Everything Else

I remember I was 15 years old when I came across a story about a famous super model, who suffered the atrocity of female circumcision in her community. The graphic details of her ordeal of her circumcision, where the clitoris was sliced off and the labia exterior were stitched together was hair-raising to say the least.  She described how a simple act of urinating was a physical torture, as the acid from the urine stung the exposed skin and how she was laid to rest in a dark room for weeks. I couldn’t imagine how parents could consent to their daughters being tortured on the basis of mindset. The most horrific aspect of this story was that it wasn’t an isolated case, and almost every young girl, coming of age, in Africa were forced into female genital cutting. The practice of female circumcision has mostly been done to reduce the likelihood of pleasure or orgasm in young girls and women. At fifteen elsewhere in the world, I had come of age. I was 17 years old, when I first watc...

There comes a movie from time to time that makes you feel like you have done something worthwhile, just by watching it. ‘The Boys are Back’ was one such movie. I watched it over the weekend, without a clue what the movie was about. I took the DVD from my rental guy, who considers every movie “damn good” . I had never really taken his word on any movie, but for once I wanted to see whether his “damn good” is actually good enough. I must say, it was true for this one. But then of course, he gave me another movie with the same review, which was incredibly painful to watch. But, I wasn’t too bummed out. Well, the movie delves into the lives of a family without a woman. The storyline is consistent in the aspect of exploring and dealing with loss- there is no great show of gallantry, nor a great show of sorrow. Sorrow just is, and people deal with grief in their own individual way. The movie is a confessional narrative of a  sports writer of a father, who deals with a young son (Art...