line somewhere or trying to shop for groceries. Though none of these people have actually approached me, I’ve started carrying pepper spray as a result of how unsafe they’ve made me feel in those rare moments. Of course, there are the internet trolls, but there are always internet trolls wherever people are being brave and vulnerable.

The unfortunate thing that has occurred, however, is the fact that there is a subsection of mostly straight cisgender women, including many with PCOS, who seem to only be able to find it within themselves to attempt to shame and belittle me when they come across my story. Some simply can’t seem to stop themselves from offering unwanted hair removal advice in response to my posts celebrating my beard and promoting self-love.

I began this journey of putting myself out there with the hope of helping to normalize women’s facial hair, after being inspired to finally stop shaving by the stories other bearded women were telling. It never even occurred to me that I might become someone else’s inspiration, but when I started receiving feedback from bearded women, including trans women who choose to keep their facial hair, and from genderqueer folks with whom my story has resonated, it shifted my entire perspective.

Then I met Kate Bornstein, who has been a nonbinary trans trailblazer for decades. I’ve written elsewhere about how moved I was by her presence and grace, but the one thing that stood out to me more than anything else was her explanation of the Buddhist definition of eloquence: “How much of the easing of suffering you affect with the telling of a truth, that is how eloquent you were.” I wept in the audience. Suddenly, I felt like there was a greater purpose to all of this. If I can be the voice that I needed to hear for so long, as the bearded woman or the less obvious but still valid genderqueer person, then I’m doing something right. The people who need to hear my voice will find me.

It’s been seven months since I finally found the courage to stop shaving my face and let my beard grow out. In that time, I have been amazed at how much happier and more confident I have become. People who have known me for years comment regularly about the fact that they’ve never seen me so bright, joyful and unapologetically myself.

Have a compelling first-person story you want to share? Send your story description to pitch@huffpost.com.

MUMBAI — Makers of Kangana Ranaut and Rajkummar Rao starrer “Mental Hai Kya” on Saturday denied that the film discriminates against people battling mental health issues and in fact encourages the audience to “embrace their individuality”.

The response from the production house Balaji Motion Pictures comes a day after the Indian Psychiatric Society (IPS) wrote a letter to the censor board to object against the film’s recently released posters.

In a letter addressed to CBFC chairperson Prasoon Joshi, the IPS had also objected to the title of the movie and said it was “discriminative, stigmatising, degrading and inhuman in projecting mental disorders and persons who suffer from mental disorders.”

The production banner countered that the film aims to celebrate distinctiveness.

“The makers of the film, believe that their movie - ‘Mental Hai Kya’ will encourage people to embrace their individuality and distinctiveness.

″‘Mental Hai Kya’ starring Kangana Ranaut and Rajkummar Rao marks the coming together of some of the most talented and responsible media personalities, who in no way intend to hurt anyone’s sentiments,” the statement read.

The IPS had also demanded to censor any sequence in the film which violates the rights of persons with mental disorder.

The makers, however, said it is a “fictional thriller genre feature film meant to entertain audiences”.

“It does not offend, discriminate or disregard any person. In fact the film is a mainstream entertainer which makes a larger point,” the statement further read.

Recently I got a new set of breast implants. I had the first pair for nearly two decades, and they needed to be replaced. I’ve been reckoning with my reasons for getting fake boobs in the first place. Most of us don’t talk about implants with the people who never see us naked. But breast augmentation has risen more than 48 percent since 2000. It’s the No. 1 most-requested surgical cosmetic procedure in the United States, with nearly 314,000 performed in 2018. And though every woman has her own reason for wanting to change what she’s born with, I want to dispel the idea that breast implants are a dubious vanity project.

I’m a 53-year-old feminist, a mother and a former medical professional, and I’ve always felt women should do what they want if it adds to their life satisfaction: spa retreats, advanced degrees, stay-at-home mothering. I just happen to be a bit obsessed with breasts.

As an adolescent, I hated my breasts the moment they sprouted. My mother was a D cup, and I was terrified I’d be getting what she got. I was a thick girl and a tomboy who was boy crazy. I loved dodgeball and tag football, and I did not want boobs getting in the way of my fun. Every day I pressed them with the palms of my hands, beat those breast buds into submission and made deals with God to stop them in their tracks. And suddenly, they did stop growing.

But when I saw the lovely orbs my friends were developing I became envious. They would prance after P.E. in their pretty new bras, and I realized the firm flesh of a developing cleavage was indeed a thing of beauty. Breasts on my peers were fascinating, and I wanted what they had. I tried to coax mine back to life, but they were like plants that had germinated early only to be killed off by a freakish hard frost. By the time I entered high school, I could barely fill an A cup.

I tolerated my breasts. They didn’t affect my enthusiasm for sex, though a Wonderbra did nothing for a woman without flesh to press together. I accepted I would live with tiny breasts, got on with graduate school, traveled the world and skied like a badass. But I longed to shed my Gore-Tex jacket at the end of a day on the mountain and command the attention of ski patrollers. Sure, I had quads that could crush cans, but what I really wanted was a pair of extraordinary specimens of feminine beauty.

No man ever complained about the size of my chest. I was the one who needed to be pleased. I wanted some heft up top to balance out my bottom half, to fill a bikini top ― jiggle even! No doubt many women feel ambivalent about the pair they’re given. Is dissatisfaction with our breasts a deep insecurity born of a narrow cultural definition of breast beauty? Perhaps. But what I felt was a longing for something which, on me, had gone missing.

Breasts are a defining feature of womanhood, and to have ones so small and inconsequential detracted from my ability to feel bodacious, that magical combination of bold and audacious. I argued with myself that I didn’t need bigger breasts to accomplish more. But like people who get nose jobs and suddenly feel the weight of self-consciousness fall from their lives, might new breasts help me shed a nagging discomfort that I wasn’t all woman? Couldn’t I roar louder if I had the mammaries?

After finishing my physician assistant training at the age of 33, I saw an opportunity. I was newly married and about to be making a good salary. Before I entered the professional world, why not give myself the gift I’d always wanted? We would vacation in Australia and I would come back an enhanced woman, well before I entered a new clinical environment. My husband neither encouraged nor discouraged my decision; he simply wanted me to be happy.

This was 2001 and silicone breast implants were unavailable in the U.S., having been banned in 1996 over concerns of long-term safety. Saline implants didn’t appeal to me because they looked less natural and felt less real (I’d seen my share having worked in a women’s clinic). But a new breed of cohesive silicone implants were available in other countries. Even with an overnight in the hospital, the cost of having the surgery in Australia was reasonable. And I could recover with the sound of kookaburras outside my window.

The day I first opened the post-surgical bra to view my new breasts I nearly cried. The surgeon and I had practiced restraint regarding their size ― nothing larger than a B cup. What I saw reflected back at me was a new fullness beneath my once-tethered nipples. Perfect teardrops of soft flesh now adorned my chest. I sighed with relief, as though I had just been reunited with a body part. I was also aroused with the sight of myself, an unexpected and delightful sensation that put a spring in my step.

I tell people I became less shy and more gregarious as a result of practicing medicine, forced to do so because of the sheer number of people I had to help guide through periods of stress and illness. But my breast augmentation happened at the same time I started medicine and I can’t separate the two. I was more at ease in my body, I stood straighter, and I finally felt I belonged to the tribe of women. My implants weren’t the only reason I genuinely began to enjoy life. Though, like a catalyst, I’m sure they accelerated the rate of change in my confidence and contentment.

I had the cohesive implants for 18 years, nursed my son without problems, and essentially forgot I even had them. Becoming free from ruminating over something I could change was alone worth the price of surgery. But at my last mammogram, there was evidence one had torn, and a diffuse haze of what was assumed to be silicone was visible outside the implant. Despite them being solid, these “gummy bear” implants have a small amount of free silicone within the envelope of the implant. I was experiencing twinges of pain and there was a chance silicone would migrate to my lymphatic system and cause unknown havoc. So I scheduled surgery.

I thought about not getting new implants, just removing the old ones and sailing flat-chested into menopause. As with any surgery, there are risks, and I debated whether I should take on new ones with a 10-year-old at home. The latest retrospective studies on the safety of silicone implants, which were approved again by the Food and Drug Administration in 2006, report that long-term health issues are very rare. It’s much more likely I’ll get diabetes or heart disease before my breast implants do me any harm.

But the best reason to replace them was that I wanted to. Despite being in my 50s I’m enjoying my body in ways I never did as a younger woman. My lovely breasts are part of the package I’ve brought to new relationships after becoming single at midlife. Now my breasts contribute to feelings of sexual maturity and eroticism that I would no more do without than I would stop traveling to new countries.

As far as insecurities within our cultural obsession with beauty, I’m not too bothered. Every culture has its own ideals for both men and women. I don’t feel compelled to tuck my tummy or lift my butt. I’m content to let my body otherwise sag and age as it will. However, I support any woman or man who opts for esthetic surgery if it gives them more confidence to pursue their larger goals.

I’m delighted with my new implants. They are rounder and slightly smaller, with less projection, as though they were aging gracefully. Just as I intend to do.

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