I can’t get myself to troll Amruta Fadnavis. Call me a hypocrite if you want, but I just can’t.
Not because I agree with everything she says, or even like all her choice, but because it’s honestly refreshing to see a Mrs. CM with a personality of her own. Someone who has stepped out of the shadow of her husband & unapologetically pursues her hobbies & interests as she sees fit.
Could she lend her voice to more deserving causes or projects? Maybe. Probably even yes. But for now, she has my heart simply for refusing to become a silent ceremonial extension of power.
"The baby you abOrtEd could've cured cancer."
So could the women you kept in the kitchen, denied education, autonomy, and basic human rights. You didn't care about them either.
Eat all mangoes. Eat every mango you can. The small, juicy, fibrous, nameless ones you pluck off that old tree down the gully. The planted-a-Dussheri-seed-but-never-grafted Dussheri-ish mango from your masi’s garden in Bhopal.
Blushing Sindhuras. Sweet Kesars. Yes eat as many of those beautiful Alphonsos from Devgad packed carefully in cardboard boxes as you can. But also eat Pairi, Neelam, Ratna. And Sindu - a cross between the Ratna & the Alphonso which is slowly gaining more ground because climate change has wreaked havoc on the finicky Alphonso - ask farmers, yields have been down for a few years now, talk to farmers.
Eat with the season.
Eat the early mangoes from the south - Mankurad, Badami, Banganapalli, Imam Pasad in late April-May.
Eat your middle-India mangoes - Kesar, Bombay Green, and also Malgova and Mallika which are late season bloomers from the south, and your Himsagar, Gulabkhaas, beauties from Malda and Murshidabad - try to lay your hands on a Champa, Saranga, or Kohitoor in May-June!
And go both hands in, into piles of Amrapali, Chausa, Malihabadi Dussheris, Langdas in July.
This is just the tip of the mango iceberg, there are so many more loved & delicious varieties - India has near 1,500 varieties of mangoes.
Why would you eat just one? Of course have your favourites but also look at our beautiful biodiversity - please cherish it! Eat widely. Eat greedily. Eat because these mangoes are so delicious. Eat in RESISTANCE TO LOSS, eat like these mangoes might disappear because some of them already are!
I am responsible for Deepinder Goyal not paying good money to his delivery workers.
Every time I order, I load baskets on both Blinkit and Instamart (I avoid Zepto), and check which one is cheaper.
I have been buying more on Instamart because, of late, it has stopped charging delivery fees.
I don't expect 10 minute delivery (it never happens), but I do get annoyed if it stretches beyond 18-20 minutes.
At times, if the tracking shows that the delivery person isn't moving, I call up and ask where he is. (I let it go if they say they had stopped for lunch or tea.)
The other day, there was a heavy surge charge and a potential delay - I would have had to pay ₹72 extra on Blinkit - and I wasn't happy.
I doubt I would buy anything on these apps if they started charging more for delivery, or stopped giving heavy discounts.
So, the business model they follow - pay less to delivery workers, and pass on the savings to customers - comes directly from the way in which I use their services.
They wouldn't exist without my self-interest.
btw in your 20's and 30’s you’ll start rediscovering the niche interests and hobbies you had as a kid. it’s very important you revisit them. your younger self was actually on to something.
The way Ambedkar's wife described his routine, would feminists call this a "manchild" behavior or Extreme Entitlement?
Even highly conservative Indian households would not expect women to perform such servile tasks, such as bathing and soaping their husbands, as a "duty".
His wealth and lifestyle shows how earning British paychecks could buy someone a royal life, complete with servants for even the smallest tasks.
“Once he had his clothes on, our cook Sudama would be ready to help him put on his socks and shoes.”
Look at how he treated the people working for him, grown adults reduced to personal accessories.
What really stands out is the hypocrisy. How they love to demonize Brahmins by claiming they treated others badly, but here we have someone doing exactly that and even worse, while still acting morally superior.
That makes many of these “atrocity” stories sound fake or more like exaggerations pushed to serve a narrative.
When the loudest critics behave worse than the people they attack, it’s fair to question whether this is about justice at all or just about pushing an agenda.