The Accidental Dentist

 Arundhati Roy's decisive remonstration: The Ministry Of Utmost Happiness. Before you commit yourself to this brutally honest, sometimes too bold, and screaming manuscript about identity, identity, and identity, you need to understand that hidden away in those lines, is a truth waiting to unravel. Roy has used her fiction as a witness, one that will make us see more than we want to. It's not one story but an accumulation of many. It freely talks about Anjum who used to be Aftab once, born with an ambiguity that takes her on a lifetime journey. In her somewhere you will see all those you have forgotten. She becomes a disputed land literally, lives through a physical partition, never overcoming the past that haunts her, and still trying to exist in the present.  Then you will be introduced to the beautiful yet tragically haunting valley of Kashmir. You will again see those who are born with disputes running in their blood, this time inheriting a land that demands sacrifice. You ...

                     A BATTLE WITHIN REACH We are among the three remaining polio-endemic countries in the world still being haunted by this century-old curse. The sad part? The witches have already cooked up the potion, they have come across the solution and tried it successfully. Pakistan's battle against poliovirus is multifactorial. The intersection between health illiteracy, religious extremism, and violence against the vaccinators have all put a halt to this chapter's conclusion.   THE ENDLESS CAMPAIGN In 1974 Pakistan launched its Polio Immunization Program, but efforts for eradication officially started in 1994. WHO backed the program to combat the six-vaccine preventable diseases. Since then, the battle against this crippling disease has seen many ups and downs . The endemic remained active despite hundreds of rounds of vaccination. Regardless of having one of the largest networks of skilled polio workers in the world...

 UNLEARNING HARMFUL GENDER NORMS: Why it's important for a just and inclusive world. The UNDP's GSNI (Gender Social Norm Index) report for the year 2023 was published in June, and it clearly states that  without tackling biased gender social norms we will not achieve gender equality as reflected in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). WHY IT EXISTS: Years of cultural practices are handed down to generations, as holy grails, with absolute authority over life. They are blindly followed without questions. Slowly and gradually they become part and parcel of daily life. So nuanced is their presence that it's never noticed. Not until you actually sit down with it and have a talk. Not until that. Limiting beliefs are the genesis point of gender norms. A woman can't lead, a man can't cook, this color is for girls, and those toys are for boys. We have created gender roles that are leading towards a lifelong cycle of inequality. If those gender norms are left unchallenge...

'A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.'  Woolf's A Room of One's Own is a testament of the truest nature. An ode to all the lost voices. A justification for the dreams lost.  A Room of One's Own is a long essay that Woolf based her polemic on the lectures that she gave in 1928. It is a landmark of feminist thought about creative inequality and women's struggle for independence. In the 80-page book, her analysis of women's lives will make you stop mid-sentence countless times. She'll take you on a journey of disparity among the sexes, differences that it has on the viewing of the world, the unfairness in the opportunities, and how all of that combined leads her to deduce the importance of independence a woman needs in order to write fiction or write at all.   Woolf dissects many themes in her book, Mainly revolving around the shameful underinvestment of society in women's education that thus led to gendered language...