LAMHE

For the last few days, I have been disturbed. Not because another murder has taken place. Sadly, India has witnessed many such tragedies before. What has unsettled me is something much deeper. Every time I read about another young couple caught in a shocking crime, I find myself asking the same question: How does an educated young person reach a point where ending a human life appears easier than speaking the truth? I am not writing about one particular case. The courts will decide who is guilty and who is not. My concern is something larger than any individual incident. It is about us—our families, our children and the emotional world we are creating for them. Perhaps this question troubles me so much because, more than forty years ago, I was also a young woman in love. I met my husband, in 1983. Whenever I tell our story, people assume that my parents opposed our marriage because I belonged to a Rajput family and he was Punjabi. That explanation is too simplistic. My father was a hig...

  I watched yet another controversy unfold on social media. A stage, a microphone, a cheering audience, and a young man joking that he wanted to “recover the cost of a biryani from his girlfriend.” The audience laughed. The clip spread. Apologies followed. Defences were offered. “It was just comedy.” “It was freedom of speech.” “We did not know what we were saying.” I am a mother of two daughters. I am also a counsellor, a community leader, and someone who has spent a lifetime working in media and the performing arts. I have seen societies change. I have lived in India, Fiji, and Australia. I have watched cultures evolve, and I have learned to respect differences. But there is one value that should never become negotiable: the dignity of another human being. A relationship is not a transaction. A dinner is not an investment. A gift is not a contract. No woman owes affection, intimacy, or her body because someone spent money on her. When young people repeatedly hear jokes that reduc...

A few days ago, someone asked me for my opinion. I gave it. They looked disappointed. Not angry. Not offended. Just disappointed. It took me a while to understand why. They had not come looking for an opinion at all. They had come looking for agreement. I have begun to notice this everywhere. In families. In friendships. On television debates. On social media. Even in counselling rooms. People ask questions that sound like invitations to think, but what they are really offering is a small examination paper. There is only one correct answer, and they already know what it is. The old saying was that truth hurts. I think the new truth is that disagreement hurts even more. When I was growing up, conversations were often noisy. Uncles argued about politics, aunts debated family matters, grandparents interrupted everyone because they believed experience deserved a hearing. Nobody unfriended anybody. Nobody announced that the family dinner was a toxic environment because two people voted diff...