Talking about her life as the youngest girl born in a typical middle class Punjabi family, she illustrates the many hypocrisies and everyday traits of Indian families that seem harmless, but have long lasting impacts.

In this diary of hers, she narrates how her marriage was of utmost priority to her parents, how “love” and “happiness” were completely out of context for successful marriages, how patriarchy is an age old ritual followed especially in middle class India, how divorce is a name of the devil himself, and how difficult and yet imperative it is, for one and all, regardless of age, sex and gender, to be independent and live life for themselves. 

This story is about how the protagonist struggles for a divorce after finally realizing that the water has gone too deep. And no, it isn’t just abuse or beating or alcoholism, but plain unhappiness and incompatibility that can ruin marriages and families, too. It is about how it is perfectly okay, even necessary, to stand up for yourself. Always. And finally, how everything that happens, can be taken as a positive learning experience, no matter how hard, or how bad.

Funny and light-hearted, yet sad and wise, The Diary of A Reluctant Feminist is for everyone who has once been afraid to talk to their family and had hesitancies to stand up for themselves, thinking they might (god forbid) be coined a “feminist”.

The Great Poet Rabindranath Tagore commented after playing his drama in England, “There was a time when, in human world, most of our important dealings with our fellow-beings were personal dealings, and a professional element in society was never hugely disproportionate to the normal constitution of its life.

Today another factor has made itself immensely evident in shaping and guiding human destiny. It is the spirit of the organisation, which is not social in character, but utilitarian. But the personal man is not dead, only dominated by organised man. The view that today we see a titanic power with endless curiosity to analyse and know, but without sympathy to understand;with numberless arms to coerce and acquire, but no serenity of soul to realize and enjoy.

It is an organised passion of greed that is stalking, does not represent the whole truth as to its character. Such an objective passion lacks the true majesty of human nature; it only assumes a terrifying bigness, its physiognomy blurred through its cover of an intricate network – the scientific system. It barricades itself against all direct human touch with barriers of race pride and prestige of power. Now we have an organised avarice – frightfully simple in its purpose,mechanically complicated in its process.” William Shakespeare also commented,

“The patient dies while physician sleeps;
orphan pines while oppressor feeds;
justice is feasting while widow weep;
avarice is sporting while infection breeds”.

Has the world changed a bit from 1923 to 2012?

The world war-II has contributed to dramatic changes in the society, its prevalent ethical guidance & value system as well as the intricate nature of human being both internally and externally. It is really amazing to gesticulate now, what a great visionary Rabindranath was, who lived far, far ahead of his time.

Beyond the space-time coordinates each day, in each moment mankind combats the challenges of life, enriching experience from the conflicts, perturbations in various strata, which simultaneously create a tragedy that inculcates in him strong desire of his soul for transition to serenity & salvation. This is the focal theme of the epic drama, The Red Oleander(Raktakarabee), which Rabindranath wrote in 1923, just at the time when Adolf Hitler was gaining ground (third Reich 1933-1945). Love and only love is the laurel of salvation. Evolution of an individual to international, achieving internationality besides relief of one from all mental agony and anguish from inner coordinates has been passionately & neatly weaved in this drama. In this backdrop the poet very carefully placed Nandini of Ishanipara, as an icon of enormous vitality and symbol of love.

In contrast to that character, Tagore portrayed a mighty & brute king, who is the owner of gold mines. He has a complex machinery of administration which has a simple and sole purpose of acquisition of wealth by the way of oppression. The fascist machinery does not even hesitate to kill the disobedient labour. The king never appears in front. He cherish that his subjects should scare him for his enormous power. To him the philosophy is simple as Bernard Shaw once stated,

“when I prevent you from doing what you want to do that is law & order; when you prevent me from doing what I want to do that is persecution”.

Nandini once met him and advised to be one amongst other rather than one above other. She told that it is love and only love that the man cherish but unable to communicate because of possible mismatch of wavelengths. Both Nandini & Ranjan had to pay their prices.

The poet also mentioned, “Nandini is the heroine of this play, has definite features of an individual person. She is not an abstraction, but persuaded by an abstraction, like one tormented by a ghost. And this is the drama. Nandini is a real woman who knows that wealth and power are maya, and that the highest expression of life is in love, which manifests in this play in her love for Ranjan. But love-ties are ruthlessly molested by megalomaniac ambition,while an acquisitive intellect plies its psychological curiosity, probing into the elusive mystery of love through vivisection.

I (the poet) have a strong faith in the simple personality of man than its prolific brood of machinery that wants to crowd it out. This personality – the divine essence of the infinite in the vessel of finite – has its last treasure-house in woman’s heart. Her pervading influence will someday restore the human to the desolated world of man”.

Is there any drama, which explores the conquest in such span, depth, yet relevant today? Rabindranath himself said,

“My drama is simultaneously of individual human being and human belonging to the mass.”

He has embedded simultaneously the inner and outer coordinates,reality and abstraction by crafting through meticulous choice & placement of words, style of presentation and the elements of composition to such accuracy yet divided in so many layers that to communicate it effectively on the stage through verbal, physical language to such an accuracy & precision such that it appears to be real to the audience, is a real lifetime challenge to any creative mind. The ambitious challenge propelled astonishments in us time and again, whenever we have read the play or seen the play on stage! But who would disagree that it is the love, and love only makes a person insane? Kishore felt that he would consider himself rather rewarded, even if, he had to sacrifice his life to search and present the red oleander to Nandini.

What ultimately the poet wanted to communicate through his master piece? The Poet himself stated that he has a strong faith for simple personality and utilitarian philosophy. His political vision was sharp & straight forward, which we see many times in several articles compiled in the “Kalantar” and also in another epic drama “Ghare Baire”. He has strongly opposed the obtrusiveness. He has questioned there the pseudo-right in the name of democracy (consider the rise & fall of the third Riech), which has a hidden interest of satisfying ill-directed collective objective along with personal gratification; which actually weakens the very foundation of the Institution. It is in his version, “The woman will one day prove that meek in soul, through the sure power of love; will rescue this world from the dominance of the unholy spirit of rapacity.The joy of this faith has inspired me (the poet himself) to pour all my heart in painting against the back ground of black shadows – the nightmare of a devil’s temptation – the portrait of Nandini as the bearer of message of reality, the saviour through death”.

Nandini leaves us forlorn on stage. But her soul is like a philosopher’s stone that touches our soft & sensitive heart; the vacuum is sharply felt with a remnant of hope that it is there surrection of the pink human bondage and that possibility is only illuminated behind the dropped screen.

As we have only one sky; so we have only one Rabindranath Tagore; who could so passionately weave the intricate, yet diverse human fabric in varied dimensions; which one has to realize from heart and not merely from mind or intellect.

We pay our most humble tribute to the apostle of our pride & prestige and the icon of a fulfilling & inspiring life.

This is not only about relationships per say, this about your goals in life, the small decisions you make, this is about your choice. It is foolish to believe that what we wish would come to us easy. You need to work towards your goal, your dreams, and in that process it might often happen that you trip, or slip or bruise yourself black and blue, that does not mean that you should give up. Your conviction in your dream is what will help you stand back up dust off the dirt and  get back on  the track. This as per me is a refining process and this is what helps you to age wisely and gracefully., just like wine, get finer with age!

By: Anish Chakraborty

However, I write mostly about relationships and love, I will speak about giving up on the people we love. It often happens that we get so worked up in our own issues that we tend to have attributional errors. We tend to succumb to self serving bias and glorify ourselves for a stable relationship and accuse the other person for bring all our efforts down. Then our little gods and goddesses inside our heads tell us that why is the onus of the entire relationship fall on us? And we get up and take the elegant walk. Have you ever turned back and judged your actions without taking sides? It is easy to blame someone for being a screw up, even easier to give up saying “I screwed up…”. What is difficult is holding on during the worst times, giving the other person  the space they want. Many would argue that ‘what is not ours can never be and we need to let go’ many would also defend their pride and think that it is belittling for them. To them I would like to say that how do you know if the other person is not your lobster (reference to Phoebe Buffay; FRIENDS. Someone I love once told me that there are difficult times in a relationship, so difficult that either one or both would feel that giving up is the better option, but then we will not.

You never know that the person you are quitting on, you are his redemption, you are the one thing they are fighting the world for, and someday they will come back, will  you not be there when they do? Will you just let go?

Telegram is another messaging app with other popular apps in market like WhatsApp. In a fast quick look you will find no difference with well known WhatsApp.

Similarity:

• Telegram works very similarly to WhatsApp. After starting the app, you must first verify your mobile number. You will then receive a code via SMS. This is either automatically confirmed or you must enter it by hand.

• You can write to people, who are in your phone contacts and have Telegram. Your contacts, who have Telegram, are shown at the top of your Contacts. They also have pictures similar concept like WhatsApp.

• Telegram, by design, is very much reminiscent of WhatsApp. Telegram has a simple neat & clean user interface. Profile information of your chat partner can be accessed with a quick tap on the small profile picture at the top right. You will also find their last-seen status, phone number, and you can set a custom notification ringtone for each contact. Previously exchanged media such as videos, photos and location data can be found under “Shared Media”, very oriented towards WhatsApp.

How is Telegram different from the popular messaging app, Whatsapp? Why Switch to Telegram? 

Free: On top of that, Telegram is free and will stay free without ads or subscription fees, forever. Telegram is a non-profit project. The team says they do not intend to sell ads, bring revenue or accept outside investment.

Secret Chat: What makes Telegram so special is “Start Secret Chat” which is a new chat window with end-to-end encryption. No data is stored on the Telegram servers. When a secret chat is created, the participating devices exchange encryption keys using two layers of secure encryption based on 256-bit symmetric AES encryption, RSA 2048 encryption and Diffie–Hellman secure key exchange. After the secure end-to-end connection has been established, the app generates a picture that visualizes the encryption key for your chat. Telegram is claiming any Secret Chat will be 200% secure, which certainly sounds confident.

Self-destruct timer: However, the most interesting thing about these new settings is the self-destruct timer. If you choose to enables this, you can specify how much time will elapse between sending a message from your device to the receiver before it self-destructs. This means not only are the messages never cached but they are also irrevocably destroyed after a set period of time. The selectable duration is between one week and two seconds configured in various set stages. In the test the destruction of the messages worked immediately, leaving traces nowhere on either device.

Speed & Stability: Telegram servers are distributed all over the world which enhances the speed and security of your messages. Telegram ran with very stable and reliable performance and the messages were delivered without delay due to its decentralized cloud based mechanism. The messenger stood up to its claim to be one of the fastest messenger apps available. Even with the self-destruction mode enabled all chats worked flawlessly.

GROUP CHAT & SHARING: With this app’s group chat you can carry on a conversation with up to 100 people, which is double of WhatsApp. Also, by using the paper clip icon you can send your pictures and videos from your gallery with a size of up to one gigabyte and also documents (doc, zip, mp3, etc). You can share your real time geographical location with your friends too.

CUSTOMIZATION: In the settings you can edit your profile, set the text size and activate animations. Background, Notifications and sound options can also be customized here.

Cross platform compatibility: The final cherry on top is that Telegram can be used on multiple devices, something WhatsApp still can’t do. It has cloud based decentralized messaging system. That means all your messages and contents are backed up in Telegram’s server. Due to this they have also created the desktop client for Windows and Linux. It works same as the mobile application. You need no emulator to install on your pc unlike WhatsApp. It works with no lagging no crash on Windows XP, 7 and 8. The app works in Windows 8.1 too.

UNLIMITED CLOUD STORAGE: Telegram offers free unlimited cloud storage for all your Telegram messages and media that you can securely access from multiple devices. In result, you will never lose your data again.

SUPPORT: For real-time support, please go to settings in Telegram and select “Ask a Question” to send a message directly to teams support staff (phone number 333). You can also email at support@telegram.org.

DISADVANTAGE

No voice chat: Voice chat is absent in Telegram. No facility for audio chatting is disappointing the Telegram users. While this feature make WhatsApp popular among messengers. But Telegram team assure they will add the features in coming versions.

No migration: Each new phone number is a new Telegram account. So if you change your phone number, you won’t be able to access your messages until you re-login. Where WhatsApp allow you to migrate your cell-phone number along with all your account information.