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Names have been changed to protect the identities of the interviewees. Illustrations and photographs by Madhushree unless mentioned otherwise. “Because we cannot see how much we have earned on the ticket vending machine, we have no idea if [on a crowded bus] the passenger has paid their ticket fare or not.” On February 3, 2021, Ebix announced that EbixCash, its Indian subsidiary, had procured a 7-year contract with Pune Mahanagar Parivahan Mahamandal Ltd (PMPML) to replace the old e-Ticket vending machines....

All names have been changed to protect the identities of the interviewees. Illustrations and photos by Madhushree. I am not a fan of Bike Taxis I have ridden a bike taxi four times. I was short of money all four times, so an auto or a cab was out of the question, and I didn’t have easy access to the bus. In India, three leading aggregator platforms- Ola, Uber and Rapido provide bike taxi services....

2022 was full of surprises and revelations. However, the lesson I hold closest to my heart was unlearning my internalised misogyny. I realised I looked down upon women I perceived as pick-me girls or not like other girls. While many people who engage in this behaviour enable sexism, it is more helpful to view internalised misogyny as a response or a reaction to patriarchy. As several cultural critics have started pointing out, even the hurling of labels such as pick-me or trad-wife tends to blur the lines between calling out misogyny and reinforcing it....

When I watched Black Panther, I remember thinking, “This is not just any superhero film. It has heart.” Actually, here is my orginal review of the film, that I wrote when I was 17. I remember crying in the theatre, feeling hopeful and moved. As a visual communication design student, the visuals had blown me away. Despite being fully aware of what Marvel does, I went into Wakanda Forever with a sliver of hope, but I was thoroughly disappointed....

Does art not also contain the opposite of this ‘Dionysian’ losing of oneself? Does it not also contain the ‘Apollonian element of entertainment and satisfaction which consists precisely in the fact that the onlooker does not identify [themselves] with what is represented but gains distance from it, overcomes the direct power of reality through its deliberate representation, and finds, in art, that happy freedom of which the burdens of everyday life deprive [them]?...

TLDR: The base website is hand-written and uses Bootstrap. The blog is built with Hugo and uses the excellent PaperMod theme (with a single, minor addition). Hosting is via Cloudflare Pages. The website One of the primary design goals was that Madhu should be able to edit the blog and make textual edits to the website directly from GitHub. This ruled out fancy React-based SSGs such as Next or Gatsby. I eventually settled on Bootstrap and Hugo, picking Hugo over Jekyll simply because I liked how PaperMod looked....

An ongoing collection of gnomic neologisms, lilting phrases and word combinations from my readings that, when spoken, just roll off the tongue and fall together — like elusive puzzle pieces, to illustrate complexities that I previously believed I had no language for. Use Control+F or Command+F to find a particular phrase or word. Words moribund: In a dying state; dying; at the point of death. 1 motley: Consisting of many different types, parts, or colors that do not seem to belong together....

My morning classes begin at 8:30 AM. To reach on time by bus, where I actually have a chance to get a seat, I have to wake up at 6:00 AM because the frequency on my route is low and erratic—a bus every 30 minutes on a good day. However, I often miss the one scheduled to reach my stop at around 7:20 AM, leaving me no choice but to catch the overcrowded buses....

Welcome to my blog! I hope to talk about culture, poetry, art, cinema, social science, mental health, observations and transformative justice. This blog is a writing exercise for me to have a dialogue with myself, slowly.