On the account of the International Women’s Day, my new friend Vennela conducted a writing session on the theme of Feminism. It’s called “Bubble Burst”. I liked the theme. Basically it starts with a valid assumption that we are all not born feminists. We are born into a patriarchal societies, if not families. We grew up with specific ideas (bubbles) about the other gender. Often these bubbles break (more often if you’re a bayesian thinker. I’d written a blog on it). So the writing prompt was to identify such bubble burst situations in our lives and write a story/poem about it. Men should write their bubble burst moments wrt women and vice versa.
I wrote this story - (lot of Telugu reading these days is making Telugu my default writing language)
A few smaller bubbles have also burst during the session:
Nanda’s bubble burst moment was when he understood that women don’t need saviors and can solve their own problems. He wrote a nice poem on this. He found a way to publish it in print. So I’ll share when it is done.
Apparently a few men walk fast on footpaths when there is a woman in front of them. They don’t want to make women feel uncomfortable that they are being followed it seems.
Men can care like mothers.
I did a fun reel on a similar theme. Idea was Krish Ashok’s. At HLF, he funnily remarked how his book masalalab became one of the major contributors to mansplaining in Indian kitchens. I just added more words to it :) Also my mom’s voice featured in it xD
Wrote a couple of blogs on Statistics. I liked this - How frauds do science?
I read Steven Pinker’s “Enlightenment Now”. Not as great as I expected it to be. There is one good idea I could pick:
How we can use leisure as a measure of quality of life. So the average work-week used to be 60-70 hours in the 19th/20th century. It is a march of human progress that we are reducing it. And this should continue. Not advocating for lazyness. Here, work is the labor one does for sustenance. People have done literature, art, science in their leisure.
Apart from that, If you've become pessimistic reading news, this book can be an antidote. There’s a fact dump showing why we are living better lives than before and why media doesn’t report it.
That was my week.
How was yours?