Even as the BJP comes to term with its defeat in the Delhi Assembly Elections, winning only 8 seats against Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) 62, union minister Prakash Javadekar has put the blame of the party’s failure on the Congress. 

“The defeat in Delhi elections was because of the sudden disappearance of the Congress. It is a different subject whether the Congress disappeared (on its own), people made it disappear or whether their votes got transferred (to AAP),” Javadekar said at a press conference in Pune on Friday. 

He said the Congress, which had got 26% votes in Lok Sabha elections, could win only 4% votes in Delhi elections.

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The BJP had seemed confident of forming a government in the capital, but that failed to happen. Delhi BJP chief Manoj Tiwari had rejected exit poll predictions of an AAP win. Before polling, he had said his “sixth sense” told him the BJP would form government in Delhi. 

Javadekar’s reasoning is one among many that BJP leaders have cited for their defeat. 

“Because of Congress’s disappearance, there was a direct fight between the BJP and the AAP. We had expected 42% votes for us and 48% for AAP, but our prediction failed by 3% each. We (BJP) got 39% votes, while the AAP received 51% votes,” Javadekar said.

Tiwari told ABP News that the BJP should have chosen a chief ministerial candidate before going into the polls. 

While the BJP led a hate-filled campaign, baying for the blood of anti-CAA protesters — with Kapil Mishra and Anurag Thakur saying ‘goli maro’, Amit Shah saying ‘send current’ to Shaheen Bagh and Parvesh Sharma saying ‘they will rape your sisters’ — Home Minister Shah admitted that such hate speech should not have been made during the campaign. 

Such remarks may have resulted in the party’s defeat in the elections, he admitted during a programme organised by Times Now.

The BJP leaders had vilified anti-CAA protesters, especially at Shaheen Bagh, while the AAP had contested on the issue of bijli, paani and shiksha. 

AAP was voted back to for the third time in a row, with a resounding victory and a decisive mandate of the people who rejected BJP’s hate campaign.

Protests broke out across Tamil Nadu, with a Shaheen Bagh like protest at Chennai’s Old Washermanpet, after police lathicharged anti-Citizenship Amendment Act protesters on Friday evening. 

Reports say hundreds of men and women sat in protest all night at Old Washermanpet in criticising the police crackdown on protesters. 

The News Minute reported that protesters raised ‘azaadi’ slogans along the bylanes of Thiruvottiyur High Road, condemning police action against protesters earlier in the day and demanding a repeal of the discriminatory CAA. 

Twitter user Gayatri Khandhadai shared a video of women chanting slogans. 

Protests have reportedly spread across Tamil Nadu with people taking to the streets and blocking roads. 

The Hindu reported that Chennai’s arterial roads like Anna Salai and Jawaharlal Nehru Salai in Vadapalani, and parts of the East Coast Road saw huge traffic snarls. The report said that people also gathered in Madurai, Coimbatore, Tiruppur, Salem, Tiruchi, Vaniyambadi, Tirupathur, Krishnagiri, Villupuram

What prompted these protests?

Locals in the Old Washermanpet area of Chennai had planned a protest after Friday prayers against the CAA, NRC and NPR. Reports say that police allegedly used full force to disperse the protests, leading to chaos and scuffle and further protests against police action. 

Protesters are said to have been badly injured during police action. 

“They resorted to lathi-charge three times between 2 pm and 5 pm. Some injured protesters were taken to Stanley Government Hospital and one was shifted to Rajiv Gandhi Government Hospital,” said Kasali, a protester, told TheNew Indian Express.

Reports say that hundreds of police personnel were present in the area that is mostly narrow lanes and by-lanes. When the protesters refused to budge, the police used full force to disperse them. 

The Hindu quoted a protester as saying, “We did not even come to the main road and were protesting on the streets and in front of homes... They spoke to the protesters and asked them to disperse. As we did not heed to their suggestion, the police used force to chase us away.” 

Videos from the incident show a huge mob of police personnel dragging, beating and even kicking a lone protester. 

Huffpost India couldn’t independently verify the video. 

Police reportedly used violence to detain protesters. 

Sahiya, a protester told The News Minute, “When we refused to leave, they pulled us by the hair and dragged us from the road. When we questioned them, they carried us bodily with two people holding our feet up.”

 While there were reports of a septuagenarian dying during police action, a senior police officer refuted the claims speaking to The New Indian Express, “The elderly man had been admitted to Stanley Government Hospital for two weeks. He was discharged on Thursday and suffered a cardiac arrest at his house in Old Washermenpet on Friday night. The protestors are spreading rumours.”

Sporadic protests spread across Chennai and across Tamil Nadu after the incident. 

#ChennaiShaheenBagh trends on Twitter 

Thousands took to social media to condemn police action at Old Washermanpet, using the hashtag #ChennaiShaheenBagh. 

As long as professionals are forced to spend so many waking hours together in one place, the office will not just be a workplace but also a convenient dating pool of people with similar occupations and shared interests.

One in three American adults is or has been in a workplace romance, according to a 2019 poll by the Society for Human Resources Management.

Dating a co-worker ― even the right way ― can be high-risk, high-reward. Karen, a professional whose office romance at a software company blossomed into marriage nearly 28 years ago, called the relationship the “best decision” she ever made but also a choice that others should approach with caution. Initially, Karen kept her relationship with a co-worker from another department quiet “to the point where co-workers were trying to set us up with other people because they had no idea.” Karen wanted to know the relationship was more than a fling before letting her colleagues know. “For the longest time we didn’t tell anybody. Nobody at work knew until we had a strong feeling it would be more than a casual thing,” she said. “I’m trying to imagine if we had been out in the open and it had fizzled. I think it would have been really awkward.”

Still, not all office romances are quiet or successful. Both participants and bystanders have some basic tenets to consider for minimizing the drama these relationships can cause to everyone in the workplace. 

Thoroughly read your HR policies on dating a colleague. 

Before you engage in any type of office romance, figure out your company’s applicable policies and whether you have to disclose. Office romances are sometimes entirely against company policy, and more often so if you are dating up or down the organizational chart. A 2013 survey of 384 HR professionals from the Society for Human Resources Management found that 99% of workplaces banned romances between a supervisor and a direct report and almost half banned relationships between employees of a “significant rank difference.”

It’s not hard to see why, considering the rate of workplace sexual harassment. But even clearly consensual relationships can be out of bounds when there is a power imbalance. Take the recent example of McDonald’s CEO Steve Easterbrook, who was ousted for having a consensual relationship with an employee. McDonald’s code of conduct states that “employees who have a direct or indirect reporting relationship to each other are prohibited from dating or having a sexual relationship.”

You should also know your reputation may be unfairly harmed, regardless of company policies. Women have more to lose from an office romance: Research has found that colleagues are more likely to assume an entry-level woman employee is using a workplace romance with a superior to get ahead in her career than a male peer who does the same. 

If you can’t compartmentalize work and home, you shouldn’t undertake an office romance.

When a romantic relationship goes public in the office, it also has public consequences for co-workers.

Public displays of affection at work can be disruptive mood-killers to everyone who witnesses them, for example. One 2011 study in the Journal of Managerial Psychology found that when co-workers observed their peers and married co-workers flirt, these co-workers reported less job satisfaction and stronger intentions of quitting. 

Co-workers can also feel uncomfortable when office romances suggest preferential treatment, said Lisa Orbé-Austin, a licensed psychologist who focuses on helping professionals manage their careers. “If you keep things as they were before, and it really feels like a business relationship at work, I don’t think people tend to feel very different,” she said. “It’s when there is the other thing going on like private lunches, time away from the office, ... glances at a meeting ― all of this stuff cannot exist, because that does make people feel uncomfortable, it makes people feel like, ‘What is going on here?’”

Keeping romance out of work is key to making this relationship work for others. When professionals in advertising, public relations, and marketing were asked to weigh in on what made a workplace romance healthy for a 2017 study on these type of relationships, many answered that a healthy workplace romance was one which “if you didn’t already know they were dating, you would have no idea.” 

Being careful to treat her partner like any other colleague was what Aimee Pierce did. She’s a client service professional who met and still works with her husband at the same marketing company. “If we didn’t inform new team members, I don’t think they would know,” Pierce said about her marriage. She and her husband share a boss who knows about their relationship, and she advises others who want to engage in an office romance to be transparent and to “personally review your actions for anything that could, even very slightly, look or be twisted to look like preferential treatment.”

For herself, “If my answer is even a ‘maybe’ when I ask myself this question, I bring it to our mutual boss or other neutral party and document it,” Pierce said. 

Plan for your breakup. 

Embarking on an office romance means preparing for the possibility of its end before it begins. 

Orbé-Austin said that before professionals engage in an office romance, they should consider how they usually react after breakups. “You have to prepare for all scenarios when you work with somebody that you can maintain integrity to the work and to yourself in this process,” she said. “If you have a history of when you break up with someone, [of] never wanting to see them again, you probably shouldn’t date someone at work.” 

Angela, who worked in customer service for a subscription business at the time of her office romance, said her experience made her not recommend it to anyone else. Angela “didn’t want a reputation at work,” so she and her co-worker kept their romance quiet, but the relationship soured after she learned he was already dating someone else long-distance. Even though the romantic relationship ended, the professional one had to continue, and that was hard.

“I couldn’t stand being there sitting with the man who lied and used me,” Angela said. “I kept my mouth shut around my other co-workers about it, but found I would make snarky comments about him sometimes. I ended up leaving the job due to the travel time, but it was a huge relief.” 

When relationships end, employees can face a tough decision: Keep their job or be forced to work with someone they dated and now hate. Six percent of workers in a CareerBuilder survey said they left a job after a romantic relationship with a colleague went bad. 

Don’t talk about your romance at work. 

When you date colleagues, your personal business can become everyone’s business. As HuffPost reader Mary wrote to us, “I once told a newly-divorced guy friend who wanted to date a co-worker, ‘If you dump her, every girl in the office will know how big (or little) your penis is and how long you last!’”

Discussing romantic prospects at work can be an invitation for your colleagues to analyze your personal life. Talking about office romance at the office “opens the door to boundary violations,” Orbé-Austin said. “Keep the boundaries up from the very beginning. Even if you have feelings for this person, don’t be sharing them with co-workers.” 

Office romance stories are not neutral topics for watercooler conversations, either. Orbé-Austin said that when you share a story about your office romance, you are also inviting your co-worker to think, “OK, how is this going to impact me?”  

As these carefully negotiated conversations highlight, workplace romances take time and effort to work for everyone to feel like they are getting fair treatment. Of course, if you want to avoid going through these mental hoops, you can always choose to avoid dating co-workers altogether. Or as one HuffPost reader advised us, “Don’t get your honey where you make your money.” 

An Indian Muslim woman shows her indelible ink-marked finger after casting her vote outside a polling station on Feb. 8 in Delhi, India.

The Ba Yi aerobatics team from China’s Army Air Force perform an aerial display with J-10 fighter jets during the media preview for the Singapore Airshow on Feb. 9.

Robyn Peoples (left) and Sharni Edwards kiss as they pose for photographs after becoming the first same-sex couple to get married in Northern Ireland. The ceremony was held in Carrickfergus, north of Belfast, on Feb. 11.

Nacho Libre wrestlers perform during the Lucha Vavoom ‘Valentines Day’ show at the Mayan Theatre in Los Angeles on Feb. 12.

A man stands on the edge of a seawall during Storm Ciara in Harlingen, The Netherlands, on Feb.  9. The storm was marked by unusually high winds across Europe, causing many countries to cancel national and international sporting events.

Writer-director Bong Joon Ho had his hands full after the 92nd Annual Academy Awards show in Los Angeles on Feb. 9. His film “Parasite” won the Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Best International Feature Film.

German Firat Arslan recoils from a punch thrown by South African Kevin Lerena during their IBO World Championship Cruiserweight title fight in Goeppingen, Germany, on Feb. 8. Lerena, the reigning champion in the division, won in 6 rounds.

Two migrants are pictured on board the Spanish NGO Maydayterraneo’s Aita Mari rescue boat on Feb. 10, a day after their rescue off the Libyan coast. 

Kai Lenny of Hawaii rides a wave during a surfing competition at Praia do Norte in Nazaré, Portugal, on Feb. 11.

Buddhist monks take their places before prayers during Makha Bucha celebrations at Wat Dhammakaya temple in Bangkok on Feb. 8.

South Korea’s You Young performs during the gala exhibition at the International Skating Union’s Four Continents Figure Skating Championships in Seoul, South Korea, on Feb. 9.

A model presents a creation from the Marc Jacobs Fall/Winter 2020 collection during New York Fashion Week on Feb. 12.

By the time you read this, Vir Das, arguably one of the most successful Indian comics, would perhaps be in Cambridge, touring his next comedy special, simply called ‘Loved.’ From Cambridge, he moves to Vancouver, Aspen, San Francisco and Arlington, Texas with fresh material that’d probably arrive on our streaming screens next year. 

Das, 40, started off at a time when the conventional idea of stand-up comedy was still watching Raju Shrivastav and Sunil Grover on television. The cool new vocation came of age only a few years ago and Das is credited as one of the early pioneers of comedy as we now understand it. 

A few weeks ago, Netflix dropped ‘For India,’ Das’s third comedy special with the streaming giant. “Think about something interesting because there’s only 6 or 7 comics in the world who have 3 Netflix specials,” a Netflix executive told the Dehradun-born comedian over the phone. 

“That was a pretty daunting statement for me. I googled them and thought if I was in the room with any of the other 5 or 6 people, I’d fanboy my ass off,” Das said, over a cup of coffee at a Bandra restaurant.

Over the next one hour, the comedian spoke about balancing social commentary with jokes, why dissenting at this point matters and, Mastizaade, of course.

What’s the reaction that you’ve received so far on your Netflix special?

This went out to a lot of people who are not my audience. They’re watching a lot of things on Netflix and until this special, I wasn’t one of the things they’d watch. I don’t get very good reviews very often and I’m sure you’re aware of that (Laughs). So receiving so many good reviews on this one is strange. I’ve done this twice before. The touring, the shooting, shit can consume your mind. It can give you serious anxiety. 

Anxiety before you’ve put it out or while you’re still travelling with it?

It takes 9 months to do these specials. It takes 3 months of writing, 4-5 months of touring and so on. This one I directed as well. Once it’s out, it’s out. On a Netflix show, the promotion really starts on the day it comes out. It’s not like a film where you create an early buzz. In the last 3 years, I’ve found a love-hate relationship with social media. Like, this whole thing isn’t making me feel better about myself even though it’s largely been complimentary.

Why do you think that is?

I feel like it’s a hit of dopamine that you get used to. That’s really what social media is, it’s dopamine right? Somebody likes your shit and *ting* your brain fires up some dopamine. And then you start to get a little bit low when you’re not catching that dopamine anymore. This is dangerous.

When a Netflix special comes out, you do it and you refresh and it’s just hundreds of tweets praising and trashing you so I don’t go through them anymore. I have nice people in the office who take select tweets and quote them and say thank you.

Last special I was like “Thank you so much!” and in this one I was like ”🙂 Namaste.” You can’t be wrong with a smiley face namaste.

Does Netflix share numbers or data with you?

No, they don’t.

How do you get perspective on what’s worked, what’s not?

I think you get a phone call and you get another special at some point (Laughs).

In terms of what you’ve done previously, this is more risky and more political which coincides with how shitty the conditions are getting in the country. At a time where news channels have totally failed us, newspapers also seem pro establishment, comedy has emerged as a raging voice of dissent.

Don’t put that on us because then you take away my freedom to be silly.  When you’re feeling something strongly, it’s easier for you to access it and let it out onto the page. 

Whether it’s good or not is for you guys to decide. For this one, I was just feeling really strongly about what was going on. I can start to write any joke but if Narendra Modi is floating around somewhere inside, which he is, he finds his way on the page. 

I had tried to stay away from Modi but then I saw a John Mulaney bit talking about Trump. To most comedians in the world and India as well, the Trump joke or the Modi joke is the easiest one because you know you’re going to get a laugh on the basis of political beliefs. Not on the basis of the joke itself. So we do it, like, 5 times in the show when we need a big laugh. 

I saw John Mulaney do a bit about Trump and comedians in the US don’t usually do Trump jokes on Netflix specials. It’s past its expiry date and sometimes it’s not even funny. But his bit was about comparing Trump to a horse in a hospital. I was watching it and thought that fuck that’s fantastic because it makes such a strong political point but irrespective of my political beliefs, I could be laughing at that shit. 

If you took Trump out, that was a great comedy bit. Then I was like can I try and do something like this? Can I bring a left winger and a right winger into the premise of a joke and then make my point? 

Explain to me the anatomy of a joke. Does it come to you in the middle of nowhere?

So I told Netflix I would do this show in April. They had offered it to me in January. I asked them to give me a few months to figure out what the show would be about. I went in very arrogantly thinking I’d sketch out this universal idea about India but two weeks into the writing process I was like I’m fucked because there is no universal idea about India. Then you kinda go, okay, maybe that’s it, maybe that’s the show. That there is no one of us, there’s 1.3 billion ideas of us. But then, the big question you have as an artist and somebody who has a healthy dose of imposter syndrome in their daily basis is how do I pack in all of this? So, then I took over the Cuckoo and I said give me the club for a month and in the month I did 49 secret shows. It was for my personal database. It cost 200 bucks and no cell phones were allowed. I did 2 shows a day and I’d write material that I had written before and I’d write about Amar Akbar Anthony or the chudail because then I wanted to talk about these two things. I do 40 minutes of material and then I just talk to people for an hour. I’d ask them like, what’s your movie? What’s your tragedy?

And what did you find out?

So then I figured out that millennials don’t have a Dil Chahta Hai. I couldn’t find one, I really tried. I asked if it’s Yeh Jawani Hai Deewani or Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara. All of them were like Dil Chahta Hai. 

So you tapped into the broader subject and then worked your way into the specifics.

It’s different when you’re talking about a joke and a special. I started recognising the difference. A live set is a live set. Your job in a live set is to kill hard and fuck off. Stand-up special is a piece of cinema and you have to start thinking about that. There are dynamics to it. The current one is dense. There’s a laugh every 8 or 9 seconds. It’s dense because it’s 4 items per category. Let’s say one thing didn’t work, I can’t just cut it out of the show because I can’t break the format. I couldn’t cut out Taj Mahal or Nirbhaya from the show because I committed that there will be 4 things so then I had to write so many jokes about the Taj Mahal so that I’d get at least 5 jokes right in the final cut.

So wait, the original show was much, much longer?

Yes, I did a 2 hour show. It’s just bam bam bam… Then you’re just trying to fit a lot of jokes in a very short amount of time per category. You then get into the economy of words which I’ve never tapped into before as a comedian. So how can I tell these jokes in the least possible words that can make people laugh? The answer lies in rewriting. That’s what Seinfeld and others do so well. I just realised that I’d never done it so far. This will sound flaky but when you get. ajoke right, it starts to feel like music, at least in my head. 

I’ve a silly question. How do you all memorise all that stuff? Or is there a secret teleprompter?

Listen, you’re an idiot if you are shooting your stand-up special without having done at least 80 or 90 live performances. You need to work this shit before you shoot it. You need to see if it works or it doesn’t. For this one, we did 49 shows. We did Delhi, Bombay, Bangalore, Kolkata. We did London, New York and then we shot it.

How much of it gets improvised?

Maybe not what you’re saying but how you’re saying it definitely changes according to the energy of the room.

Tell me about the conversation you had with your wife when you decided to go into topics considered ‘risky’

I think Shivani (his wife) sees it pretty early. She’s been at the venue so she kinda knows what I am up to We’ve had two conversations about this. I’ve definitely had a conversation with her where I said, “If anything happens, head to our parents’ house and take Watson with you.”

When I do a joke, I’m scared of repercussions. I’m scared for my wife and my pet. I’m not an alpha comic. But I’m more scared that the joke is not funny than any of those things. That’s much more terrifying. I’m not going to pretend to be some ballsy mofo, like I’ll say what I want to and not worry about it. I will say what I want to and I will worry about it. But when we were talking about it, I was very clear that this show is a tribute and a celebration. No matter what I did I had to maintain that line. I think of this show like, if you have a kid, which I don’t but I have nephews, you know how they draw their mom and dad with crayons and they come home and be like this is for you? Now usually, it’s terrible. It’s always terrible. But the parents put it up on the fridge because the intention behind that is how they see them. That’s kinda what the show is for me. I’m sure it’s terrible to a lot of people but the intention is this, and I’m trying to put our culture out there. So put me on your fridge. Hopefully if I keep that, it’ll be okay.

What do you think is the contribution of art at this moment in time?

Art will dictate how this moment is remembered. Nobody is going to remember who the Chief Minister of Delhi in 20 years, they’ll remember kagaz nahi dikhayenge (we won’t show our documents). I do a joke where I say Vivek Oberoi’s Narendra Modi will last longer than Narendra Modi (Laughs).

It’s our job to buckle down and create art that outlives. India is bigger than this India. We have to create art that outlives this India. I’m clear about the fact that it has to be through art. You have to use your medium, whatever it is.

And what do you do when the propaganda, which has the backing of State apparatus, is significantly more robust?

One could argue that it’s stronger. So we gotta keep on plugging. How long will they fool people? If you watch a magician do a trick a thousand times, no matter how good he is, you’re going to get the trick at some point. I feel like that’s what this government does, it’s very good at misdirection. It’s a magician. Hey, let’s say something outrageous on Twitter today so you all focus on that and then let’s pass this law. Let’s disguise this piece of economic data etc etc. I feel like we’re starting to see how the trick is done.

I am as much a part of the tukde tukde gang as Swara or Kamra or Kashyap. I remember when IT cell trolls first descended. We were all like what the hell is going on? And now it’s a joke. I think we are also starting to be conscious of how much privilege we have. This government has very little repercussions for you and me and very large ones for other people who don’t have the privilege we do. At least I’m starting to feel that. I’m like, oh you got trolled on Twitter today? Boo. Fucking deal with it and write a fucking joke you know.

How do you tailor your writing? Does it change with a new demographic?

No, strangely enough. You have to be authentic and bring in your personal narrative. I feel like the second generation of Indian Americans is fairly well represented. They’ve got Hasan, Aziz, Russell Peters, all these characters. So when I go there I have to bring in an authentic story, like can I take you to India? And they enjoy that from a guy like me. Because you and me, if we would be watching Bill Burr, and if he’s talking about Tennessee and you’re going there with him aren’t you?

But don’t you need a lot of lived experiences which you can mine for, sorry for using the word, but content?

Instead of circling around the same sort of vibe? Hell yeah! I call it scening. Where I get lost in a scene, like the comedy scene or the acting scene. The minute I feel like that’s all I’m talking about with people I just feel like I need to get out and do other shit man.

Like what?

I’ll give you an example. I did an ABC show called Whisky Cavalier. We shot in Prague for 5 months. This is like a spy show with tailor-made suits and weapons etc. So a lot of focus on fitness right. I was kinda living in Prague for that long in minus 20 degrees temperature and at some point I kind of sat back. I love actors and I love being one of them, but can I spend all day talking about protein shakes and intermittent fasting? In a basement of a youth hostel called the ‘Check In’ on a Tuesday, I discover a stand-up comedy gig and I just went in. Ugly insecure people like me? I had found my brethren! We took that Tuesday evening and we turned it into 4 nights a week. I would literally be a CIA guy during the day and then for 20 druggie hippies from all over the world, I’d do stand up every night so I could get out of the acting world.

I would personally want to know about your experience with Mastizaade, an underrated gem.

There’s a life experience that paid off eventually, did’t it?

How do you feel about that today? It’s not a self aware meta movie, it’s genuinely a bad film

But it’s one of the things I talked about and I went after myself in one of my specials. I kind of put it to bed then. But all these people (who acted in the film) are friends and all of them saw the special and we got together and they thought it was funny as hell. We just have that with each other for the rest of our lives. We promised one another: let’s never do that again. We were all persona non-grata after that film for a while.

Why did you do it?

It was a mixture of, “I like these people”, “I want to reach out to this audience” and “this is a lot of money.” The script did not figure any of these decisions (Laughs).

You live, you learn.

I’m still not at a point where I have enough clout or experience or creativity to really dictate the content that I’m a part of. You got to do some for them and some for you. I’m not all for me. So now I’ve figured out that acting wise, if you were going to come and see me do a romcom and it was just me trying to play a fuckboy or a chocolate boy, there’s better looking people who are also better actors, better built and better trained, basically better at everything than me to do that. I kinda figured out that stop playing that game because you’re never going to win. So now I am trying to mix it up a little bit.

About the special, the ending was kind of over the top?

I didn’t have an ending for the show. So my Nani and the biscuit tale of the show is from my childhood in Patna. And you are right, I felt like that ending would be too filmy, it’s a bit Bollywood, I was very torn up if I wanted to end it that way. The compromise I made with myself is I’m going to cut it just when the biscuit drops (Laughs). Now usually when you get a standing ovation you try to capture it from every direction. You milk that shit as long as you can before you get to the end credits. Here we didn’t do that.

Your next show is about love.

It’s doing well internationally because it’s very relatable. We’ve done 19 countries and we’ve got 20 more to go this year. I went to Athens this year. There are no Indians there at all. We had got 500 people in Athens and I would say about 460 of them had seen the Netflix special. We did Trondheim in Norway which was 42 people. I happened to be in Oslo, there was a big show there. They said come and do Trondheim and I agreed. It happened to be the best show of the tour.

Are a lot of these Indians?

No, they’re just locals who don’t even know comedians. They see a comedy evening happening and they check it out. But you’ll learn more from those shows. You get your ass kicked. There’s nothing better than getting your ass kicked by a crowd. You remove the Indian safety net. In “For India’ there’s still a cushion of patriotism and there’s sentimentality. It’s a cushion that you can’t ignore and you can’t construct it either, it’s just going to be there. The minute I say India, you feel a certain way and I can’t control what you feel. The minute I say Parle-G or Nirbhaya, you feel a certain way. I can’t construct or reverse engineer that experience. Now if I take you into unknown territory, you’re probably not going to have a preset emotion about what I’m talking about. That safety net will be gone.

I felt the advantage you had here was also what’s increasingly becoming popular as a trope: weaponizing nostalgia which unfailingly works.

I think so too but on the nostalgia point, let’s say 6 years from now, this government is gone and we’re all happy again. We’re chill, life’s good, gay marriage is legalised, maybe we’ve legalised cannabis as well, maybe women feel safer etc. Will my show still be watchable? As an artist you get one shot to put your culture out and that’s a big opportunity. So I thought let me put my culture out there for a long period of time on platforms before the robots kick in or whatever. I didn’t want it to be negative.

You mean like subverting patriotism by taking the power away from those you claim to be wielding it?

Yes. I’m saying that Amar Akbar Anthony outlives Narendra Modi. Parle-G is more Indian than Amit Shah. So why are they not in my show? At some level they get to set the narrative of what India is. Why shouldn’t we set the narrative for my India? You’re not worth being in my 60 minutes of Netflix special. I’ve only got 60 minutes and I don’t want you to be what I spoke about throughout.

Hmm, the director Todd Phillips said it’s become impossible to make films like ‘The Hangover’ series because someone or some community will be offended, what do you think about that?

The punch up is very relative as well. It’s something that we throw around saying punch up but then my up is different from yours right. This might come across as irresponsible but if you’re offended, so? I’m offended by potholes on the road and the fact that my parents can’t breathe in Delhi, you look at me and say, so? There’s very little being done about those things as well. Now I didn’t come into this with the intention to offend. I just made a joke and offence is taken, it’s never given. You took it and hopefully there’s 10 other jokes that you’re not offended by or you’ll move on to another comedian but at some level I’d argue, so what if you’re offended? It’s your own moral compass.

It’s also about who gets to tell those jokes, who has ownership of certain stories specific to the experiences.

I think so. It’s on you to read enough and evolve enough and form your own moral compass. Mine isn’t nearly as sophisticated as it needs to be. Hopefully it gets better every year. There are parts of Chapel’s comedy that are very problematic. I’m not on board with everything he says but I recognize that that’s okay, for me to not be on board. The purpose of comedy is so that we can disagree with each other and laugh about different things under the same roof.

As long as you also critique it.

Absolutely.

Like I’d rip apart a Kabir Singh and caution people against watching it but I would still defend its right to be released

Exactly my point. Trust your audience. The audience will smack you if you cross a line. There’s nothing that anybody can say about me that parallels a silence from an audience or an inverse reaction from an audience. That’s the biggest teacher that you have. And Ankur, I’m always a step away from being tone deaf and trust me, every comedian is. I always advocate that at some level don’t put a medal on us, don’t put ‘speak truth to power’ on us because forget me, think about a comic who’s two years old into the scene, that girl or boy has the right to be tone deaf. You have to give us freedom to fumble upon these things. Otherwise you’ll be written off year one or two in the current ecosystem. We’re just fucking around man, we’re throwing poop at a wall. Some of it will stick and some of it won’t. 

Indian society has a paradoxical relationship with sex. On the one hand, you have the enchanting legacy of erotic art and the Kamasutra. On the other, you have Cherry* (23). A bisexual woman, the journalist is almost paranoiacally afraid that her parents will find out she’s on Tinder. “My parents are conservative Christians. They would flip if they found out I was dating, let alone having casual sex,” she says. After five years of looking for relationships on dating apps, she began using them only for hook-ups a year ago. For a week, her bio read, ‘Looking for someone to go to protests with and maybe fuck after’.

“I put that in my bio as a joke,” she says. “But then I quickly changed it, because I don’t know who’s out there to screenshot it and send it to my parents.” Her Tinder bio now reads ‘Not here to be your friend’. The hint is so broad, it’s almost funny.

India is Tinder’s largest market in Asia, and multiple surveys have shown that  Indians are broadening their sexual horizons, indicating that their sex lives are getting more exploratory in nature. 

Yet, Cherry, like many sexually liberated women on dating apps, is reluctant to engage confidently with the very hook-up culture these apps are supposed to enable. 

‘Don’t want to be hounded by randos’

“Just the fact that I’m on a dating app is enough for my DMs to be flooded with dick pics and derogatory messages,” says Anamika*, 21, a Kolkata-based fashion-communications student. “If I have to put [an interest in hook-ups] in my Tinder bio, I have to phrase it in a way that doesn’t make me look easy. Otherwise guys get cocky. They believe that just because you’re interested in casual sex, you’re going to be interested in them so they don’t put in the effort.” So she doesn’t mention it in her Tinder bio. On Bumble, she selects the ‘Don’t know yet’ option for the section asking users what they want on their dates.

“Tinder used to be good, but over the years, the quality of people you meet has dropped,” says Cherry. She acknowledges that there is some classism inherent in that statement and declines to elaborate much further, but adds that people on Bumble tend to be “a lot more progressive, and a little subtler. Usually, they’ve studied abroad, travelled a bit, had a little more exposure”. 

Nonetheless, most popular matchmaking apps are designed based on the context that cis-het white people tend to occupy, which is removed from Indian settings and their idiosyncrasies. It’s hard to draw boundaries when men feel free to stalk and approach women on their other social media handles even after they’ve been rejected on a dating app. It’s not just uncomfortable, it’s also dangerous. India, with its “Draupadi-like” gender ratio, is notoriously unsafe for women, and dating apps have not figured out how to keep women safe on them. According to a 2016 US-based survey, as many as 57% of women respondents said they felt sexually harassed on dating apps. And while there is not much data available on the subject, women in India have reported that they were sexually assaulted or had their consent violated on Tinder dates. Many keep their experiences a secret because they know that they will be blamed for ‘putting themselves in that position’.

Poor bedside manner

Tinder saysIndia is its “chattiest” market in the world, with people using the in-app messaging feature more than any other country. Almost all the women HuffPost India spoke to said they preferred to talk to their matches for a few days before setting up dates, or even opening up about what they were looking for.

“I’ve never started off conversations with this, but if it came up, I said I didn’t see any problem with casual sex or having friends with benefits or a fuck buddy,” says Tanvi*, a Dubai-based communications professional. “How men react to that conversation says a lot about their character. The last time I had that conversation, two days after we moved to WhatsApp—and mind, at this point we’ve not gone past small talk—he sent me unsolicited shirtless pictures. Out of nowhere. In the middle of a workday!”

Archana*, 25, a Mumbai-based copywriter, had a similar experience a few years ago. She was in an open relationship at the time, and frank about what she was looking for on her bio. A few minutes into her date with a match, he immediately asked her how many men she’d slept with, and proceeded to give her his ‘count’. “Men feel like they don’t need to show a modicum of respect when a woman is upfront about looking only for hook-ups,” she says. 

From accounts like these, it becomes clear that misogyny, sexism and a deep discomfort with female sexuality are at the core of cis-het Indian men’s behaviour both online and offline.

Disinhibition by design

Paul Anthony, a design researcher based in Bengaluru, posits that apart from the skewed gender ratio of their user base (only 26% of users in India are women), the design of apps themselves could play a big role. “The user interface and behaviours within matchmaking apps are designed for gamified participation, rather than care, in their framework,” he says over email. “Coupled together, these might be reasons for creepy and/or ambivalent behaviour to originate, perpetuate and normalise.”

As is true for much of the online world, dating or matchmaking apps (Anthony prefers to call them the latter) have become grey, private-public spaces that young people of all genders and sexual orientations are using to curate themselves to be in ways they cannot in offline life. “Online spaces also encourage men (and women) to operate with disinhibition and civil inattention,” he says. This is why men find it permissible to be ‘creepy’ or violate consent when granted relative anonymity, and women feel they have more agency on dating apps than they do in physical spaces.

Yet, it is hard for most women to extricate themselves from the conditioning and constrictions of their lived realities.

The shame game

Women have to withstand a tremendous amount of disrespect in India, whether it is on the streets or in the sheets, on a daily basis. That alone is enough to deter them from enjoying being in public, leave alone celebrating their sexuality. 

“When men are open about looking only for casual sex, I feel relieved but also a bit wary,” says Archana, who spent a few minutes looking for space out of her mother’s earshot to tell me this on the phone. “And even though I know better, it still feels wrong to be on the app, and I also feel worried.”  

Neha Bhat, atrauma-informed art therapist, artist and counsellor who runs the Instagram account indiansextherapist, breaks down why women like Archana might be feeling this way. “Indian women, in general, are conditioned to be indirect about their personal needs. Speaking for others, speaking as a family, putting the role of a wife, a daughter or a sister first are more comfortable social behaviour norms,” she says.

Her typical clients are middle-class, highly educated women in their mid to late 30s who live alone in Indian metropolises. While the topic of sex and sexuality generally seen as taboo, Bhat feels every person of every gender stands to benefit from some sort of personal exploration of what their sexuality means to them.

“A large aspect of a healthy sexuality is being able to connect to one’s sense of agency, which includes not only knowing what good touch feels like, but experimenting with different types of sexual pleasure, and being comfortable advocating for them. Indian women’s fears around being open about their sexual preferences is not a personal failing but a systemic one. We punish women for stepping out of the roles we have designated for them. As a society, we don’t have many support systems for women to put themselves and their sense of pleasure first,” she says.

At this confluence of multitudinous anxieties, ‘casual’ sex is often bereft of the breezy nonchalance that the term implies, even though it is just a swipe  away.   

*Names changed to protect privacy

NEW DELHI—Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal took oath as the chief minister of Delhi for a third time at the Ramlila Maidan on Sunday noon.

“This is a win for every citizen of Delhi,” he said. “I am the Chief Minister of people who voted for Aam Aadmi Party, Congress, Bharatiya Janata Party and other parties as well. Election is over. I am the Chief Minister of all 2 crore people of Delhi.”

Referring to the Bharatiya Janata Party politicians calling him as “terrorist”, Kejriwal said, “We have pardoned the opposition parties for the name calling they indulged in against us. We want to work with all parties for the development of Delhi.” 

Notably, he also stated that wants the “blessing” of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government for the development of Delhi. He mentioned that Modi was invited for the swearing in and made it clear that he wants to take a clean break from the past where his relations with the centre were marked by severe acrimony. 

The third time Delhi Chief Minister said the election result had inaugurated a “new politics of work” in which carrying out development activities like building schools, hospitals, among other things, would win elections and popular support from voters.  

What differentiated this oath taking ceremony from the last one in 2015 was the presence of a bunch of “ordinary” citizens of the national capital on one side of the stage in a special sitting area who Kejriwal referred to as the “makers of Delhi”. These people included a woman metro driver, a teacher and similar people who contribute in their small but significant way to Delhi. 

 He also noted criticism that “Kejriwal is making everything free” and said it would be a shame if he sought fees from school kids and patients in government hospitals. 

Besides Kejriwal, other AAP leaders including Manish Sisodia, Gopal Rai, Satyendar Jain, Kailash Gahlot, Imran Hussain and Rajendra Pal Gautam also took oath. It appears that their portfolios will remain unchanged as Kejriwal seeks to maintain continuity of his government’s agenda.  

The AAP won 62 seats in the recently concluded assembly election and the BJP eight. 

NEW DELHI—A 49 second CCTV video clip released by the Jamia Millia Islamia Co-ordination Committee late on Saturday on social media appears to show that the Delhi Police officials entered the library of the Jamia Millia Islamia university library, assaulted students without any provocation and took them in custody.

The video is dated 15 December when the Jamia locality witnessed violence during the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act, with protestors accusing the police of excesses and violent crackdown even on those protesting peacefully. While the Police pointed towards protestors, accusing them of indulging in violence, the latest video appears to bolster the claim made by protestors about the Delhi police’s unprovoked violence against them. HuffPost India has been unable to verify the authenticity of the video.

In an interview with HuffPost India within hours of the violence, Aam Aadmi Party MLA Amanatullah Khan, who led the effort to get students from the Jamia Millia Islamia university out of police custody on December 15 and 16, said, “The way in which the police entered the university premises, attacked boys and girls studying there, is wrong. It cannot be tolerated. There should be a judicial inquiry into this, And whoever is faulty should be revealed.”   

Shockingly, Khan also said that students told him that officials of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) against  “The CRPF soldiers also behaved roughly with them. Apart from beating them up, they also told the students, “Modi is doing right. Why are you protesting?” They beat up those students relatively more, who had a beard. They also beat up a Maulana,” he claimed. 

Regarding the latest video, a representative of the co-ordination committee told HuffPost India that a detailed statement regarding this video will be released on Sunday. This report will be updated once the statement is issued.

The Delhi Police, on its part, said it will “investigate it”. It remains unclear if it meant investigation of its own officers’ conduct or the authenticity of the video or both. 

You’re reading How To Get Off, our series celebrating bodies, pleasure and fantasy.

I’ve always had a limitless imagination. In school I wrote poetry, short stories, comics, essays, and more. I was a performer too and, by all accounts, fairly confident in my penchant for the odd and alternative. In short, I was a bona fide ‘weirdo’ – but a shy one at that. 

I’m naturally soft-spoken, and it’s hindered me a great deal in life: whether it’s as simple as a flushed face over having to repeat myself multiple times, or, even worse, the assumption I’m being outright ignored, not realising that the person whose attention I was trying to get simply couldn’t hear me. Oftentimes I prefer to just keep to myself rather than make an awkward at best and humiliating at worst attempt to be heard.

By the age of eighteen, I’d naturally begun to develop a healthy interest in sex. And then, on the evening of my eighteenth birthday, my interest in the world of fetish and BDSM was piqued when I visited my first goth club. This – coupled with my activity in a midnight shadow cast of The Rocky Horror Picture Show – was my gateway into the kink lifestyle. 

But where to begin? How could I express my curiosities and my desires in a healthy and dignified way?  I knew I wanted to explore deeper into the world of sex and fetish and discovering my own sexuality but I didn’t know how to go about it. I didn’t know how to ask for what I wanted. That first night at the club I had to make a friend come with me to help speak to a dom with whom I was interested in playing – I was simply too scared to speak up for myself.

As I began to get curious about pornography and erotica, I found that not everything out there suited my unique tastes. Like many others, I was frustrated by the lack of content that catered to my particular desires, fetishes, and interests. I had begun to learn what turned me on and realised I needed to learn how to experience and practice it properly. The loneliness of silence was both deafening and defeating, and so I fell back on a talent that I was confident in: writing. And I found putting what I wanted into words came easily to me. In writing I found not only solace, but I finally began to find my voice.

I started with pieces ranging from shorts to novellas, even picking up some meagre ghostwriting work along the way. Honing my craft as a writer gave me a new insight into my own mind. “Write what you know,” as the saying goes. And so I did. I wrote what I knew, what I liked, and what I was curious about. I’d blush as I wrote scenes that depicted hardcore BDSM and dominant/submissive dynamics – things I’d always wanted to explore first-hand but had only seen in adult video clips. I’d clam up over female-on-female pairings, sweating as I put myself in the shoes of the characters I created, wondering what it would really feel like to step into such a situation. I knew that, ultimately, I was writing more for myself than I was for anyone else. It’s just lucky that what I wrote happened to resonate with a wider audience.  

More than that, writing erotica gave me the confidence and self-awareness to share my thoughts and feelings with others. Indeed, I credit my writing for playing a large part in my gaining an understanding of my evolving sexual identity as a queer femme as well as a BDSM lifestyler. Every time I would finish a story and go back over it to edit, I’d find myself titillated by the worlds and scenarios that I’d created. More than just my curiosity had been piqued, and I felt inspired to reach out to partners and put my fantasies into action – finding along the way that I’d truly made an amazing self-discovery. It was incredibly liberating to finally be my true sexual self. Though it took some stumbling, awkwardness, and initial discomfort at expressing myself, my putting my fantasies into words was what led to them becoming a reality. 

In my youth, I was an award-winning poet. If there was one thing I was confident about, it was my writing skills; however, I still cringe – to this day, even – at the thought of getting up in front of strangers and reading my words. That’s why I try to do it every chance I get. In the words of my hero, the immortal Carrie Fisher, “stay afraid but do it anyway”. I started submitting my work to websites and publishers and, to my delight, I became a published erotica author, and have even had my stories put in print and made into audiobooks. It’s a welcome surprise to see where my skills as a writer have taken me professionally, but no more than where they have taken me personally. Writing has helped my relationships with sexual and romantic partners to blossom and grow. Being able to share myself through the medium of writing has assisted with having conversations from which I’d ordinarily shy away. It has opened both my mind and my heart. 

I still get tongue-tied and flustered, but writing has never failed to help me say what I want or need to say – in fact, I regularly write erotic stories for one of my partners at their request. It’s a wonderful feeling to know that not only am I doing something that excites them but, in turn, I’m also helping myself express ideas I might otherwise be nervous to initiate on my own. 

I’ve had years of sexual experience at this point in my life, I have gained a healthy sense of confidence as well as a better understanding of who I am as a sexual individual. It’s an emboldening feeling to have found my voice. Writing has helped to break me out of my sexual shell and it has given me the strength and courage to be out and proud in all aspects of myself and my life. Without my writing, I’d be silenced entirely. Everyone’s communication styles and love languages are different and I’m so glad to have found mine. 

I will always speak quietly, but I can most certainly write out loud. 

Deb Kavis is a writer, poet and journalist from Los Angeles. Follow her on Twitter at @DebKavis.

Have a compelling personal story you want to tell? Find out what we’re looking for here, and pitch us on ukpersonal@huffpost.com 

How To Get Off is our answer to Valentine’s Day, celebrating bodies, pleasure and fantasy – whatever your relationship status. We’ll be exploring what really gets us off in 2020, looking at sexual awakenings, toys and erotica, and real-life experience.

In the age of Instagram, “self-care” has become synonymous with indulgences like massages, facials, fancy products, boutique workout classes and lavish vacations.

That all sounds great if you have tons of disposable income. But for most of us, spending serious cash on self-care just isn’t realistic. 

“The whole concept of self-care has really strayed from the original intent, and become a meme unto itself,” said Kathleen Dahlen deVos, a psychotherapist. “When I talk with my clients about self-care, rarely am I encouraging practices and habits that cost money. In fact, spending excessive money or funds we don’t have In the name of ‘self-care’ can actually be distressing, destructive and work against our mental and emotional wellbeing.”

We asked experts in the wellness space to share some of the best ways to practice self-care that are basically free. Here’s what they told us:  

1. Spend some time outside.

Take a walk around the block, sit in the grass, hike a local trail or just let the sun shine on your face for a few minutes. 

“No matter where you live, you likely have access to an outside space,” said Tiffany Lester, a doctor. “If it’s not in your neighbourhood, think of a close space you can get to within 10 to 30 minutes. Getting outside and away from our devices calms our nervous system from the negative effects of everyday stressors.”

2. Clean and organise your living space. 

When your apartment or office is a mess, it can take a toll on your mental state, making you feel more stressed, anxious and overwhelmed. 

“For some, a messy or disorganised space can activate their nervous systems and impact mental health wellness,” said therapist Jesse Kahn, director of The Gender & Sexuality Therapy Center. “If that’s you, taking time to clean up your space can be an act of self-care and self-love, and may feel healing rather than like a chore you don’t want to do.” 

3. Reduce the amount of time you spend on social media.

Mindlessly scrolling through your social media feeds for hours on end is not only a time suck, but is also linked to lower self-esteem, sleep issues and an increased “fear of missing out,” or FOMO. 

“Social media and the internet is a great resource to connect, cultivate support and community, but it can also be a place of overconsumption, distraction, and numbing out to what we truly may need in our lives,” said McKel Hill Kooienga, a registered dietitian in Nashville, Tennessee, and founder of the site Nutrition Stripped.

The iPhone’s “Screen Time” feature, Android’s “Digital Wellbeing” tools or apps like Moment can monitor your social media usage and help you cut back. Other tricks that may be useful include disabling certain push notifications, switching to grayscale mode or hiding your most enticing apps in a folder that’s not on your home screen.  

4. Do some journalling. 

All you need is a pen and some paper to get started. Journaling can be a therapeutic practice that helps you understand thought patterns, work through difficult emotions, reflect on certain events or cultivate more gratitude in your everyday life. 

“Sometimes I find it just as helpful as therapy — and I’m very pro-therapy; I’m studying to be a therapist,” said Lauren Donelson, a writer and yoga teacher based in Seattle. “Journaling helps us externalise what’s going on inside our heads, and it helps us to look at our thoughts more objectively.”

5. Get better sleep. 

Making an effort to get the recommended seven to nine hours of quality shuteye can make a huge difference when it comes to your overall wellbeing. Getting a good night’s sleep on a consistent basis offers benefits such as better immune function, improved mood and better performance at work. (If you need some tips on how to make it happen, we’ve got you covered.) 

“Maybe the self-care practice here is getting a certain number of hours a night, not exceeding a certain number of hours, getting to sleep by a certain time so you’re able to wake up by a certain time or creating a ritual to help you calm your body, relax and go to sleep,” Kahn said. 

6. Meditate. 

Practicing meditation is one of the best ways to restore and reconnect with our mind and body, said Tamara Levitt, a meditation instructor and head of mindfulness at Calm.

“As (writer) Anne Lamott said: ‘Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes,‘” Lamott said. “There is immense value in giving ourselves time and space to shift from ‘doing’ mode to ‘being’ mode. Meditation allows us to reconnect with the needs of our mind and body.”

If you prefer guided meditations, you can check out the free version of apps like Headspace or Calm, or find videos on YouTube. And, of course, meditating in silence is another great option that doesn’t cost a dime. 

7. Check in with yourself. 

At least once a day, if not more, take some time to check in with yourself. Pause to assess how hungry or full you are, any emotions you may be feeling or scan your body for areas of tightness. 

“Simply asking yourself the question, ‘How am I doing right now?’ is a gentle reminder to take care of yourself,” Hill Kooienga said. 

8. Move your body. 

It might be dancing in your bedroom to a fire playlist, doing squats in your living room or participating in a community yoga class (which is generally less costly than a boutique fitness class). 

“However, if that still doesn’t fit in your budget, there are many free online yoga videos on YouTube,” Kahn said. “One of my favourites is Yoga With Adriene.”

9. Connect with loved ones offline.

Texting and email are convenient forms of communication, but they don’t satisfy our deep need for connection in the way more personal interactions do. 

“Call a friend, take a walk with a colleague or cook dinner with a family member,“ Dahlen deVos said. “Connecting with others we care for helps to shift us out of our heads, regulates our nervous systems and elevates our moods.” 

10. Invest time in a hobby. 

The demands of work, family and other obligations take up most of our time and energy, leaving barely any room in our schedules for activities we truly enjoy. But carving out some time for our hobbies — even when we have a lot on our plate — matters. 

“Most of us are too busy to make time for activities that are joy-filled and feel nurturing,” Levitt said. “Find a time each week to shut off your electronics, and engage in a hobby that rejuvenates your spirit; play music, write in a journal, take a cooking class. While electronics deplete us, our favourite activities nourish us.”

11. Take some deep breaths.

During high-stress periods, we may go hours or even a whole day without taking a full, grounding breath if we’re not intentional about it. 

“I like to take a few deep breaths in the morning and also throughout the day because it helps me to recenter and connect more with the present moment,” said Jessica Jones, a registered dietitian and co-founder of Food Heaven. “One strategy that I use to remind myself to do this is to take three deep breaths every time I go to the bathroom and wash my hands. It’s easy, free and makes a huge difference in my daily stress levels.” 

12. Volunteer your time with an organisation you care about. 

Choose your cause, whatever it may be, and then figure out a way you can pitch in. 

“Engaging in altruistic acts and seeing our actions make a direct and positive impact in the lives of others is a surefire way to shift your mood and feel part of something bigger than yourself,” Dahlen deVos said. “This can help put our problems in context, or at least give us a break from stressors without numbing out.”

13. Eat more vegetables. 

Aim to put more of your grocery budget toward veggies and less towards ultra-processed snack foods. Then, to up your intake, cut up some vegetables at the beginning of the week and store them in your fridge — that way you can easily grab them when you need a snack or throw in a handful or two to spruce up your meals. 

“Most of us are not consuming near enough whole foods let alone vegetables, which keep us nice and full because of prolonged satiety from the fibre,” Hill Kooienga said. “Vegetables nourish our physical bodies on a cellular level with fibre, minerals, vitamins, and antioxidants, and they can taste really delicious too.”

14. Cuddle with someone you love. 

Snuggle up next to your partner, your child or even your BFF.

“Cuddling releases oxytocin, a feel good hormone, that also helps with reducing stress,” said Lynsie Seely, a marriage and family therapist in San Francisco. 

Pets make great cuddle buddies, too. Plus, spending time with our furry friends has been shown to alleviate anxiety, depression and feelings of loneliness.

“If you don’t have access to a pet, go visit adoptable animals at the local shelter, sign up to walk dogs for a service such as WAG or sip tea at a cat cafe,” Dahlen deVos said. 

15. Say “no” more often.

We often think of self-care as doing something extra for ourselves on top of our normal day-to-day activities. But self-care can also be about what you choose not to do, Seely said.

One way to give a healthy “no”? Start setting boundaries with the people in your life. 

“So many of us are people pleasers and spend a lot of time doing things out of feelings of guilt and obligation, causing us to feel energetically drained and lacking the ability to focus on ourselves and what we truly want,” said Sara Groton, a nutrition and eating psychology coach in San Francisco. “Any time I find myself thinking ’I should do that or I have to do that,′ I take a moment to question and challenge that thought.”

16. Practice self-compassion.

All the face masks, manicures and massages in the world can’t undo the damage of that harsh inner voice criticising, judging and berating yourself all day long. 

If you don’t know where to begin with self-compassion, Allison Hart ― a mental health professional in San Francisco ― recommended putting your hand over your heart and saying to yourself: “I am struggling right now. I’m in pain, I’m angry or feeling out of the flow. May I be gentle and flexible with myself. May I be kind to myself and may I take a break from problem-solving just for a moment.”

You’re reading How To Get Off, our series celebrating bodies, pleasure and fantasy. 

Women are always on, but is this stopping us from getting turned on? If we’re not actually doing something we’re thinking about doing it (washing up or filing our tax return or any of those 3,000 things on our to-do list that aren’t sex).

No wonder our minds often wander when we’re actually doing it. But worrying about gas bills that need paying is never going to be conducive to a good time. That’s because mindset is instrumental when it comes to the female orgasm – not only do sex therapists and sexologists believe this, but studies back it up.

One such study, from 2015, found women who regularly reached orgasm tended to focus more on the sensations of sex and how their body felt – basically, sex mindfulness – compared to women who found it harder to orgasm. A separate study found a link between a lack of “erotic thoughts” during sex and less frequent orgasm.

Negative thoughts during sex are also – perhaps unsurprisingly – a barrier. Among women, the most intrusive concerns cited tend to centre around appearance and, to a lesser degree, performance (no, it’s not just men).

Even the words we use to describe orgasm can play a part in making women less likely to come. “I prefer to think of orgasm as an ‘experience’ rather than something to ‘achieve’,” says sexologist Gigi Engle, author of All The F*cking Mistakes: A Guide To Sex, Love And Life. “The reason for this is pressure – women face enough pressure in every other area of life, so taking it off of sex is a pivotal component in having fulfilling sexual experiences.”

Some women might feel ashamed that they don’t orgasm as much as they’d like – some struggle to do it full stop (this is known as female orgasmic disorder) – but it’s actually a fairly common experience.

A survey of more than 32,000 women conducted by Massachusetts General Hospital found one in five had difficulties experiencing orgasm.

Removing the pressure to have an orgasm is key to freeing them up to happen, says Engle. “Why? Because having an orgasm is as much a mental process as it is a physical process,” she says. “When you put pressure on orgasm, you start to think you won’t have one or you have to have one – and then you don’t have one. Being in a calm, present mindset is key to allowing your brain and body to sync up for an orgasm.”

Switching on your body

Isiah McKimmie, sexologist and author of Epic Orgasms, says getting clued up on practical tips is key to reaching orgasm more easily and often. “Along with our cultural messages about sex, we also receive very little real education about sexual pleasure or get taught skills to enjoy ourselves more,” she says. 

So, the basics. There are two key ingredients to the magnificent cake that is orgasm – adequate clitoral stimulation (the physical) and being in a sexy, relaxed mindset (the mental).

“The clitoris is a huge part of orgasm,” says Engle. “Women are never taught about their clitoris nor are they taught to prioritise their pleasure. We’re taught to somehow have orgasms through intercourse and do whatever we can to make our partner orgasm.”

Some women can experience orgasm without clitoral stimulation. But a study published in The Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy found only 18% of women said vaginal penetration alone would do the trick. That same study found most women liked to be touched directly on the clitoris and cited up and down, with medium pressure, as their favourite way to be touched.

Spending 15-20 minutes on foreplay, especially if this includes deep kissing and oral sex, can help your orgasm along nicely, McKimmie suggests.

But in addition to the physical mechanisms at play, mindset plays an equally important part. Sex and relationship therapist Miranda Christophers says women need to feel emotionally in a place that will allow arousal, in order to get off. You need to be able to fully relax – so if you’re feeling tired or anxious, that might make things quite difficult. The idea is all about letting go.

“While not all women need to feel both to achieve orgasm, most females need to feel psychologically and physically excited and stimulated,” she says.

Turning on your mind

Once you’re clued up on the clitoral logistics, is there a way to get into a better mindset for orgasm? In the words of Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally: Yes, yes, yes! Communication is key, says Engle. “Your partner is not a mind reader. They are not responsible for your orgasm. You are responsible for your orgasm.”

Brits can be pretty reserved when it comes to talking about sex. A survey by eharmony found only a quarter of people in the UK are happy to talk about what goes on in the bedroom, with the over-55s least at ease. But plucking up the courage could actually change your sex life – and with two thirds of Brits saying they’re unhappy with theirs, it’s clear there’s some serious talking to be done.

Engle advises speaking to your sexual partner about what works for you, what you need – even telling them you’d like to bring your vibrator into the mix if that’s what you want. “If you lie back and think of England – as the old saying goes – you’re not going to feel pleasure, let alone have an orgasm,” she adds.

It can also help you get in the zone if you engage in relaxing, centring practices in everyday life, she says – whether that’s yoga, meditation or mindfulness.

Best of all, masturbate, says Engle. “Get yourself a high-quality sex toy – I love the We-Vibe Tango and the Womanizer – and get to know your body,” she suggests. “Find vibration patterns and rhythms that get you there. Experiment with external and internal stimulation. Try running a vibrator over your labia.and mons, and your nipples and inner thighs. When you take control of your pleasure and your orgasm, you give yourself the power to ask for what you want and to make your orgasm the centre of your experience.”

It’s time to get off

Next time you have sex, try to focus on the feeling, what turns you on – and nothing else. “Avoid focusing on performance or distractions and instead notice the pleasurable sensations within your body and allow the flow of sexually exciting thoughts or visual stimulation,” says Christophers, who advises clients to ‘fall into’ the feeling of pleasure once it starts. “If it begins by the feelings aroused by kissing, to allow themselves to immerse themselves into the feeling,” she says.

Not every sexual encounter needs a climax. “We don’t always need sex to end in an orgasm. It’s a perfectly valid choice not to, sometimes we can struggle to have an orgasm in a particular encounter,” says McKimmie. That’s okay.”

But harness your power. “The brain can really be considered our biggest sexual organ,” she says. “Our thoughts can help turn us on – or off.”

In fact, our mind is so powerful when it comes to orgasm, that some women can actually reach orgasm through thinking alone, she says. And if that’s not something to aim for someday, we don’t know what is.

How To Get Off is our answer to Valentine’s Day, celebrating bodies, pleasure and fantasy – whatever your relationship status. We’ll be exploring what really gets us off in 2020, looking at sexual awakenings, toys and erotica, and real-life experience.

You’re reading How To Get Off, our series celebrating bodies, pleasure and fantasy.

“I’ll f*** you so good, I promise, I will, I will… thank you,” says an obsequious staffer, eager to please his manager (“ma’am”) as he attends to everything she needs ahead of a work conference. Soon, things get smuttier, and this man begins to describe how his “sexy boss” is pleasuring him. Then, accompanied by audio effects of heavy breathing, licking, groaning and skin-slapping, the narrator describes, not without some imitated obstacles, a sex scene.

I can’t actually see what’s going on, but it sounds like I’m the one being called “ma’am” and I don’t not like it.

Audio erotica is a booming industry, if not in money terms, then in tech’s race to grab the female millennial market this visual-free format is primed for.

‘Yes Ma’am’, the sweetly euphemistic title of this particular story, is hosted on Quinn, launched last year by Caroline Spiegel, the sister of Snapchat founder Evan Spiegel. Her company has raised close to a million dollars and is in pursuit of more, much like sexual wellness app Ferly, which also launched in 2019 and has raised a similar amount. Dipsea is the market leader, after setting up in 2017, and raising $5.5m as of 2019.

While each of these sites produces and hosts different types of audio erotica, others are diversifying their offering. Do You, a relative newcomer, aims for further intimacy with the listener by texting sex scenes over to them. But who is listening and what do they get from it? And how, in turn, does this impact what sort of zero-nudity, highly-explicit, middling-budget smut is being created?

“I discovered audio porn last year and I listen to it about once a month,” says Rachel, 22, from Surrey, who says she enjoys a male voice narrating a BDSM scenario. She prefers audio erotica, in part, because it’s more accessible to stream on a slow connection, telling HuffPost UK: “I live with my parents at the moment and the internet is rubbish, so visual porn isn’t an option for me.”

Accessibility, to a really different degree, is also an issue for John, 31, from the Midlands. He is blind, so, of course, “pictures don’t help me in the slightest.” What John likes about audio erotica, he tells HuffPost UK is that it is “one-on-one, with the reader painting the pictures with her words and her inflection.”

Dr Karen Gurney, a clinical psychologist and psychosexologist, sees audio erotica as a real gift to her and her clients. This is partly because it is accessible to people like John, and partly because it encourages the use of imagination. “Audio erotica triggers arousal and desire, and research shows it does this almost as well as visual porn, and more effectively than reading erotica or using fantasy,” she says. And this is backed up by the research into what turns women on that inspired platforms like Dipsea in the first place. 

Quinn, which is profile-based, allows direct communication between creators and users. “I’m passionate about assisting women to explore and embrace their sensual and erotic nature in a respectful and loving manner,” reads the blurb for Harry, a British male voice on the site, who regularly checks in with listeners on what scenario he should record next. “You come in, throw her up against the wall and show her just how much you missed her,” responds a fan.

Subjects are tagged according to voice, participants, atmosphere and acts, catering to a spectrum of sexual orientations that may or may not match your IRL leanings. What’s more, in an era where we’re oversaturated with screentime, accessing erotica through headphones helps support users’ imaginations rather than override them – and crucially leaves your hands free.

Audio suits a range of people, Dr Gurney says, as “it provides a strength of story which doesn’t take so much concentration, so appeals to people who haven’t found a visual porn that works for them, or those who want to develop their fantasies, making a note of what turns them on.”  

The reason why audiovisual porn can’t do this so well, she says, is because “most mainstream porn can be quite misogynistic”. 

Rough sex is the norm in mainstream porn, with male pornographers creating stories that rarely take into consideration women’s pleasure – or pain. As Rachel explains: “There are certain kinks that turn me on but it’s more comfortable for me to imagine them than to watch another woman being beaten up.

“I don’t think any shame should be attached to visual porn,” she adds, “but I feel it a lot less when I’m listening to audio. It just feels a bit healthier.”

Anna, 27, from London feels similarly. She listens to women’s voices narrating heterosexual sexual scenarios on Dipsea about twice a week, and remembers that when she used to try visual porn, “I couldn’t understand it as being pleasurable, because I enjoy something more loving and passionate.”

As a survivor of sexual violence, she adds: “Seeing someone in pain isn’t conducive to me enjoying myself.”

It sits uncomfortably with me when John admits that he enjoys “nonconsent” and “violence” in his audio erotica because I’m not keen on either being fetishised, but I also appreciate that audio porn depicting these themes is far further from their actuality than visual porn. 

There’s an important discussion to be had about how violence in porn impacts real-life sexual behaviours. Regardless of how you feel about this debate, at time where more people are considering where their other pleasures in life – food, clothes, travel – come from, ethical porn is something many users are looking out for.

The obstacle to pursuing ethical porn, explains Dr Gurney, is often price. “The problem of porn is you have to pay for it to get good quality.” Audio erotica, however, is relatively cheap to make. GirlOnTheNet, who started off writing erotic stories, is now an independent audio erotica producer, using Patreon so her users pay for the audio that will often be tailored to their desired (Harry of Quinn – latest story title, ‘Let’s Make A Baby’ – is also fundraising there).

“Initially, it was an accessibility thing,” explains GirlsOnTheNet of her work – in her case, for blind people. “The eroticism gets lost when these stories are read aloud in a robot voice.” But after narrating some of her blog posts, “it took off”, she says. “It seems there are lots of people who would prefer to get their erotica whispered in their ear than read it,” she says. Now, she tailors her content to audio, something which John values over the stuff he used to get from old-school sex phone lines. As he puts it: “Recorded content gives performers the time to edit and include sound effects, which greatly enhance the experience.”

That kind of audio mix will be familiar to anyone with a podcast habit – and, indeed, there are several podcasts, such as Kiss me Quick, presented and narrated by California-based Rose Carraway, that serve up audio erotica, too. 

These days, anyone with a webcam, some genitals and a hand can make porn. But, says GirlOnTheNet, “there are ethics, casting and cost issues with visual erotica that you don’t get with audio.” As an example of good audio, she cites the UK-based Molly Moore, who blogs at Molly’s Daily Kiss and also uploads real-life sex stories to her website.

In a society where those who create sexual content – be it the winners of literature’s Bad Sex Awards or sex workers – are routinely mocked and stigmatised for their efforts, Yes Ma’am’s creator, Anonyfun35 (with his supposed PhD in “Ache Linguistics”) has the freedom to make all of those slurpy, sucky noises and still show his face in public.

The accessibility, imagination and ethical boundaries of audio erotica all mark it out as a valuable prospect for those seeking an alternative to mainstream porn on the route to titillation. And for all these aspects, it carries a certain sophistication. The Hoxton, an upmarket hotel chain with branches across the world, wouldn’t dream of installing the pay-per-view porn channels that lesser hotels are known for.  But the London outpost is teaming up with Dipsea for a limited period to allow guests to dial-in to hear some audio erotica.

While a spokesperson for the hotel explains this is part of a wider programme of “cultural discovery” and “unique experiences” for its guests, Gina Gutierrez, co-founder of Dipsea, tells HuffPost that “audio is special because it’s so powerfully imaginative” – adding that the company wants to make “more beautiful, considered and design-forward choices.” And what could be more beautiful, considered and design-forward than the visuals we create on the canvas of our minds? Yes, sir!

How To Get Off is our answer to Valentine’s Day, celebrating bodies, pleasure and fantasy – whatever your relationship status. We’ll be exploring what really gets us off in 2020, looking at sexual awakenings, toys and erotica, and real-life experience.

You’re reading How To Get Off, our series celebrating bodies, pleasure and fantasy.

Sex dreams can be fun, thrilling and occasionally mortifying – particularly if you wake up and realise you dreamt about someone off limits. But, as BACP-accredited counsellor Deshara Pariag says, “it’s completely normal to dream about sex, because sex is a normal part of life”. 

There’s also science behind it. The neural firings in the brain – which happen when we sleep – can fire up our libido, says therapist Pam Custers, prompting various bodily responses: wet dreams, sleep orgasms or, as Sex Education’s Dr Jean Milburn (Otis’ mum) calls them, nocturnal emissions. “Because our brain is firing, we can get aroused in our dreams,” says Custers. 

Studies have shown men and women experience increased blood flow to their genitals during REM sleep. A healthy man has up to five erections per night, with each one lasting 25 to 35 minutes. And a study found women could orgasm in their sleep simply by thinking about touching their clitoris – one woman’s heart rate increased from 50 to 100 beats per minute, respiration from 12 to 22 breaths per minute, and she had a “marked” increase in vaginal blood flow. 

When we’re dreaming, the emotional (limbic) part of the brain goes into overdrive, while the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex – which controls executive functions like working memory and cognitive flexibility – is under-activated. 

As a result, the cognitions we experience during dreams are “highly emotional, visually vivid, but often illogical, disconnected and sometimes bizarre,” Patrick McNamara, a neurologist at Boston University School of Medicine, told Time. Chances are, many of us have had some truly baffling sex dreams.

So, should we pay attention to them? They’re very rarely a reflection of our awake state, says Custers. In fact, we may dream about someone we don’t want to dream about in that way at all – a study of 3,500 people found 20% of women and 14% of men had sex dreams about a person who was off limits.

Just because you’ve dreamt about having sex with your boss or next door neighbour, it doesn’t mean you suddenly fancy them. “It simply means that part of a snippet of your experience is being integrated into this REM sleep, which is like a soup of hormones and psychological processing,” explains Custers, who is a member of Counselling Directory.

A lot of the time, sex dreams generally mean nothing at all, and many people will wake up, laugh it off, and take it with a pinch of salt. But that’s not to say people never read into them – it varies from person to person. 

Some believe there can be underlying meanings to these dreams – if you know where to look. Dream analyst Lauri Loewenberg believes if you have a sex dream about someone, it’s not necessarily because you desire them, but more that you want to be like them. “Sex in a dream isn’t as much about a physical union you want, as it is about a psychological union you need,” she told Bustle. “When you dream of someone in that way, there is likely [to be] something about them you need to incorporate into your own life or into your own behaviour.”

Counsellor Deshara Pariag acknowledges there may be times you might want to reflect on your sex dreams a little more – when you feel deeply impacted by the dream, perhaps. For example, you might be dreaming about having sex with a stranger if you’re not satisfied with your sex life, or sex with an ex if you have unresolved issues. You may also keep having a recurring sex dream.

If this is the case, it might be useful to unpack what’s going on in your dream. One way to do this, says Pariag, is to write an email to the person you had sex with in your dream, not to send it to them, but to express what’s going on for you in the dream. This can be a good way to get things out of your brain and help you push forward with why you might feel this way.

Dreams about sex might leave some people feeling vulnerable. This can especially be the case for those who’ve experienced abuse – disturbing dreams or flashbacks can be a symptom of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Ammanda Major, from the charity Relate, says if your dreams become disturbing, it may be helpful to explore why with a therapist or counsellor.

Ultimately, though, your sex dream could mean anything – and it could mean nothing. “For the vast majority of people, sex dreams aren’t anything to worry about,” Major adds, suggesting there’s a tendency for people to “overanalyse” what their dreams mean. “They’re a healthy expression of something – and what that something is might be quite hard to determine.” 

Moral of the story? Enjoy those sex dreams, and stop stressing. 

How To Get Off is our answer to Valentine’s Day, celebrating bodies, pleasure and fantasy – whatever your relationship status. We’ll be exploring what really gets us off in 2020, looking at sexual awakenings, toys and erotica, and real-life experience.

JERUSALEM (AP) — The Israeli military on Sunday said it has thwarted an attempt by the Hamas militant group to hack soldiers’ phones by posing as young, attractive women on social media, striking up friendships and persuading them into downloading malware.

Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus told reporters that the phones of dozens of soldiers had been infected in recent months, although he said the army detected the scam early on and prevented any major secrets from reaching the Islamic militant group.

“We do not assess there is any significant breach of information,” the military spokesman said.

Conricus said this was the third attempt by Hamas to target male soldiers through fake social media accounts, most recently in July 2018. But he said this latest attempt was by far the most sophisticated.

He said Hamas used a number of social media platforms, including WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram and Telegram, to make contact with unsuspecting soldiers. Posing as young women on social media, the group struck up friendships with the soldiers, sending photos, texts and voice messages to them.

The “women” claimed to be new immigrants to explain their poor Hebrew, and even claimed to be deaf or hard of hearing as an excuse for texting, instead of speaking directly on the phone, Conricus said. The profiles appeared on multiple platforms, and he said the photos were disguised to make it difficult to “reverse track” them, giving the accounts additional authenticity.

“We see that the level of social engineering is much higher and much more advanced and sophisticated when compared to previous attempts done by Hamas,” he said. “We see that they’re of course learning and upping their game.”

Eventually, they sent the soldiers links to “seduce” them into downloading what they said was a Snapchat-like app to exchange photos that could quickly disappear, Conricus said. In reality, the links were to three malware programs — Catch&See, ZatuApp and GrixyApp — that allowed Hamas to gain access to the soldiers’ phones.

He said it was “very clear” that Hamas was behind the effort. He said the malware linked to known Hamas servers and at least one of the profiles had been used in a previous Hamas scam. There was no immediate comment from Hamas

Conricus declined to say how many soldiers had been targeted. But he said that dozens had downloaded the malware. He said soldiers had reported the suspicious activity relatively early on, allowing the army and the Shin Bet internal security service to monitor their phones. It is now in the process of removing the malware, he said.

Israel and Hamas, an Islamic movement that seeks Israel’s destruction, are bitter enemies that have fought three wars and numerous skirmishes since the group seized control of the Gaza Strip in 2007.

The enemy sides have been holding indirect talks through Arab and U.N. mediators aimed at reaching a long-term truce under which Israel would ease a blockade on the Gaza Strip in exchange for Hamas assurances to maintain quiet.

But low-level fighting has persisted. Early Sunday, Israel carried out a number of airstrikes on Hamas targets in Gaza in response to the firing of two projectiles from Gaza into southern Israel. No casualties were reported on either side.

NEW DELHI — On Republic Day, Radhika Vemula, Saira Bano and the grandmothers of Shaheen Bagh tugged at the halyard affixed to the bundled national flag atop the five-story high flagpole anchored in the middle of the national highway connecting south eastern Delhi to Uttar Pradesh. 

On December 13 2019, the Delhi Police had stormed the Jamia Millia Islamia University campus in a violent attempt to suppress a student demonstration. The students were protesting against the Citizenship Amendment Act of 2019, a controversial new law that violates the secular tenets of the Indian constitution by making religion the basis for granting citizenship, and conspicuously discriminates against Muslims. Two days later on December 15, a group of elderly women from the neighbouring settlement had occupied the highway in protest. 

Now on over a month later, on Republic Day, they were joined by Radhika Vemula,  whose son Rohith had killed himself 5 years ago the administration of the University of Hyderabad harassed him for being Dalit. Saira Bano’s teenage son Junaid was lynched by a group of men who accused him and his friends of being “beef-eaters”. 

As the crew of mothers and grandmothers squinted that the flag, now unfurled and slightly askew, there followed a moment of silence, as if the gathered crowd of several thousands had taken a collective sigh. A low hum began, growing louder as it rippled through row after orderly row of women, children and men. 

“Jana gana mana,” they sang, their voices rising above this barricaded stretch of the highway, carrying snatches of the national anthem up above the overbridge festooned with posters, the scaled model of the war memorial at India Gate, the large welded map of India, the bus-stop now converted into a library and reading room, the ersatz detention camp assembled out of aluminium and plywood.

Their voices floated down High Tension Road (the surprisingly apt name chosen for the high-tension electricity cables that run down its length), past the sweet shops and the meat shops, the bakeries and the restaurants, the fruit-sellers and tea vendors. 

Across the city, tanks thundered down Rajpath, fighter jets screeched over head, ranks of soldiers marched in stiff formations before two ageing men: India’s embattled Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his chief guest Jair Bolsanaro, Brazil’s democratically elected President who happens to be a longtime supporter of military dictatorships.

After passing the CAA, Modi’s Home Minister had said, the government would conduct a national census of citizens, and detain and deport those who couldn’t gather the right papers in time. The protest in Shaheen Bagh was a rebuke to this blatant attempt to disenfranchise citizens.

These two very different processions — a joyous, spontaneous and inclusive gathering of citizens, and a grim, tightly rehearsed, heavily policed, military parade — on the day the constitution turned 70 were a reminder that India remains a young country bolted atop ancient land.

If youth carries the promise that another world is possible, age consecrates that promise by reminding us that another world existed before this one. In the winter of 2019-2020, Shaheen Bagh often felt like a bridge between these two worlds; where grandmothers older than the Indian Republic and the country’s youngest citizens had pushed back the oppressive presence of the Indian state back to the police barricades on either side of the Kalindi Kunj crossing, leaving behind a tiny air pocket of possibility.

Of late, air pockets such as these have become so rare that their presence transmits a febrile electricity through our body politic; no one knows quite what to make of it. So unnerving is this heady whiff of freedom that many commentators have responded by demanding immediate strategic withdrawal; no one can resist the might of the Indian state forever, the reasoning goes, so better to withdraw on one’s own terms.

The grandmothers of Shaheen Bagh have been content to draw out this encounter. For all its projections of power and permanence, the modern Indian state — the constitution, states, union territories, elections every five years, Chief Ministerships, Prime Ministerships, the works —  is younger than they are. They remember that even before this constitution, and before universal adult franchise and elections, there were ways for the people of this land to engage with one and another. They have been joined in their vigil by thousands of young comrades confident in knowledge that they will outlive this current moment and the fossilised politicians who have precipitated this crisis.

On Monday February 17 2020, the Supreme Court shall continue hearings on a petition to end this occupation and open up the highway to traffic. The petition has been filed by Nand Kishore Garg, a member of the national executive of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Since no-one in the government has found a good enough argument to move the protestors thus far, the BJP hopes the Supreme Court will.

The petition has been drafted in the preferred language of power: a plea to be reasonable, the argument that people are free to protest but not by inconveniencing others. Yet, the banality of these arguments about convenience and traffic jams cloak the very real horror of the possibility that millions of Indians of all religions could find themselves stripped of all their rights.

No one knows what the court shall say; for now Shaheen Bagh Maintains.

Time And Space

A sit-in begins as an occupation of space then deepens into a liberation of time. On Monday February 17, the Shaheen Bagh occupation will have been in place for close to 1500 hours. 

That is a lot of time to liberate: What would you do if you were suddenly granted 1500 hours in the midst of a thus far orderly lifetime. When would you choose to eat, drink, sleep, sing, read, dance, study, love, fight, and work? 

By day Shaheen Bagh appears much like any other protest; but by night it has an uncanny effect on those who visit. So habituated is the city to hunker down in exhaustion by sundown, that to stay awake deep into the night is a radical act.

In Shaheen Bagh, visitors arrive at all hours of the day and night. They line up at the tented shamiana at the centre of the road and await their time to address the gathered crowds over the static hiss of the public address system: They sing, they recite poetry, they give impassioned speeches, they shout slogans, they mark the passage of time.

A professor of political science was asked to give a lecture on nationalism that began at 3 am the night before Republic Day, in the hope that the crowds she would draw would hold off a rumoured police raid. She delivered the lecture; the raid didn’t happen.

One weeknight in the dead cold of early January, a gaggle of women took their young daughters for a walk at 1 AM. There was no police on the streets, the shops were shuttered, the alleyways were dark. But their neighbourhood had never felt this safe, they marvelled. 

An hour later, a busload of Sikh farmers from Punjab arrived at the shamiana to poke fun at Prime Minister Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah. A volunteer walked amongst the crowd, handing out biscuits to children too tired to run around, but too wired with excitement to fall asleep. A neighbourhood momentarily safe enough for a child to sit amongst a crowd unattended, has been described as a threat to national security by the Indian government.

At 2 AM, a young woman took to the stage and read out a ghazal she had typed out on her phone. “Mein ne Shaheen Bagh mein Hindustan ko dekha,” she said. “Ma ke haat mein samvidhan to dekha.” (I saw India in Shaheen bagh/ I saw my mother with the constitution in her hand.)

It is no surprise that much of the opposition to the Shaheen Bagh, including in the Supreme Court, has been couched in the language of traffic jams and the hardship caused to office-goers, and school buses; those imprisoned by the clock have approached the Supreme Court to take action against those who have freed themselves from its the demands.

Questions Versus Answers

Political actors of all stripes and persuasions often speak of the need to preserve political momentum: Energies unlocked in the heat of protest cannot be allowed to merely dissipate, they argue, they must be channeled into movements. 

As a consequence, leaderless movements like Shaheen Bagh often produce an anxiety amongst a section of the occupation’s supporters. What will happen to the energies released in Shaheen Bagh? Who will channel them into a movement?

This question has animated many conversations at Shaheen Bagh, on support groups on Whatsapp, in good natured arguments en route to or upon return from, the protest.

Radhika Vemula’s presence at Shaheen Bagh offers some answers: the nation-wide protests that followed her son Rohith’s death sparked national movements that are still working out the contours of their politics. This kinetic conversation of resistance is most visible in the personhood of Chandrashekhar Azad Raavan, the charismatic face of the Bhim Army.

Some would dismiss the posters of Chandrashekhar and Rohith Vemula at Shaheen Bagh as a sign that the demonstrators exist in an echo-chamber of their making. Another interpretation is to see these as mutually reinforcing: An event ripples outwards from its epicentre, only to find resonance in another synchronous reverberance. The ripples amplify, the event horizon expands.

In Shaheen Bagh it is hard to escape the energy radiating outwards from the shamiana where the women sit, but is it equally hard to translate this energy into a simple narrative: Why are so many people coming to Shaheen Bagh? What do they carry within themselves when they leave?

Over the past two months, the middle-aged lady with the red woollen scarf, worn as a hijab, visited Shaheen Bagh every weekend in a show of solidarity. Each time she came in the afternoon, sat by the stairs adjacent to the now-shuttered shop-fronts and listened to the speeches from the stage.

Then one afternoon, as she walked the neighbourhood’s narrow alleyways, she was confronted by the largest crowd she had ever seen. A rumour that the United Nations was sending a team to Shaheen Bagh had prompted an outpouring of public support. 

“I saw the crowd,” she later recollected, “And I was suddenly overwhelmed. Suddenly, I was crying but I couldn’t understand why — what was it? What was it?”

She sat back in her plastic chair to relive the moment. At the shamiana, someone was singing “Hum Dekhenge”.

“I thought, is this what it must have felt like to protest against the British?” she said, now annoyed by the fact that she had cried. 

“I thought, am I crying because I now see there are so many who are suffering through this present time?” she said.

“I thought, am I crying because I thought I was alone, but I know there are so many who stand with me?”

Where these tears of joy, or rage, or sorrow, she still didn’t know. She knew these weren’t tears of helplessness. 

Shaheen Bagh does not have all the answers to what is happening in India today; but listen carefully and Shaheen Bagh can push you to ask the right questions.

A new piece of street art by elusive artist Banksy has been vandalised in Bristol 24 hours after the artist claimed it. 

The mural, in Marsh Lane, features a stencilled image of a girl firing a slingshot of red flowers and leaves.

Vandals splashed explicit graffiti spelling out ‘w****rs’ in huge red letters across the artwork.

One local resident who spotted the vandalism said: “It’s a real shame, but it was always going to happen unfortunately.”

A protective screen covering the artwork was torn down on Friday.

Residents in the Barton Hill area of the city awoke on Thursday to find the striking piece on the side of a building.

Banksy confirmed the piece by posting two images of it on his official Instagram account and website in the early hours of Valentine’s Day.

The artwork appeared on a rented home owned by Edwin Simons, who celebrated his 67th birthday on Thursday.

His daughter, Kelly Woodruff, 37, found out about it after being tagged in a Facebook post.

“We’ve been down here all day and it’s just been a complete buzz of excitement,” she told the PA news agency.

“There’s so many people coming and enjoying it, taking pictures, it’s fantastic.

“There’s been a lot of debate if it is a Banksy or not. Most people I’ve spoken to think it 100% is, and they’re naming it the Valentine’s Banksy.

“It’s incredible and beautiful.”

The family are looking to cover up the artwork with glass to preserve it.

“My slight worry is, we’ve got this Storm Dennis coming on the weekend, so I really want to try and protect the roses,” she added.

News of the Banksy first emerged on Twitter, with Bristol Somali Community Association writing: “Today in Barton Hill, we woke up with this remarkable mural art painted on one of the houses of the area.

“We hope it’s Banksy’s work. Come and have a look yourself. Whoever painted, it’s worth admiring their creativity. Thank you.”

One local resident, James Bullock, saw scaffolding on the wall at about 6.20am on Thursday.

He walked past it later with his girlfriend and was stunned to see the artwork had appeared.

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Guterres is currently undertaking a four-day visit to Pakistan.

“We hope the UN secretary general would emphasise on the imperative for Pakistan to take credible, sustained and irreversible action to put an end to cross-border terrorism against India, which threatens the most fundamental human right - the right to life - of the people of India, including in J&K,” the MEA spokesperson said.

Addressing a press conference after his meeting with Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi in Islamabad, the UN secretary general said he was “deeply concerned” over the situation in Jammu and Kashmir and tensions along the Line of Control.

Guterres said it was important for India and Pakistan to de-escalate “militarily and verbally” and exercise “maximum restraint” on the Kashmir issue.

He said he was ready to help if both countries agreed for mediation.

“Diplomacy and dialogue remain the only tools that guarantee peace and stability with solutions in accordance with the Charter of United Nations and resolutions of the Security Council,” Guterres said.

NEW DELHI—Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s claim in Lok Sabha last week that the Indian economy is not in trouble and that “green shoots” of recovery were visible is a “problem” and serious analysts should not use the expression, India’s former Chief Statistician Pronab Sen said in an interview with HuffPost India. 

“Now, this is the problem. Any economic system will show volatility. This is the nature of economic systems. Things go up and down. If every time something goes up you say that’s a green shoot, then you have a problem. You actually have to look at the trend, not a one quarter or one month uptick,” he said.

“So you remember last time they were saying, “Oh! IIP is up, so we are good.” Well, IIP promptly went down the next month.” 

Sen made the above comments a day after the Narendra Modi government released data pertaining to the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for January 2020 and Index of Industrial Production (IIP) for December 2019. While the CPI, or retail inflation, was the highest since May 2014 at 7.59%, the Index of Industrial production was at -0.3% for December 2019. 

These numbers poured cold water on Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s claim, made just two days before in Lok Sabha, about “green shoots” for the economy.  

According to Sen, who was previously the principal economic adviser to the then planning commission, what these numbers essentially show is that, there is a “supply side problem in agriculture which is pushing up prices and you have a demand side problem in manufacturing which is pushing down prices.”

In other words, poor supply of onions and garlic, as well as other crops, caused a spike in food prices which reflected in high consumer price index in January and poor demand for manufacturing goods, which led to a drop in their prices in December 2019. The poor demand, he further explained, is due to the ongoing economic slowdown. 

The economic slowdown is persistent, Sen said, because there isn’t “enough agreement” about the “origins of the problem”.

“At the end of the day, any solution has to be based on your diagnosis of the origins of the problem. You have to attack it at the source. You cannot attack at the symptoms level,” he said. 

Adding further, “You know, economics is not aspirin. It’s more like an antibiotic, you have to recognise the nature of the problem. Where does it originate and what can you do to address that? Now there is, I don’t think enough agreement on the origins of the problem. And that is where the real issue lies”.

Sen, who was appointed to lead a special standing committee on statistics in late December by the Narendra Modi government, has a two point solution for the ongoing economic slowdown: a) get cash back into the rural economy and b) stop demonising cash because that’s how rural India operates. 

“I am all for formalisation and moving to non-cash. Provided you have systems in place and people are able to transact without using cash. Those systems are not in place today; not in rural India. Even in urban India, they are not,” he explained. 

Edited excerpts from the interview:

What do you make of the IIP and CPI numbers released by the government?

Well, you see, as far as the IIP is concerned, if you look at what has been happening for the last few months, it’s essentially hanging around zero. That’s what it suggests. If you take away the normal statistical discrepancies, zero seems to be a fairly reasonable way to go. Nothing much is happening. So basically it seems to be flat. 

But why is that a satisfactory situation to be in for an economy like India?

No. Not in the least. It’s not a satisfactory situation. 

The IIP growth doesn’t necessarily equal growth of value added in manufacturing. There are intervening variables like productivity increases, like differential movement in output and input prices, so all of those things have a role to play. 

But nevertheless if we are talking about any kind of a reasonable growth in the economy, you would want to have manufacturing value added increasing somewhere around 7-8%. So what you would want for that to happen is that IIP should be growing somewhere around 4.5-5% at least. We are way below that. As I said, we are closer to 0%. 

You also mentioned this one bit about the discrepancy between what the IIP numbers state and what the GDP numbers show. 

You see, the GDP number is value added. The IIP is about physical production. Now the two are related, of course. But, you know, you can have 0% IIP growth and yet have positive value added growth through things, as I said, like productivity increases and differential price movements. But at the end of the day if you are thinking about employment, then what is critically important is what’s happening to volumes, which is what the IIP shows. It is not the GVA. GVA has absolutely nothing to do with employment, in fact GVA growth can be employment displacing as well. Yeah, so if you have labour saving technology coming in, that gives rise to productivity, then you can have positive GVA growth and employment going down. So employment is very closely linked to the IIP. 

So will it be fair to say that this IIP number is a reflection of the poor state of employment generation? 

It is a part of the same story. 

And what do you make of the Consumer Price Index number—highest in five years—which made headlines? What’s being said is that it is so because of seasonal spike in vegetable prices (interrupted)

Well, it’s actually an unseasonal spike. Because what you had was very late monsoons which led to crop damage and so on. That is primarily the case, but if you look at the CPI data more carefully though CPI is not the appropriate price data to look at for these purposes; on manufacturing, the inflation is very, very low. So what you are getting is a supply side problem in agriculture which is pushing up prices and you have a demand side problem in manufacturing which is pushing down prices. 

If you could simplify this for our readers, by referring to supply side problems in agriculture, you are essentially talking about the spike in prices of onion and garlic that we saw due to poor supply, right?

Yes, yeah; which then trickles into other crops as well.

But will it be right to understand that these were the primary crops that were most affected?

Yeah. It is, it is. One of the issues that one needs to be little careful about is that the reality is probably not as bad as what the CPI is showing simply because the CPI now is seriously outdated. The CPI is based on 2011-12 consumption patterns. Now we are 10 years down the road. So the CPI desperately needs to be revised. My sense would have been that, if past patterns continued to hold good, then the weight of food in the CPI basket would go down quite significantly. So the inflation would be much more moderate than what is being reported. 

It’s too far away, over the course of practically a decade now, so the basket could have changed quite a lot, so the CPI may not be very representative. 

But given that these numbers are for a period in which food inflation peaked, and it was essentially the main concern about the economy, within the available methods of calculation, it would still be fair to say that the number does capture to a great extent what was going on, right?

No, no, it does capture; but you know, the thing is that, remember, your entire monetary policy depends upon not just the direction but also the magnitude. So if the CPI is overstating inflation, then we may be doing less of a monetary expansion, than we should be. 

Will the statistics committee that you head right now look at revising the base year and formula for calculating the Consumer Price Index? 

For doing that we need to have the household consumption expenditure survey, that is where you get the CPI weights from. We had one in 2017-18 but the government has junked that. So now the next one is being planned for 2020-2021. It will be released sometime in 2022. We are quite far away from there. 

So, in the interim period, we are basically working with imperfect or probably imprecise data. How would you characterise the present data that we are working with?

You have no choice but to continue with the old weights. We have no data to change the weights of the different commodities in the Consumer Price Index basket. Till that data becomes available, you just have to continue with the old ones.

So essentially, the numbers released point us in the right direction but you are not certain about the extent (interrupted)

The magnitude of inflation. 

But you remain concerned about the inflation problem as such. Is that right?

Well, no. In fact, my concern is elsewhere. You see, when you have high food inflation, there are two things you need to be very conscious about. 

The first is what will happen to non-food prices. Now, as far as non-food prices are concerned, manufacturing prices are trending down. They are not trending up. So there is a downward trend and, if things get worse, you could be slipping into deflationary territory, where inflation goes into the negative territory. That’s one thing you have to keep in mind so you have to look at non-food inflation as well and see what’s happening there. 

What are the consequences on the economy in a real sense, not only the theoretical?

What happens if prices go into negative territory, then viability of industries gets jeopardised. Because when companies borrow money, they assume a particular level of inflation at which they can service their debt. If inflation is much lower than debt, particularly negative, then they have a hard time paying back. 

The second thing you have to remember are commodities where households will actually divert income from other goods and services to keep their food consumption the same. You have a very low elasticity of demand so what happens with high food inflation is, by and large, demand for other goods and services goes down. So if you already have a demand deficiency for all other products, this will make it worse. That seems to be the situation. That is more worrying than the food inflation in itself, or the headline inflation for that matter. 

This is interesting because, among some analysts, the word ‘stagflation’ seems to be frequently used to describe where the Indian economy could end up. But what you are talking about is a different argument.

It is a different argument. 

So you don’t see any possibility of India facing stagflation.  

You see, stagflation, by and large, is a situation where there is a growing demand deficiency and a cost push inflation. So the stagflation term actually originates, If you go into its etymology, it originates in the oil price shocks. Where commodity prices globally went up because of oil and demand contracted. In the 70s and again in the 90s. 

I was asking also because wage growth is terrible. 

Wage growth is terrible. So think of families having roughly constant incomes with food prices going up. So what will end up happening is that they will shift their consumption pattern to protect their food consumption and will cut down on other so-called discretionary components. 

And there is a possibility that in the months of December and January, the most recent months for which data was released, something like this happened. 

It could. 

So that then nullifies or reduces the “green shoots” in the economy that Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman referred to, right? 

Now, this is the problem. Any economic system will show volatility. This is the nature of economic systems. Things go up and down. If every time something goes up you say that’s a green shoot, then you have a problem. You actually have to look at the trend, not a one quarter or one month uptick. So you remember last time they were saying, “Oh! IIP is up, so we are good.” Well, IIP promptly went down the next month. 

So the whole green shoot thing is only for talking. Serious analysts should not be saying green shoots. Because green shoots would be when you are saying overall, across-sector  either things bottoming out or starting to turn up. If you are seeing components going down, worry. 

Some analysts have said inflation may have bottomed out now. What do you think?

That is quite likely, unless some other disaster happens in the middle. Because the agricultural cycle, particularly for horticultural crops, is three to four months. And it’s been three to four months since food prices shot up. So there is a good chance that we have bottomed out of this or topped up, as the case may be. 

So there is some cause for optimism then. 

Yeah. But in order to get that, you have to track what is happening at the mandi level, which I don’t do. I am not sure they are doing it either. 

I want to come back to the point you made about the manufacturing sector. You mentioned that, when you look at the data closely, you find that there are demand side problems pushing down prices. Could you elaborate?

As far as the manufacturing sector is concerned, incomes are not growing. Okay? Manufacturers are increasingly having a difficult time selling their product. So you are seeing large discounts happening. So that’s what is going on. 

So that is a reflection of stagnant incomes, isn’t it?

Yeah, basically. 

What can be done to revive income? Does the budget give us enough tools to revive incomes?

Not really. So far as I can make out, there has been no real push towards increasing demand in the budget. 

The new personal income tax scheme announced by the finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman in the budget won’t help?

It’s very small. And how much benefit will actually accrue isn’t all that clear. Because much of it depends on how many people switch and how many people don’t switch to the new system. That’s not clear at all. 

Also, it doesn’t address the source of the problem ie: rural India, right?

No, it doesn’t address the source of the problem. 

So the problem of slowdown and stagnant incomes is going to persist with us for a while now. 

Well, that’s what it looks like, yes. 

What do you think should be done to address these stubbornly persistent problems?

At the end of the day, any solution has to be based on your diagnosis of the origins of the problem. You have to attack it at the source. You cannot attack at the symptoms level. You know, economics is not aspirin. It’s more like an antibiotic, you have to recognise the nature of the problem. Where does it originate and what can you do to address that? Now there is, I don’t think enough agreement on the origins of the problem. And that is where the real issue lies. 

I could give you a long spiel on what I think is the origins of the problem, I am already on record, there is nothing new, if you google my writings, you will get it. But my sense of it is that the origins of the problem is rural distress, which started well before this government, started in 2012 or thereabouts, but got exacerbated by demonetisation. Now if that is the nature of the problem, you have to recognise that, till such time as systems are in place where non-cash transactions can happen in the rural economy, to discourage the use of cash is a self-defeating set of decisions. And this has been happening repeatedly. Cash has been demonised in the system. 

That’s fine. I am all for formalisation and moving to non-cash. Provided you have systems in place and people are able to transact without using cash. Those systems are not in place today; not in rural India. Even in urban India they are not. So, at this moment, my thing would be: 1) please get cash back into the rural economy. 2) stop demonising cash because that’s how rural India operates. Until you have enough evidence that rural India has been able to move into a non-cash transaction mode, don’t do anything drastic. 

Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Sunday said that the Delhi Police had lived up to Sardar Valllabhai’s Vallabhbhai Patel’s advice of remaining “calm” despite “provocation” while dealing with miscreants with a “firm hand”.

Shah was speaking at the 73rd Raising Day ceremony of the Delhi Police when he called it one of the leading metropolitan police forces in the country and the world which has foiled attempts to create disturbance without fail.

Shah’s comments come in the wake of a series of incidents in the capital where the Delhi Police has been accused of either gross brutality or sheer apathy.

The home minister’s statement stood in stark contrast to Delhi Police action seen in the CCTV footage released by the Jamia Coordination Committee on Sunday which showed paramilitary and police personnel beating up students inside the library in Jamia Milia Islamia on December 15.

The university confirmed to the Indian Express that footage was from its library, but refused to comment on the video.

The Delhi Police had in December denied entering the library.

Last week, students of the all-women Gargi College alleged that the Delhi Police did nothing after a group of men broke into college during its festival ‘Reverie’ and groped, harassed and molested the students. The students said that Rapid Action Force and Delhi Police personnel were deployed close to the gate from where the men entered.

On February 10, the Delhi Police was seen lathicharging Jamia protesters who were taking out a march to the Parliament against the CAA and NRC on February 10. Several students were injured and women said the police hit their private parts.

In his speech on Sunday, Shah cited a 1950 speech by India’s first home minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and said, “Despite all the anger and provocation, Delhi Police should remain calm but it should also be ready to deal with the miscreants with firm hands to protect the people.”

“I believe, on many occasions, the Delhi Police has lived up to this advice of Saradar Patel,” the home minister said.

He lauded the force for helping the government on occasions like celebrations of Independence Day and Republic Day, festivals and visits by foreign dignitaries.

 Shah claimed that while constructive criticism of the police was always welcome, one must keep in mind more than 35,000 police personnel had laid down their lives on the line of duty.

Shah said that under the Delhi Safe City Project, the Centre has sanctioned Rs 857 crore for the safety and security of the capital city.

As many as 10,000 CCTV cameras have been set up in the area covered by 165 police stations and the home ministry has sanctioned 9,300 more to ensure the safety of women in the city, he said.

(With PTI inputs)

“Society holds a strong belief in gender roles that men are physically stronger and women are weak and submissive.” The court said the notion “women are the weaker sex” is flawed, Bar&Bench reported.

The bench also said that the exclusion of women from command posting goes against the principles against discrimination and equal opportunity in public service, ie, Articles 14 and 16 of the Consitution.

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The top court said even after 70 years of post-colonial era, there is a need for change in mindset with regard to giving equal opportunity to women officers in the Indian Army.

The top court said despite there being no stay on the 2010 Delhi High Court verdict allowing grant of permanent commission to women officers, the Centre had showed scant regard in implementing the directive in past one decade.

It said that women officers have brought laurels to the country and several gallantry, sena medals and UN Peace Keeping awards for their contribution in armed forces and to cast aspersion on them on the basis of physiological features is wrong as based on a fallacy.

The bench, however, clarified that deployment of women officers in combat role is a matter of policy as held by the Delhi High Court and the competent authority has to look into it.

The top court said permanent commission can be given to the women officers in the Army irrespective of their tenure of service.