In India, this isn’t just a gripping book; it’s a tool kit.

By Stuti S.:

Fear is a complex and paralyzing emotion.

It overwhelms us especially while living under a fascist regime. It becomes imperative to try to understand fear, its origin and how far it can travel when one lives in it, day in and day out.

Ravish Kumar’s book, The Free Voice, is a chronicle of the present socio-political climate in India, where speaking truth to power is severely punishable. And yet, he advocates for us to do just that. This book has a chapter which talks in great detail about fear and its relationship with speaking out. Ravish’s journey of understanding his fear is one of my biggest takeaways from the book.

‘His fear’ is not his alone to be fair. It is something many journalists and anyone who speaks out against authority and the current government in India faces. But at the same time, it is also uniquely his because each of us lives this feeling differently. What Ravish does for us is give us a tour of his landscape of fear — his wonderings, musings and insights as he goes about navigating it.

The common fears that journalists and people who dare to question the state of affairs in the country are not limited to sedition-related arrests, online trolling, and media trials of being ‘anti-national’. These fears also materialise as disturbing threats to their personal safety, and that of their families. Who wouldn’t be afraid if our phone numbers were circulated amongst an army of trolls being paid to harass us with messages and calls all day? Being verbally abused takes its own time to recover from, but how does one recover from incessant calls and messages from a mob which threaten to end your life?

Ravish also talks about the different ways in which this mob creates fear. When we speak out, will we be maligned, amputated, lynched? How are we to step out of the ‘circle of fear’ when asking simple questions about the economy, employment, and hate-crimes invite vitriolic comments online, or outcries of ‘anti-national’ in family gatherings? When this is our everyday reality, one needs a book such as this one to lean on for support.

The Free Voice would’ve been a gripping read for me if I were reading it from a truly free and democratic country, and not in present day India. Here, it isn’t just a gripping book; it’s a tool kit… for there are many of us who are struggling to face similar fears in big and small ways in our own lives.

“‘The Free Voice’ would’ve been a gripping read for me if I were reading it from a truly free and democratic country, and not in present day India. Here, it isn’t just a gripping book, it’s a tool kit.”

Ravish’s everyday battle with fear has given him insights which he generously shares. He speaks of the origins of fear and how it is ‘created and sustained in our homes, where we are taught to keep silent’. He mentions how this forbidding of speaking out soon spreads to the outside world. Conditioned to being silenced in our own homes, we become mute spectators to the world around us. But he also adds that if we can’t speak up in front of those closest to us, how are we ever going to stand up to institutions such as the government?

The journey to questioning the government or institution of power is fraught with fear, and Ravish offers a powerful perspective on this. He ascertains that perhaps we have no faith left in any of our institutions, and that is why we are scared to even begin our process of challenging them. To understand this, one only has to take a look at the arbitrary sedition cases slapped on students, scholars, activists, and journalists by the same government that is supposed to represent us.

Ravish ascertains that perhaps we have no faith left in any of our institutions, and that is why we are scared to even begin our process of challenging them.

Despite this, Ravish makes a case for speaking up. He explains why we may still choose to speak out and not be terrified by the possible punishments. He mulls over the psychological unease that comes with giving in to fear and what that does to us as a human being. Do we want to walk around like dead bodies? Terrified of the institutions we are surrounded with? Or, do we want to risk speaking up ‘even when there may be no one to stand with us’?

Each one of us will have different answers for these questions. Our locations such as caste, class, gender, etc., will also contribute to how we respond to our fears. However, those who can and want to build speaking up and facing fear as a skill, will find some interesting anecdotes in this book.

One of my favourite anecdotes is where Ravish proposes a way of learning to challenge and question any authority. He says that if you are afraid of asking questions to, say the current state government, you can begin by questioning the state government from 20 years ago. Your questions will not impact that government since it may not exist anymore, but it will teach you how to stand up to an authority and investigate the truth.

Elaborating on how to flex our speaking truth to power muscle, he talks about the ethics of questioning and speaking out. “Just make sure that your questions are correct when you do ask them. Check your facts. Don’t allow hatred towards the person to seep into your questions… Stick to ethics at all times. Keep your life clean and uncluttered. And keep speaking out.” He also adds, “Fear does not end after you’ve spoken out. Even after you’ve spoken, fear lies in wait for you with its nets and snares.” It isn’t one day, one revelation, but an ongoing process. We must familiarise ourselves with it, in order to claim ourselves back from it.

Fear isn’t the enemy. In fact, fear is not always a bad thing, and Ravish himself talks about how it can save us from rashness. Fear is real and can often be crippling. But, we owe ourselves an examination of its structure that keeps us trapped in it. This probe will not only support our mental health, but also help us live and speak freely.

About the author: Stuti S is poetry-loving, feminist, queer-affirmative therapist.

Fear Isn’t The Enemy: Crucial Lessons from Ravish Kumar’s ‘The Free Voice’ was originally published in The Reader on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

By Mariyam Raza Haider:

Last weekend, I decided to wander in my neighbourhood, with only one agenda — to find myself a corner to read, along with some breakfast. As I climbed up the hill in Sai Ying Pun, Hong Kong, I came across a small empty cafe, which had just opened. I quickly grabbed a comfortable spot and pulled out my copy of ‘The Bookseller of Kabul’ written by Åsne Seierstad.

The story of an Afghani man surviving multiple tyrannical regimes in his country, while protecting books and literature, is, in simplest terms, inspiring. The book follows Sultan Khan and his family’s journey, traversing Kabul and Peshawar, to keep his business alive and with it, the history and future of Afghanistan.

The author knits the social, cultural, religious and historical backgrounds of that region. Each word carefully chosen to fit in with the characters. Souls laid bare, the men, women, children all come with their unique desires and aspirations. Some find a way towards a better life, some make attempts and fail, while others simply accept life as fate. From the oldest matriarch to the youngest toddler, each character is incomplete without the other.

This is the story Seierstad wrote for her readers. And then there’s another story, which the copy in my hand read out to me. This book was a second-hand purchase (one of the reasons why I bought it). I picked it up because its yellowing pages narrated a different tale.

Books are like wine. The older they get, the richer they become.

As every book passes through homes and shelves, cities and countries, it builds a new layer of features. Some become dated, some bookmarked. As you flip through pages, you come across dull scribbled notes in illegible writing. Exquisite, isn’t it? The botched ink stains of library stamps, the creases of the folded pages, all define the person and the time that the book originally belongs to.

For me, that has always added to the charm of reading. Who bought it first? Why did they pass it on? Imagining the person and characterising him/her/them by the books which they once owned. Building a relationship with the book and its former owner.

‘It has been through such books, that I came to know more about my maternal grandfather, Husain Mehdi Rizvi, who passed away before I was born. It was through what he read that I understood who he was. An advocate by profession, he was amongst the few scholars of his time with whom one could learn about philosophy, science and religion, over a cup of evening tea.

Every childhood visit to my mother’s maiden home, involved gazing at grandfather’s dilapidated book shelves, filled with titles in English, Urdu and Persian. Some were hardbound while others were paperback, each with a Roman number marking its place on the shelves. Curiosity would get the better of me as I would climb on the dining table to figure out which book I could pick up to read. A book on human evolution was a constant favourite, holding my attention for hours.

I imagined grandfather reading Darwin’s theory to my mother when she was a kid, and imagined how that knowledge may have changed her thought process. His scribbles in the corners of pages made me picture him seated past midnight in his room, deep into his thoughts. There were black and white pictures of him, one in which he looked like young Raj Kapoor.

As years went by, the visits shortened and the books went unnoticed, engulfed by time. Writings and pages disappeared as colonies of termites made the bookshelves their home.

Grandfather’s memory — present yet forgotten.

It was on one such visits, that I began rummaging through the racks to carry some books home. Deciding to have a piece of my grandfather’s personality forever in my books collection, I found: ‘Mother’ by Maxim Gorky, the biography of Priscilla Presley, English translations of Persian poetry by Allama Iqbal, a book on American diplomacy before World War II, and others.

As I read those books, grandfather’s image became clearer in my mind. He was no longer a memory crafted through pictures and discussions. He was now a character, defined by his choice in literature.

He was a poet at heart, inspired by Iqbal’s writings, which he translated into Urdu. He was a theologian who researched Islam’s genesis, its components, and distilled them from the traditions attached with it. He was a political commentator, who studied Lenin and Churchill, Nehru and Jinnah, all at the same time. But perhaps, above all, he was a philosopher. Trying to understand human behaviour, searching for answers, looking for new layers of the human thought process, with each book he read.

And that is the reason why, he chose to translate Persian prose by Allama Iqbal and Rumi, into Urdu prose. His books, ‘Asrar-e-Iqbal’ and ‘Afkar-o-Rumuz’ are the result of his endeavour to better understand spiritual reasoning and action.

As he spent hours in his study with all his books, he became a sum of them. An ocean of knowledge, where you will always find pearls of wisdom, every time you dive in.

As my mother and her siblings recall grandfather’s daily routines and lifestyle, I now recall a personality, a mind. I feel closer to him, to his thinking and gather immense hope to continue on my path of gathering wisdom.

It has been grandfather’s original writings in Urdu, that have inspired me to learn the language. As I try to practise every day, his copy of Urdu prose, awaits at home, to be read. A task which will take a long time but nonetheless, a task I am inspired to accomplish.

Books are the mirrors to one’s personality. Books define character. Books showcase a lifestyle. They are the biggest giveaways of a person. You can know who they really are, by simply scrolling through their collection. Or the lack of it. You can search the soul of a home through the titles of the books it houses.

And second-hand books? They present first hand stories.

Which no one else can perhaps tell.

About the writer: Mariyam Raza Haider is a researcher and writer, currently working at a public policy think tank in Hong Kong. Her writing is inspired by cultural and religious influences on women’s lives in Indian middle-class families. Mariyam holds a Master in Public Policy from the National University of Singapore, and a Bachelors in Journalism from the University of Delhi. This article was originally published on her website, and has been republished here with permission.

Getting To Know My Late Grandfather Through His Book Collection was originally published in The Reader on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

“Writers have suffered all over the world for their books and their convictions. In this Brave New Technological Paradise of ours, now it could be the turn of the reader,” writes Sidharth Bhatia of ‘The Wire’ in a recent piece, commenting on how the police is picking up books and materials owned by writers and poets who have recently been arrested in India for ‘Maoist links’. Bhatia ends the piece by imagining a day not too far away, when the state could prescribe what one should read and shouldn’t.

Well, a bookshelf says a lot about the reader — a book’s strength often becomes the reader’s, and vice versa. In solidarity with the writers and poets who have recently been arrested by the Pune police, users on Twitter have followed Bhatia’s lead and started tweeting photos with #MyAntiNationalBookshelf. This isn’t just a timely trend, but it is a trend that floated exactly a year after noted journalist Gauri Lankesh was assassinated. The photos and this trend symbolise that young India’s words, interests, possessions, thoughts and ideas cannot be silenced and oppresed — they are out for people to see.

Take a look at some ‘antinational bookshelves’ here, and tweet to @thewire_in with #MyAntiNationalBookshelf!

Also read:

Behind Viral Tweets & Trends: The Wire's Karnika Kohli On Anxiety, Social Media & More

To push Karnika’s inspiring work forward, you can follow her on Twitter and donate to The Wire here.

The State Tried To Silence Writers, Indians Responded With #MyAntiNationalBookshelf was originally published in The Reader on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

On reading, releasing and healing.

By ʇsnſ ʇuıɐs (Scherezade Siobhan):

The first time A speaks about her inability to cry after starting antidepressants, the streets of Mumbai are angling for space between Atlantis and Venice. Water has been spilling over the streets with a notoriously bullish vagrancy. We are sitting in the breakout space of my office, closer to the window where rain is dividing its fall into translucent threads unfurled across the pane. We watch throngs 10 floors down scuttling about like a coterie of marbles, each person tumbling towards their own chaotic direction.

A was diagnosed with clinical depression about a year ago and initiating meds has been a reluctant wrangle at best. She fears the shadowy, revolving door of history as do we all. Her father fought the needling dissonance of the same condition she is faced with now and in her own words, she saw him go from a buoyant humorist to an “emptied wine bottle” following his inconsistent trials with voluntary psychiatric confinement. It is hard to calibrate free will with repression. It is hard to harmonise the sour notes that deck the edges of our conversations as she laughs and lets “like father, like daughter” slowly slip from under her breath. It is hard for any child to find the trestle between themselves and their loved parent to be shaped as an illness. She calls it an illness and doesn’t want what she calls “candy-coating” about the condition.

A discovered my therapeutic practice via my own poetry. Her first visit to me marked a decidedly fecund talkfest about Virginia Woolf. Woolf is not necessarily a poet but A finds something resonant in her surmounting, that surprising lustre in the “thin skimmed milk of the morning”. A intends an inked homage to Woolf; an echo that saltates — “I rise from my worst disasters, I turn, I change.” The stubborn bloom of this line from “The Waves” is destined to serve as A’s own bodied vine. I have often turned to Woolf myself even if sometimes just to find relief in my cynicism against the quotidian homilies about hope; even if to release comfort in the entropy of my own tremors that chant: “I belong to quick, futile moments of intense feeling.”

We discuss Woolf and then we discuss the simultaneous relief and heaviness of crying during depressive lows. A has an expressed disdain for the false equivalence between tears and rain which reminds me of Alice Notley writing that “the tears are looking for a place to alight in, they aren’t rain they’re desolation.”

A seconds that summary with her own analysis: “I like rains. Monsoon reminds me of our capacity to endure and release without holding on. Rains are about unmooring — a freedom I am distant from when I feel depressed. The only other place where I find this simultaneous expression of freedom and flight at the same time is inside a book and more so, in poems.”

In “The Natural and Cultural History of Tears”, Tom Lutz recounts how the earliest written records of crying — The Ras Shamra texts — were discovered on Canaanite clay tablets dating from the fourteenth century B.C in present day Syria. They belonged to the ancient city of Ungarit which was consumed by an earthquake. It is intriguing to note that these tablets — disinterred during a series of ongoing excavations — in fact contain a narrative poem about the death of Ba’al, an earth god worshiped by several ancient Middle Eastern cultures.

In the very first chapter titled “Crying”, Lutz writes — “One of the fragments tells the story of the virgin goddess Anat, the sister of Ba’al, as she hears the news of his death. Quite naturally, she weeps at the news. The accepted scholarly translation is that Anat “continued sating herself with weeping, to drink tears like wine.” This, the earliest mention of tears in history, suggests that they are induced by grief, and that they offer satiety, even a kind of intoxication.

When I think of A remembering her father as an “emptied wine bottle”, I wonder if the grief of his depressive lows, his persistent concavity, had swallowed his own tears to a point where nothing was left to pour out. Crying can be a connection, a flickering bridge that reminds us how we are secured to one another not just in gathered joys but also in the possibility of sharing our griefs.

“I wonder if the grief of his depressive lows, his persistent concavity, had swallowed his own tears to a point where nothing was left to pour out.”

A poem often feels like a safe place to fully dive into the lowest registers of grief without faltering for reason or commentary. We see waves of “reach out” being passed around in a tidal alarm when a celebrity succumbs to the worst possibility for their life. It is fatiguing to reach out when you are incapable of believing that someone would want to fit their presence into the shape of your “reaching” or even that your reaching can be wide and strong enough to tug at something resonant that will answer back with a compassionate acceptance.

Sometimes though, I have found my “reaching out” answered not by a person but by a passage in a book or a line in a poem like JoEllen Kwiatek’s writing in “Snowlight” —

“The mind’s a lonesome flourish.” This line helped me navigate a peculiar sense of depersonalization coupled with a desire to destigmatize the idea of aloneness.

When I have cried with a poem, the poem has made no attempts to decipher or demarcate my crying. It has, instead, allowed me space for cleansing and renewal, a freedom to cry without explanations alluding to rationale.

In a purely scientific classification, there are three types of tears — Basal, or tears that help lubricate the cornea, Reflex, or the kind of tears that occur as response to physical irritation (onions, anyone?) and Psychic, or emotional tears which are linked to feelings, cognition and expression. Crying has its own cultural, social and religious connotations that stretch far and wide. “Moral Weeping” was once differentiated from regular, “physical” crying as an expression of authentic sadness.

Religions have often equated penance with crying. Certain cultures including Korea and India even have the tradition of employing “official criers” at funerals to indicate the social significance of the deceased. In literature, Beckett once proclaimed that “the tears of the world have a constant quantity” and in Epligoue, Anna Akhmatova quickens the lyrical pulse when she writes — “From my eyelids, bronze, unmoving, may snowflakes fall like tears, melting.”

A, like many other clients of mine who have recently started antidepressants, felt a certain emotional paralysis when she was unable to cry once the meds kicked in. This was ironic because one of her biggest challenges with daily functioning used to be the excessive crying and an accompanied psychological aridity that almost forbade any clear direction for her days. In a breakthrough of sorts, we both agree that sometimes crying was the compass for being able to recognize that one had an emotional scale that hadn’t effaced. This is the greyest of feelings to verbalize.

A week later from our session, A sends me a text with a snapshot of a Woolf quote that reads “Now let us issue from the darkness of this solitude”. Accompanying this text is a pair of emojis — one crying the other smiling along with a message — “I was reading her and then was able to cry a little today. I didn’t feel crushed. I felt possibility. I know what you mean when you say that being on my own doesn’t mean I am alone. Because the words always stay with me. Without expectations.”

About the author: Scherezade Siobhan is an award-winning writer, psychologist and a community catalyst who founded and runs The Talking Compass — a therapeutic space dedicated to providing mental counselling services and decolonizing mental health care. Her work is published or forthcoming on Medium, Berfrois, Feministing, SPR, Jubilat, DATABLEED, Nat Brut, Winter Tangerine, Cordite, among others. She is the author of “Bone Tongue” (Thought Catalog Books, 2015), “Father, Husband” (Salopress, 2016) and “The Bluest Kali” (Forthcoming, Lithic Press). Send her chocolate and puppies — nihilistwaffles@gmail.com. Find her online @zaharaesque on Twitter/FB/IG.

Reading And Releasing — The Healing Power Of Crying With Words was originally published in The Reader on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

An interpretation freed from the dead weight of classical commentaries.

By Meenakshi Chawla:

We live in an unsettled and unsettling world. Religion is at once a personal value and a public stance — it is at an uncertain juncture in these unsettled times. At the heart of present uncertainties and perceived future impossibilities is a book — the Qur’an, the sacred text of Islam.

What is read as the Qur’an and how it is interpreted by people, both Muslims and non-Muslims, contributes to contemporary debates, positions, arguments and fears. To that end, Reading The Qur’an by Ziauddin Sardar is an invaluable resource. Written with conviction and a humility born of study and reflection, the book attempts to demystify the message of the Qur’an and its significance today.

The message of the Qur’an is not easy to grasp. Unlike other books, it has no conventional start or finish; it appears full of repetitions and internal contradictions. But on closer examination, an internal logic emerges. Written in ‘a heightened form of Arabic, language of great beauty with the power to move listeners’, Qur’anic Arabic has a particular structure: it locks every word with every other in the text, and places it in a precise location in the entire text. The interlocking is seen as testimony to its divine origin.

To interpret an abstruse text such as this in English translation can only be a task for a committed believer — Sardar is not found wanting in faith! His focus is on relevance and ‘what guidance it provides for contemporary problems, how it seeks to promote a life of virtue and righteousness’.

Reading the Qur’an is organised thematically, and that helps the uninitiated reader to follow the thread of its historicity from medieval times to the present — how changing times call for a fresh outlook, new ways of reading the eternal sacred text of Islam. For that is what the Qur’an asks its readers to do — enquire, question and examine. The sacred text demands a receptive heart and mind, and expects substantial effort — no easy answers emerge from the book. But to the malleable reader, it provides a fresh understanding of our ethical and moral dilemmas, as well as the meaning of our lives on earth.

Sardar brings forth a certain facet of the sacred text again and again in different ways, and that is ‘the “Word of God” is not beyond question; only through questioning the text can we tease out possible answers to our moral dilemmas. This is precisely why one of the most insistent commands in the Qur’an is to think and reflect’.

Sardar lays before the reader — perhaps here he targets primarily the non-Muslim reader — the structural beauty of the Qur’an, its lack of a strict chronology, and the importance of sound, or a ‘musical symphony’. It is illuminating that the first word of the revelation was ‘Iqra’ (‘Read’), to which the Prophet replied ‘I cannot’. But the Prophet repeated orally each revelation to his growing tribe of followers and recited it in prayers.

…the “Word of God” is not beyond question; only through questioning the text can we tease out possible answers to our moral dilemmas.

The Qur’an was revealed in instalments over 23 years from A.D. 610 to 632. The innate beauty of the language enabled the community to memorise the sounds, and to this day, millions of devout Muslims commit the Qur’an to memory. For non-Muslims engaging with the text of Qur’an, the changing voice is a concern. The speaker is God — but it confuses readers when the speaker changes from ‘I’ to ‘We’ to ‘He’. Why? How? The author explains these apparent aberrations as also the fact that there is an internal logic to the Qur’an, a higher logic than the Aristotelian logic the West has propagated and that we are familiar, rather comfortable, with.

As just another ordinary reader completely unfamiliar with the text of the Qur’an, I found it helpful that Sardar draws upon other scholars’ views through their translations and interpretations. He has drawn upon the earliest translations, for instance, The Alcoran of Mahomet (Alexander Ross, 1649); The Koran: Commonly called the Alkoran of Mohammed (George Sale, 1734) to more recent ones like The Koran (N. J. Dawood, 1956) of which Sardar disapproves because he believes the translation ‘projects the Qur’an as a violent and sexist text’ and The Holy Qur’an: Translation and Commentary (Yusuf Ali, 1934–37).

This engagement with various interpretations and translations makes the sacred text come alive to the needs of a changing world, a world woefully short of spiritual capital, a world fast losing its ethical moorings in the face of multi-hued adversities. That is the true power of the word of God.

For this work, the author synthesises a number of translations and picks the translation that has the ‘most lucid language, shorn of archaic form’ to convey the sense of the verse under discussion. The author also does not adhere to the traditional method of interpreting the Qur’an verse by verse, and ‘atomise the Sacred Text’. He examines the verses in the context of the whole, ‘questioning the interrelationship within and between the verses’ and thus embarking on a ‘deeper understanding of the logic behind the structure of the text’.

Part One: Overview provides the framework within which the remaining sections unfold as well as the historical backdrop of the revelation of the Book.

Part Two: By Way of Tradition goes through the Al-Fatiha and Al-Baqara. The opening sura, Al-Fatiha, is known to Muslims as Umm al Kitab, ‘Mother of the Book’. Al-Baqara is the longest chapter in the Holy Book and covers a wide range of subjects that Sardar takes up in separate chapters (for instance, Paradise, Children of Israel, Law of Equity, War and Peace, Arguing with God and more). It provides an overview of what the Qur’an means as a spiritual and practical guide to humankind.

The author describes it as a seeker: ‘…to read each verse, each passage in relation to each other and in the context of the whole, to remember at each instant, with each word, that there is nothing in isolation and that everything that is being said is constantly referring to past, present and future.’ The sura ends with a prayer that emphasises human frailties — forgetfulness, erroneous judgement and unintentional error. The Holy Book promises hope — always there is hope of forgiveness and God’s mercy and guidance.

The Holy Book promises hope — always there is hope of forgiveness and God’s mercy and guidance.

In Part Three: Themes and Concepts, the author employs substantial dexterity of analysis and thought to present the teachings of the Holy Book in context, since the ‘multiple distinct contexts the Qur’an addresses’ escape the average reader. Each verse, the author argues, must be read in its context — a verse cannot be divorced from its context, in order to grasp its meaning and true significance. Thereafter, interpretation is a singularly individual effort and again, as a general reader, I found Sardar’s interpretation most enlightening and enriching.

The thirteen chapters in this section of the book range from Prophets and Revelation, Truth and Plurality, Reason and Knowledge to Reading and Writing. The ideas put forth are powerful and stir the intellect to reach further than it can see.

In the chapter on Ethics and Morality, the author discusses human virtues of patience, humility and moderation — universal qualities that most of us were taught by our parents and that we have discarded as incongruous with a life of competitive materialistic appropriation and advancement. The ideas themselves are deceptively simple, but ‘reading’ them with Sardar as it were, rejuvenates a fraying moral fabric and revives faith in simple things.

The most important concept in the Qur’an is ‘tawheed’, or the unity of God.

The most important concept in the Qur’an is ‘tawheed’, or the unity of God. ‘God according to the Qur’an is One and the absolute possessor of the universe.’ The idea of ‘tawheed’ extends to nature — there is Divine purpose in its creation. Thus the Qur’anic term for nature is ‘created order’; all nature is a ‘sign’ of God and thus, sacred.

Part Four: Contemporary Topics engages with subjects and views that are highly divisive and arouse passions around the world — homosexuality, the veil, suicide and the Shari‘a.

So, is the veil sanctioned by the Qur’an? The author explains that the term associated with the veil is ‘hijab’ meaning a curtain, screen or partition, and occurs eight times in the Sacred Text. The author further explains that in none of the verses is hijab used in quite the way as understood by modern societies around the world — the Middle East, Indian subcontinent or Arabia.

In the Qur’an, the word is used as ‘raiment of righteousness’ (as in the Yusuf Ali translation). Sardar elaborates: ‘This raiment of righteousness, counterposed to any actual garments one wears, is a moral condition, a state of mind and of being.’

On suicide, assisted or otherwise, the author categorically states that ‘life is sacred; so it cannot be ranked. All life, whatever its quality, according to the Qur’an, is equally valid and valuable. …it is a journey that must reach its natural conclusion.’ And this brings the reader face to face with the suicide bomber and his abhorrent act. Sardar is scathing in his criticism of ‘suicide bombing’, and reaffirms that ‘the notion that the bomber is heading straight for paradise is perverse.’

Interpreting a religious text is always fraught with the risk of being burdened by personal prejudices — traditional discourses, historical framework and contexts too bear upon such an exercise. All this and more is of even greater import in the case of the Holy Qur’an.

The author irons out these creases in the manner of a true believer. ‘If you approach the Qur’an with the view that it has nothing to say to you, that it is an outdated historical text, then the questions you will ask will yield nothing of importance. If it is interrogated with a view to finding faults, then your questions echo your own prejudices. … To produce genuine insight, we need a higher order of questions… . Simplistic questions generate simplistic answers; complex questions would lead to a more holistic and deeper understanding of the Sacred Text.’

The sentiment essentially sums up his ahistorical interpretation of the Holy Book, freed from the dead weight of classical commentaries. On the other hand, in his hands, the Qur’an and its teachings serve as building blocks for the future — a transformative force that guides people and societies of the future.

About the author: Meenakshi Chawla is a writer of short stories and poetry. She also translates works from Urdu to English, and is an avid reader of religious philosophy, especially works on Sufism.

Why Reading The Qu'ran Matters In Today's Unsettled Times was originally published in The Reader on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

It is such a joy to see women say the words you wouldn’t expect them to say in our cloistered social climate.

By Dr. Ishmeet Nagpal:

Yesterday, I attended the event “Rethinking Pornography with Richa Kaul Padte” hosted by Point of View and Penguin India, as a part of the book release of ‘Cyber Sexy’.

I took a notepad along just in case I’d find something interesting to jot down and ended up filling it cover to cover. Richa’s presence and manner are pure and intelligent, and she has some enlightening insights about pornography. Out of the one hour of conversations and Q&A, what I loved the most were the readings of snippets by Srinidhi Raghavan, Shreya Ila Anasuya and the writer herself. It is such a joy to see women say the words you wouldn’t expect them to say in our cloistered social climate.

Richa talked quite a bit about consent and what I found really interesting was how she explained the three levels of consent where porn was concerned. The first level is the act itself, so people engaging in a sexual act need to consent to it. The second level is the filming of said act, and the third, consent to share or distribute it for viewing by other people.

Consent at one level does not equal consent at other levels. Consent has become convoluted and messy in these times of technology. So is abstinence from clicking nudes or agreeing to be filmed, the only way to prevent misuse for revenge porn? Richa says only an overhaul of the culture of sexism and misogyny can stop practices like revenge porn.

“Only an overhaul of the culture of sexism and misogyny can stop practices like revenge porn.”

Richa says the content created as a result of violation are rape videos which should be curbed but the law as it stands does not distinguish between consensual filming/distribution and assault videos. It just puts everything under the umbrella of obscenity making the filming and sharing of porn illegal in India. She made an excellent point about the need of a revenge porn law in India and replacing the obscenity law in its current form.

Richa also talked about her writing process and I couldn’t help but smile at the bits that seemed much like my process. Her reflections on her struggles with chronic illness were relatable as I suffer from a chronic condition as well. I will follow her example and write in the mornings now with less distractions from social media to cloud my brain.

Another wonderful reading by Shreya explored the concept of dance floors as venues of mass intimacy and I am so excited to read the entire chapter in the book now. Richa drew a beautiful comparison about porn coming out of the closet in India by referencing a childhood story of the boy who stopped a dam from bursting by using his finger to plug the leak. Richa says the dam is about to burst now.

From the snippet readings, it was evident that her prose reads like poetry and has a melodious flow to it, which I prefer over the monotonous. Richa has included a lot of personal experiences in the book, which is generally not common for non-fiction books, and that is what will make the book special for me.

“The dam is about to burst now.”

In the Q&A she spoke about the question of morality and how we try to “define” porn so as to delineate it from so called “moral” media that endorses sexism every day anyway.

Her insights and ideas make one think deeply about an issue that we hesitate to even discuss in sex ed with teens, when they are the ones most vulnerable. The event left me with countless new questions, and I hope to find some answers in her book. What I can say for sure is that the conversation about porn with 50 people in the room was a form of mass intimacy for me as well, it moved me and shifted my perceptions. I hope her book inspires more people to open their minds and rethink porn.

About the author: Dr. Ishmeet Nagpal is a public health professional, social activist, trainer on gender and sexuality issues. She is also a poet, writer, co-founder of SXonomics, and is currently working at Save The Children India.

I Participated In A Conversation About Porn — And It Moved Me was originally published in The Reader on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

By Sumedh Natu:

For a lot of us who’ve attempted stand up comedy, there’s a sort of an urgency to hear laughter when you’re up on stage. We’ll do anything for it. We’ll pander, make jokes about ourselves, make jokes about our inability to make decent jokes about ourselves. What we long for at the end of our set is a physical reaction to a joke. Laughter. Lots of it. Nuance, honing our craft, slowly raising the bar of our material are all secondary to our first demand — laughter. They have to laugh. They’ve paid for a reason and there can be no two ways about it.

Over time, the way I’ve learnt to appreciate stand up has changed. I’ve grown to love and understand comics who’ve gotten people to laugh at their pain, or the darkest parts of their life. I’ve adored how Norm Macdonald disregards any form of pandering to his audience whether that means entire minutes of silence or ending in a lull.

I’ve treasured Marc Maron’s ‘Too Real’, which I found incredibly intimate and introspective. I loved Patton Oswalt’s Annihilation, where you could see how much pain went into writing that special, post his wife passing away. I’ve been awestricken consecutively by Ali Wong through both ‘Baby Cobra’ and ‘Hard Knock Wife’ where she channels her indignation and anger into two perfect hours of stand up.

Cut to yesterday, where I finished Hannah Gadsby’s ‘Nanette’ in basically a crumpled heap of emotions. Her special breaks every single rule of stand up I could think of, but I think Nanette’s crowning achievement is that you’re not meant to laugh through it, except where and when Hannah allows you to. It’s a masterpiece of craft and technique, and it’s impossible to last through it as a straight, male person without feeling a huge sense of guilt how at much privilege we enjoy simply by virtue of our gender and our position in society.

Gadsby confronts her early career that catapulted her to stardom pretty early in her set. She acknowledges how she’s built a career out of self-deprecation. She mentions what it was like to grow up as someone who’s gay. She breaks down why we laugh and how comedy works as a unique relationship between creating tension and diffusing it. She explains how her gay identity has been a point of tension her entire life, so diffusing it came naturally to her. The initial moments in her set are light, they show no indication of how painfully real the rest of the hour is going to go.

Gadsby reaches a point where she confronts how she’s constantly belittled and put herself through humiliation on stage to make other people laugh, and she doesn’t wish to do it anymore.

I think this point is very important to me, because I see the person behind the act renouncing everything they have done in their career to finally present themselves in a light that they want to be seen in. It’s the recognition that success doesn’t matter if you can’t work on stage on your own terms.

From this point on, Gadsby covers you with the tension which primarily forms the base of every set-up in comedy. She builds on it with every topic she covers. Whether that’s the entitlement of white, male artists (She uses Picasso to build a fantastic case), whether it’s how male comedians have built careers by victim blaming (by talking about Monica Lewinsky) or how she’s paid the price for other people’s homophobia for most of her life.

By the end of her set, she declares that she’s angry, and that she realises it’s fine for her to be angry, but she can’t continue to work in comedy anymore, because comedy is a medium where anger is diffused. At this point the crowd (and I assure you, you will consider yourself a part of them) is silent. You want to be relieved. You want her to make you laugh, to say that it was all an act and that you’re allowed to laugh. But it doesn’t come. This is Gadsby at the height of her control, because she refuses to utter the punchline that allows you to walk home in peace. She doesn’t bend. She walks off stage.

“I am not helping you anymore, because this tension is what not-normals carry inside of them all the time, because it is dangerous to be different.”

Every male comic I know (myself included) has at some point given a permutation of advice to a female comic to the tune of — Why are you so angry? Why does it bother you so much? Why can’t you talk about things that aren’t feminist? We do this because as straight, mostly upper caste male comics, we have no visible problems we can talk about at a personal level. It’s easy for us to be woke and cool, because we don’t have any pressure in our day to day lives of living in fear for who we are.

Gadsby’s special changes the very meaning of comedy to me because my eventual goal as a comedian cannot be to merely go up on stage and just make people laugh. It could start that way but it has to eventually be deeper . Comedy must question, it must make people think. More than anything else, if your obvious choice to make fun of someone or something are the threatened, you’re doing this wrong. As she says — “Pull your fucking socks up!”

Hannah Gadsby is testament that the cost of some of the world’s most memorable punchlines is often an entire life of pain. When a comedian grants us this privilege of a punchline they allow us to share their pain. With Hannah’s absolute refusal to let her audience share her pain, I’m convinced in her case, we don’t deserve to laugh at her genius. I hope she deigns us fit to some day.

I urge you to watch her special. It will question why you laugh at things, it will question what you laugh at and more than anything else, it will leave you with a gigantic question mark about everything you have ever made fun of in the past. It’s a work of art that won’t be replicated for a very long time.

‘Nanette’ is available for streaming on Netflix. This post was originally published on Sumedh Natu’s personal blog, and has been reproduced here with permission.

Nanette: The Power of Pain was originally published in The Reader on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The story behind the feminist crime-fighting star of my children’s book series

By Lavanya Karthik:

“Write the book you want to read.”

That was Toni Morrison, I think, responding to a question about writing. Those are words I take with great seriousness, as I write books that are anything but serious.

I’d love to say that the idea for the ‘Ninja Nani’ series popped into my head while I was doing something fierce and breathtakingly impressive like running a marathon or scaling Kilimanjaro, tending to my organic rooftop garden or, at the very least, thatching the roof of the mud meditation hut I maintain in the middle of said garden.

The truth is, inspiration struck while I was doing what I normally do when I claim to be writing — slouching on the couch in my jammies, slurping coffee while staring at an empty notebook and wondering which takeaway joint to order my next meal from. Thoughts of food segued into thoughts of the book I should read as I inhaled a platter of spring rolls (Or was it pizza? I can never remember). For what self-respecting bookworm does not read while eating, right?

And there, the shriveled famished kernel that is my brain just before lunch time faltered. My eyes scoured the various stacks of books that line the floor of my room. Books I had in abundance; a book I actually wanted to read on that particular day — nope. My stomach growled. My brain wailed back.

Enter Toni.

Write my book, I thought. That’s it! But wait, what about?

More growling. More wailing (This is probably why rude body noises play a small, but significant role in the series.)

A silly book, I decided. One that made me laugh and snort and roll my eyes over its bizarre characters. A book of mystery too, and adventure, a book with a superhero hiding in plain sight in the unlikeliest of disguises, nefarious villains crawling out of the woodwork at random intervals. But wait — I like comics too! What fun to have a book that was both a novel and a comic book!

HIYAAA! HUP! HUP!

Things began cartwheeling and backflipping in my head! Characters frowned and whined — and blarped. False teeth flew! Rubber ducks shimmied! Television sets blew up! My writer ninja senses jingled — oh wait, that was just the doorbell. My springrolls had arrived.

Did I have that book ready by the time I’d eaten my lunch? Of course not. Did the plot reveal itself to me that day, or the next, or even a month after that? Hah! But eventually, the first ‘Ninja Nani’ idea did work its way out of my head and into a book. More of it followed; Book 2 is out as well, Book 3 waits in the wings and Book 4 simmers away quietly on the hob that is my head. And there’s plenty more to come — the Naniverse slowly expands and unfolds and I, like an astronaut (a couch-bound, jammie-clad, junkfood-eating version, anyway) have the pleasure of floating about in it, exploring its many wonders.

Being a published author is fantastic — it’s what I’ve dreamed of since I was old enough to write. Seeing my books on shelves in bookstores and on Amazon’s Recommended list — fabulous. Knowing I still have lots of stories to tell — terrific! But the best part of sharing my stories, the thing that keeps me going as a writer, is the little connections the books have helped me make with its readers everywhere.

“Reading is boring!” an eight year old tells me after a reading in his school, in Chandigarh. “But I opened your book and it had comics! And dog farts! And silly people! ” “They get sillier,” I assure him. We bump fists on that promise.

“My grandson and I fight over the TV too,” an elegant woman says to me at an event in Jaipur. I had just finished reading the bit from the book where a fight between two characters over a TV set triggers the incredible events that follow. “Who wins?” I ask. She smiles enigmatically, and I get a glimpse of her superpowers right there.

“I go to tuition too,” a 10-year-old girl grimly tells me in Raipur, after a discussion on the second ‘Ninja Nani’ book, a caper involving the hapless kids in a tuition class and their strange Pied Piper-like teacher. “That bad, huh?” I ask. “Worse,” she says. We share a moment of silence.

I am delighted when readers call the Nani books feminist. I believe books, especially books meant for growing readers (though who, it could be argued, isn’t one) — need to reflect diversity. Feminism, to me, is not about putting women first. It is the understanding that women are just as strong, flawed, ridiculous and awesome as men are, just as adept — or inept — at everything from cooking a meal and raising a child to flying a rocket into space or battling zombies.

And it is the understanding that people come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, ages and colours, genders and beliefs, with differing abilities and issues, and each one of us is equally deserving of respect and freedom. A feminist view must also be an ecological one — after all, we are, as a species, just one tiny thread in the fabric of our planet’s diversity.

As a reader I say, show me this diversity — in outer space, in classrooms, in kitchens, in royal palaces. Give me characters of varying abilities, tastes and beliefs finding a way to live alongside each other. Give me books that, regardless of the age group they are intended for, or the genre they are belong to, respect diversity in their narratives and their portrayal of characters.

As a writer, I tell myself — listen to Toni.

About the author: Lavanya Karthik is a Mumbai-based writer, artist and comic creator who has written multiple beloved children’s books. She is the brain behind the awesome illustrations of the Apoorva Books and is passionate about the environment.

How I Wrote 'Ninja Nani' was originally published in The Reader on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

“The reason Savita Patel is so relatable is because like all real women, she lives in the grey areas.”

By Lipi Mehta:

“Maari dikri porn jove chhe? (My daughter watches porn?)” was my mother’s reaction when porn was mentioned at home. She almost couldn’t believe that her namaste uncle-saying daughter could be indulging in an activity society has deemed a ‘dirty secret’, especially for women. Richa Kaul Padte’s book ‘Cyber Sexy’ drags this secret in the wide open, and reveals extremely perceptive insights on how India watches porn.

Find out more:

Cyber Sexy is an empowering, stereotype-smashing read on porn, consent and sexuality. After writing it, how do you define the relationship between porn and the viewer in 2018 India?

Thank you! I think the relationship between porn and people is not as passive as it’s often assumed to be. The internet is an interactive space where users are making, sharing, viewing, filming, writing, reblogging sexy content. And this content often falls under the umbrella term “porn”, because its intention is to turn people on. I think we’re past the point where porn is only something shot in a studio consumed passively by viewers. The internet is a two-way (or a many-way) street, and I think this is true of porn too.

The book has diverse narratives about how the Internet says a huge ‘Go to hell’ to moral gatekeepers of society. The book however misses the narratives of these gatekeepers. Did you speak with any of them?

I think the gatekeepers get enough airtime, don’t you? :) Through Cyber Sexy, I hoped to create a people-led approach to the internet. I was interested in making space for the stories we don’t usually get to hear, not the ones we hear all the time.

And I honestly have no idea what people’s reactions to the book are, but I do hope that some of our moral gatekeepers read it. Because I don’t think it’s as much of a “fuck you” as it is a highlighting of regular people’s opinions and experiences. And I think those who wield power should learn more about what things are actually like for everyone else.

India definitely has a major ‘bhabhi’ obsession. There’s Savita Bhabhi on one hand, and then there’s the bhabhi at home, the ‘Sita’, who is revered. Why is India so hypocritical in its approach to what happens with doors open and doors shut?

I think the two are very connected. Savita Bhabhi is a huge hit because she is also the bhabhi at home. If you’ve read the comics, you’ll know that she’s a loving wife and an attentive daughter-in-law, while ALSO being a super sexual woman who goes after what she wants.

But yes of course, what you’re talking about is incredibly true, because this is the exact dichotomy that binds women.

You have to be homely and sexy, but it’s a lose-lose, because you’re either a prude one way or a slut the other way.

And I don’t think this is unique to India. The Madonna/whore dichotomy exists everywhere in the world, except here I guess it presents itself as the bhabhi/Bhabhi dichotomy. And I think the reason Savita Patel is so relatable is because like all real women, she doesn’t conform to one or the other — she lives in the grey areas, which is where all of us live.

Cyber Sexy is proof of what fantastic research can create. Can you walk us through the process? Did you face any judgement or sexism?

Thank you! I was researching and writing at the same time, so while I did have an outline for the whole book, I definitely let my research guide me along. I did a lot of reading — I took all the books and articles I could find around these issues and made extensive notes. I also spoke to loads of people, most of whom I found either through word-of-mouth or by putting calls out on Twitter for specific topics (fan-fiction and erotica writers, for example). Everyone I told about the book was really supportive and my interviewees were just fantastic, so I didn’t face any negative experiences or judgments while working on it. Maybe that’s something I have to look forward to now?

What do you say to those who think masturbating to a book is a taboo and a big ‘sin’? After all, Indian society says books are meant for worshipping and respecting, not deriving pleasure from.

Hahaha omg I don’t think anyone is going to masturbate to ‘Cyber Sexy’! But then again, who knows? Like I point out in the book, what turns people on can be really random, and everyone has gotten off to fairly strange-seeming things.

But okay, so assuming you are talking about books in general, and not my book in particular, I find this idea very interesting — that if you respect something, you shouldn’t derive pleasure from it. Why is that?

Why do we have respect on one side and pleasure on the other?

I think what you’ve touched on here is key to why we are completely lacking a culture of consent in India — because at some level, people (men) believe that respecting women means seeing them as non-sexual beings, and as soon as they want pleasure from or with a woman, she is no longer deserving of respect and can be treated in any manner. Respect and pleasure should not be mutually exclusive, and positioning them like that gets really dangerous, really fast.

India defines the ‘Bhartiya Nari’ as the sexless, churidar-clothed ‘respectable’ female figure. But your book paints a different picture. As per you, who is the Bhartiya Nari of 2018?

I think she’s you. I think she’s me. I think she’s all of us, really. And aside from sounding catchy, what I mean by that is there is no single Bhartiya Nari — and there shouldn’t have to be, either. I talk about this in the book too. Women aren’t a homogenous category, and we shouldn’t be treated as one. We are full, autonomous, flawed, very diverse human beings. And so I don’t want to say that today’s Indian woman is independent, sexual, amazing — because that’s just another ideal, like the ideal of the Bhartiya Nari herself. What would be truly amazing is if we could get rid of the idea that women have to be something, and just let women be.

About Richa Kaul Padte: Richa grew up in Kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu, and became a person in Brighton, England. She is co-founder of the award-winning publication Deep Dives, and her writing has appeared in several places, including BuzzFeed, Vice, GQ, Racked, the Caravan, India Today, Open and Rolling Stone. ‘Cyber Sexy’ is her first book.

Writer Richa Kaul Padte On India's Bhabhi Fetish, Masturbating To A Book, And More was originally published in The Reader on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

“I did not expect that the BJP will turn into what it has under its pradhan sevak.”

The Wire is arguably one of India’s most read as well as progressive publications online. Just over 3 years old, millions read its content every month, and it is known for bold, edgy and exclusive stories like the one on ‘The golden touch of Jay Shah’. So, what does it feel like to handle the social media for the publication, and empower thousands of readers with reading material and stories? The Reader caught up with The Wire’s Social Media Editor, Karnika Kohli, to find out.

1. How did you get interested in social media and how did working with ‘The Wire’ come about?

To be honest, I just wanted to work for ‘The Times of India’ and they were only looking for a social media manager. But once I started working there, I realised how awesome social media can be if you use it to do the right thing. I had an awesome mentor there who was patient and kind enough to let me make mistakes and learn from them.

I was there for almost 4 years, out of which for over 1.5 years I was allowed to head the social media team (how crazy were TOI people! they let a 20-something manage some of the biggest social media accounts in the world!). As far as ‘The Wire’ is concerned, it just happened without any planning (like most of the good things in my life).

I was looking for a job and on one fateful Thursday I saw a post by them on Facebook… applied for the job… got a call… went for the interview at 2 pm the next Friday and Siddharth Varadarajan mailed me my offer letter by 2:50 pm on the same day. And bang! I have been working for TW for over 1.5 years now and every day is an adventure.

2. The content you post is read by and reaches millions. How does this feel? A lot of people think a social media editor just schedules posts. Do you agree?

It’s an AMAZING feeling. I keep telling my journalist friends that one of the best things about digital journalism is that we know exactly how many people read us, where the belong to, what they like, etc. (Getting a little creepy, right?) But like uncle Ben said, “With great following comes great responsibility.”

SM managers just schedule posts? Umm yea sure!

3. What key activities constitute a typical day in your work life?

I usually start my day early to make sure I have enough time to go through as many newspapers and news websites I can before 8 am. After that, I look at the last day’s stats (FB Insights, GA, Parsley), decide which stories didn’t get enough traction and need to be plugged again.

Then, I go through our publishing schedule to see what all we have planned for that day and figure out if there is any way I can help add value to those pieces — that can mean a lot of things: helping the desk give social media-friendly headlines, finding relevant images, creating illustrations, figuring out ways to share it on different social media platforms, etc. I usually work from home till noon and then go to office. Throughout the day, I track news sites, agencies, social media trends/influencers, Google trends/news to look for stories that The Wire can cover/follow up.

My favourite thing, of course, is tracking what The Wire readers/haters/fans are saying about us and every now and then interacting with them. We need to do more of that tbh — interact with our awesome community. Working on that.

The second favourite part of my job — bugging reporters and my bosses to make sure they do enough Live videos on FB and interact with their readers on social media. Since we are a small team, I get to work on a lot of different projects (it is really awesome). Somedays, I help desk with SEO on other days I make illustrations for stories. And every now and then, I write about media and fake news.

Oh! I am also incharge for ordering cakes on birthdays (this is the most important aspect of my job here).

4. What’s your reaction to the everyday trolling? If you are open to sharing — what are the emotional or mental health costs beyond the activities of report and block?

I’d be lying if i said the trolling doesn’t bug me. People are RTing my old tweets as I answer this question. Yes, I wanted to get rid of a corrupt government before 2014 and NO I did not expect that the BJP would turn into what it has under its pradhan sevak. People need to wrap their head around this and get over it already.

Funny thing — a couple of right-wing “influencers”/writers troll me on a weekly basis and then follow it up on DM with — “Sorry ma’am. Don’t take this personally. I really like you but yeh sab karna padta hai.” Sab performers hai! At least, I can sleep at night peacefully knowing that thanks to me and others (who have actually made a difference in the field of journalism, unlike me) a lot of people are getting employed (*cough* BJP IT Cell *cough*). You’re welcome!

Jokes apart, I have always suffered from anxiety and it has gotten worse in the last few months. Anxiety attacks are not fun. They can have a paralysing effect. And I tend to go down a self-loathing spiral with every single attack that makes getting out of bed or working really difficult. In my case, anxiety brings along its horrible friend, insomnia, also. It was a lot worse when it started — the co-ordinated trolling. But now I am learning to deal with it. It was not easy and if you can afford professional help, you should go for therapy. Mental health is very important.

Having a support system also helps. I have a really awesome team here and my bosses have been very supportive. And most of my friends are not journalists so they don’t care about things like ‘Twitter’. So that makes it better. I have switched off notifications for my personal social media accounts. It wasn’t easy but it makes a huge difference. Apart from that, i recently started meditating using Headspace app. When it gets too crazy, I dance.

It is really easy to become an “influencer” now. (I hate the term, btw). We live in such a messed up world that people put you up on a pedestal for standing up for very basic things. And the same people won’t take a second before kicking you off that pedestal if you don’t say the right thing every single time.

It is easy to forget that the person behind that Twitter handle is someone who will evolve with time, make mistakes and learn from them.

And often realise what they believed in was actually a result of the privilege that they didn’t realise they enjoyed. I have decided to listen more and speak less. Do whatever I can to amplify voices of those who actually have something to say. It is still WIP.

5. A social media editor’s job is pretty much 24/7. What keeps you going and what empowers you?

I love my job! You have to or you won’t be able to do it. We don’t get offs on festivals, most of us work on weekends, we get paid peanuts, we don’t have fixed hours and most of the readers hate us no matter what we do. So yes, you can’t do it if you don’t absolutely love it. All journos will agree with me on this — you need to be a certain level of crazy to survive in this field.

One of the things that keeps me going — messages from readers (especially students). Not kidding. We often get adorable mails from students across the country who have donated small amounts to TW from their pocket money.

A young lawyer walked up to me at a bar recently to tell me how much he loved our coverage of Cobrapost expose and that he donated a small amount of money when we turned three.

Similarly, I was in a small city in Madhya Pradesh a couple of months ago and was talking to a local tourist guide there. He asked me what I did for a living and because Iwas so sure that he wouldn’t have heard of TW, I just said Iam a journalist. He asked who I worked for and I reluctantly mentioned The Wire (reluctantly because I wasn’t in a mood to explain what we do etc. etc.) and he looked at me and said — “Wahi website na jisne Amit Shah ke beta ke story ki thi?”

6. Any words of advice to other young people interested in taking up this career?

Not everybody can do social media. No, it is NOT just posting on FB and Twitter. You need to understand data, multitask, understand news and more importantly care about news (that’s not something you can teach to people). It is one of the most exciting careers out there and there aren’t many people in the field. So, if you are willing to work hard and forget everything you think you know about social media every six months (that’s how often things/rules completely change), apply for a SM job!

To push Karnika’s inspiring work forward, you can follow her on Twitter and donate to The Wire here.

Behind Viral Tweets & Trends: The Wire's Karnika Kohli On Anxiety, Social Media & More was originally published in The Reader on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.