Not Aloud Podcast

A podcast exploring secret lives of South Asians who're silently rebelling against societal rules and trying to live their dreams

[PenPencilDraw @penpencildraw]

Empty-quote generator.

[Not Aloud Podcast @Notaloudpodcast]

Also the privilege to be able or allowed to move out of your hometown, have extra expenses for 4-5 or even more years that your family can spare. Meanwhile arts has the space to still be a local, support your family by working part time and quickly join the workforce in 3 years.

[Jarshad NK @jarshadnk]

Sachin Tendulkar has finally spoken on the student protests, and I had to read his note twice: once as a fan and once as an editor. The fan was disappointed, but the editor realised that this was a textbook specimen of the kind of writing that George Orwell warned about in his essay “Politics and the English Language”.

The essay was written in 1946, but it might well have been written yesterday about this very statement. Orwell’s point was that when people want to hide something, they stop using plain words and reach instead for the passive voice, for fog, for phrases that sound like they mean something while meaning nothing at all.

Consider the line, where students are disappointed that “their hard work hasn’t been rewarded”. Rewarded by whom, and denied by whom? There was a paper leak, which means somebody leaked it, some institution failed to prevent it, and an official presides over that institution. Yet none of them appears in the statement, and neither does the leak itself. A crime with identifiable custodians has been turned into something that simply happened to lakhs of children through nobody's fault.

Then comes the list of those who must set things right: parents, teachers, friends, relatives, schools and administrators. If you read that list again slowly, you will notice it covers everyone in India except the people the students are actually protesting against, which is to say the NTA, the education ministry and the government. When everyone is responsible, nobody is, and that is not an accident of drafting. It was engineered to deflect blame.

There is also a quiet sentence buried in the middle. “A society which prioritises outcomes over effort will seek shortcuts over meritocracy” is a line about those who take shortcuts, meaning the cheat. So a note on protests around paper leaks ends up gently lecturing the leaked-upon about honesty. His father’s lovely lesson—that failure is okay but cheating is not—is again aimed squarely at individuals, while the scandal and protests right now are about institutions that failed them.

The rest of the statement is what Orwell called ready-made strips of words, glued together. Full of dreams and energy, fuel to our success, safeguard their aspirations. Nobody can disagree with any of it, which is precisely the point, for this is prose engineered so that no one in power will find a single sentence to object to.

What an actual position would have looked like is a single sentence in the active voice: The government must find and punish those who leaked the paper, and fix the system that allowed it. He wrote 160+ words to avoid writing that one.

Here’s Orwell’s full essay for those interested:
https://t.co/VlPoJdOcDG

[Joy @Joydas]

BJP preparing Bollywood Actors to defend the Government

[Arunima 🤟🥂 @arunima_3_5]

Hey PZ, under orders or what?

[Harsh @Abrakakhobra]

READ IT CAREFULLY. READ IT AGAIN. THIS IS THE FUCKIN TOOLKIT. DON’T FALL FOR IT.

[M.🐦‍🔥 @ayosznn]

may your “let me just try” work out beautifully.

[Not Aloud Podcast @Notaloudpodcast]

@twinitisha There's the other side where educated wives, working or not, also get beaten up by drunkard husbands but they don't leave either. Neither our society nor their own families are kind to separated/divorced women.

[kalim @akhmxt]

I’ve highlighted this to the folks at X but they did not bother to response. The victims range from influencers/comedians, journalists, to academics.

[Doe ♡ @DoeEyedGirlie]

Doctors will look you straight in the eye and prioritise hypothetical future children you've told them you don't want over your existing health and comfort. The concept of a woman whose life isn't designed around getting pregnant at some point is treated as unfathomable.

[Not Aloud Podcast @Notaloudpodcast]

@yoonchaand The same mom will expect you to do the laundry which includes their undergarments, dry and fold it all up as well 🙆🏻‍♀️

[CIRUS ⁷ @innerchilding7]

Indian women still married by a knot around their neck, a signal on their forehead to show that their body belongs to their husband & are packed off to husbands house like a packet of chips
Even educated, earning women
If u have a choice stop going through this humiliation ritual

[lizz @Spxxxya]

the grief of being a woman missing out on most of your youthful experiences bc your parents are assholes

[Shayrad @Shayrad_Azavan]

Women cooking easy to cook meals when their husband isn't around tells you alot about the Indian family system
🙂🙂🙂

[Anshika Chouhan @anshika_writes1]

The FACT THAT MY FRIEND WHO IS A https://t.co/DMn3TWFJch, https://t.co/TOqm2TJrC7, pursuing PhD and FULL TIME CORPORATE TRAINER WHO EARNS MORE THAN HER HUSBAND, STILL WENT THROUGH THIS RITUAL IS WHY I NEED FEMINISM.

AND SO DO YOU.

[lipsey @fowontmiss]

Someone said this: “once your kids no longer depend on you for food and survival you are left with the relationship that you cultivated or lack thereof.” I think it makes a lot of sense

[Goddess Graveyard Punany✨ @xm_muva]

There are little boys following these men. This is going to be a boy's first introduction to sexual violence, how will he learn that women are human beings if the elders in their communities are having a rape festival? The society is broken.

[Not Aloud Podcast @Notaloudpodcast]

All of this fails when you have parents/family who would have controlled the way you breathe if possible, let alone live as per your wish. A culture that constantly interferes in what you consume, frown at sportswear and blame you for the men staring at you is why fitness is hard

[SANYA | Corporate Athlete Method @sanyayyyy]

I’ve posted a lot about why India makes it hard to stay fit.
But here’s the other side:
- unfair advantages you have for getting fit just because you live in India.

1.Domestic help. Cooking, cleaning, laundry - most of it is handled for you. People in the West spend 2-3 hours a day on chores. That’s 2-3 hours you could be using to move, train, or just rest. You have time. You’re just not using it for yourself.

2.Full body health checkups for ₹3,000-4,000. In the US that costs lakhs without insurance. You can monitor every marker in your body twice a year for the price of one dinner out. No excuse to not know your numbers.

3. You can hire a cook for less than what you spend eating out. A full time cook costs ₹8,000-12,000/month. You’re already spending more than that on Swiggy and Zomato. Redirect that money and every single meal is home cooked. Problem solved.

4.Quick commerce changed the game and nobody’s talking about it. Eggs, chicken, paneer, fruits, vegetables - delivered to your door in 10 minutes. Zepto. Blinkit. Instamart. The excuse of “I didn’t have healthy food at home” is dead. You’re 10 minutes away from a full kitchen restock at any time of the day.

5.Freshly cooked meals are still culturally normal here. In most countries people batch cook on Sunday and eat the same reheated food all week. Here, fresh food daily is standard. The infrastructure for eating well already exists in your household.

6. Weather that lets you train outdoors almost year round. Walking, running, outdoor parks, morning sessions - all usable 10 months a year. Half the world is stuck indoors for 6 months. You’re not.

[hanyur @menghanyurkan]

remember that religious holiday festivities won't exist without women's domestic labour that is often left unseen and underappreciated :)