mrin@herdesk

In search of the subtext..

[mrin@herdesk @mrin_atherdesk]

Women of the world, do not come to India. Do not spend your money on coming to a country where women are treated as expendable objects whose lives do not matter.

[mrin@herdesk @mrin_atherdesk]

@HasibaAmin He is still not recovered from the failed attempt at imitating Rahul Gandhi's deep sea diving.

[AJ+ @ajplus]

Hundreds of local residents and Buddhist monks in the coastal Sri Lankan town of Hiriketiya protested against increasing Israeli presence.

[Siddharth @DearthOfSid]

After Rahul Gandhi’s recent condemnation of Manusmriti, many complained that it was unnecessary because “no Hindu actually reads or follows Manusmriti”.

Here is the CM of India’s most populous state openly glorifying it as part of India’s heritage.

Now what?

[Shashant Shekhar @ShashantShekhar]

2011 - My nanaji died in Patna.

I took the train home. I watched my Mama light his pyre. I sat through the rituals. I missed two minor exams at IIT Delhi.

When I returned to campus, I went to ask for a re-exam.

A professor looked at me and said: “You people from Bihar come here on reservation, can’t handle the pressure, then make excuses and kill your grandparents ten times over. Bring me his death certificate.”

I was twenty years old.

Twenty.

I had just come back from a cremation.

My Dadaji was already fighting cancer. My dadi had died of cancer few years back. I remember thinking, with the kind of fear you don't say out loud, that there might be another funeral in our family soon.

There was.

Five months later.

And there I was, standing in a corridor of one of India’s finest institutions, being asked to prove that my grandfather was actually dead.

I still remember that corridor.

I remember the humiliation.

I remember the anger.

But more than anything, I remember how small and helpless I felt.

I was grieving, and the institution I had worked so hard to enter had reduced that grief to paperwork.

The Dean’s office eventually sorted it out. I sat the exam. I graduated in three years.

IIT Delhi gave me a platform I could never have had otherwise. I will always be grateful for that.

But gratitude does not require silence.

Because on Monday, nearly 300 students gathered outside the Director’s office at IIT Delhi.

Eight of their classmates have died by suicide since 2023.

The latest was Rishikesh, a 31-year-old MSc Physics student. He had lost his father. He took a semester off. He came back with his mother, only to find his name struck off the hostel rolls.

Imagine that.

You lose your father.

You step away because you are grieving.

You return to the campus that was supposed to be your home and discover that, administratively, you no longer belong there.

The students used a phrase for what they are experiencing:

“Administrative indifference.”

I know exactly what they mean.

And that is what makes this so painful.

I don't think the people inside that system wake up wanting to hurt students.

That is almost worse.

It is a machine.

A machine that knows how to measure CGPAs, cut-offs, placement packages, rankings and deadlines.

But somehow never learned how to measure grief.

Never learned how to recognise the look on the face of a twenty-year-old who has just come back from a funeral.

Never learned that sometimes, before asking for a certificate, you simply ask:

“Are you okay?”

Every year, our brightest children fight their way into these institutions.

And some of them don't make it out.

Then we announce an inquiry.

Form a committee.

Issue a statement.

And eventually, we go quiet.

We cannot keep doing this.

Two things are not difficult.

First: serious, mandatory sensitivity training for faculty and administrative staff. Not an induction video. Not a box to tick.

The person a student meets after a death in the family is often not a counsellor. It is a professor. A section officer. A hostel clerk.

In thirty seconds, that person can make a grieving student feel like a human being or like an inconvenience.

We have trained them to administer rules.

We have not trained them to recognise suffering.

Second: Counsellors.

One or two counsellors for thousands of students is not a mental-health system. It is a formality.

A student in crisis should not have to wait weeks for an appointment and then be expected to somehow survive the waiting.

Hire enough counsellors.

Make them permanent.

Make them accessible.

And make sure that when a student says, “I need help,” someone is actually there that week.

I owe IIT Delhi a great deal.

That is precisely why I am saying this.

Because I remember that corridor.

And I never want another twenty-year-old, standing there after a funeral, to feel the way I did.

Not at IIT Delhi.

Not anywhere.

[RT_India @RT_India_news]

Indian Man Shot Dead While Delivering Pizza In New York (Reports)

Gurdeep Singh, 28, from Punjab, was shot dead in Brooklyn on August 21 while delivering a pizza. The Indian Consulate in New York has confirmed his death and said it is assisting his family.

Police are investigating a possible street altercation. No arrest has been reported and the motive remains unclear. (Reports)

The killing comes just over two months after another 28-year-old Indian, Telangana’s Anshul Kuncha, was shot dead while delivering pizza in Philadelphia. His family alleged he had been lured to the location through a fake order.

[Dhanya Rajendran @dhanyarajendran]

Priyank Kharge asks if RSS will sing Vande Mataram instead of Sada Vatsale
https://t.co/KUhk3cHJKn

[mrin@herdesk @mrin_atherdesk]

@VinayDokania They got the trade deal of a lifetime and now can mock us as they please.

[mrin@herdesk @mrin_atherdesk]

Viswoguru theke Viswogoru.

[Shashank Mattoo @MattooShashank]

NEW: US Ambassador Sergio Gor slams Indian TV news

"I love getting back home and watching Indian TV news shows. The later it gets, the crazier the shows become. At 6 PM you have 8 people arguing on the show. At 10 PM, there are 12 people who are all talking at the same time."

[Ankit Mayank @mr_mayank]

“Why there are only 2 airlines? Why there are only 2 mobile companies?

There were 12-15 cellular companies and 10 airlines some 10 years ago

There is always some invisible hand creating these monopolies & duopolies

And that is the worst thing that can happen to a big country like India”

— Sachin Pilot brutally thrashed Modi Govt over ��Duopoly Raj’ 🔥

[mrin@herdesk @mrin_atherdesk]

All the cctvs in the world cannot stop student suicide it seems.

[wazziii @hopelessmalakha]

Peaceful protest at IIT Delhi demanding justice for Rishikesh who committed su!cide on 22nd August

[Maktoob @MaktoobMedia]

On Sunday, a bulldozer was used on the Darul Uloom Rahmania Madrasa in Fulat village, Muzaffarnagar, following a complaint by a Hindutva seer alleging that its construction was illegal.

Watch:

[India With Congress @UWCforYouth]

Gen Alpha Loading. . .

#ChhatronKiGoonj #StudentsProtest

[Jeremy Loffredo @loffredojeremy]

After Lynch was captured during the 2003 Iraq invasion, the media reported that the teenage soldier from West Virginia had fought fiercely against her Iraqi captors, firing until she ran out of ammunition, and had even been shot and stabbed multiple times. The Washington Post called her a “little girl Rambo” from West Virginia. Hollywood-style footage of U.S. forces raiding the Iraqi hospital where she was held was played on television stations across the country. But it later emerged that Lynch had not fought her captors, had not been shot or stabbed, and had been treated humanely by Iraqi medical staff, who even tried to return her to American forces but the Americans refused to take her back and instead staged an on-camera nighttime raid of the hospital, turning the spectacle into a Pentagon propaganda win. The U.S. neurosurgeon who treated Lynch found no evidence of gunshot wounds and testified that the Pentagon barred him from telling anyone.

[mrin@herdesk @mrin_atherdesk]

Patriotism according to RSS.

[👑Che_ಕೃಷ್ಣ🇮🇳💛❤️ @ChekrishnaCk]

Schools shut down, flowers dropped from helicopters to encourage this behaviour 🤮

[Neha @neha_aisa]

The politics of anti-BJP parties should be democratic and uphold the spirit of the Constitution.

If they behave like the BJP, the same people who reject the BJP will hold you accountable.

[Dipankar @Dipankar_cpiml]

#SchoolThikKaro #ShikshaSudharo

Report from an 'abandoned' primary school in Rajasthan (Pipalkoot tehsil, Pratapgarh district): The dilapidated school 'building' had to be demolished a month ago as it had become utterly insecure and dangerous. Rajasthan government must immediately rebuild the primary school in Gothra Fala (Panchayat Samiti Babdi, Tehsil Pipalkoot, District Pratapgarh).

गोठड़ा फला, पंचायत समिति बावड़ी , तहसील पीपलकुट, जिला प्रतापगढ़ राजस्थान में स्थित इस प्राथमिक विद्यालय में जिसमें 72 बच्चे पढ़ रहे हैं कि स्कूल बिल्डिंग एक महीने पहले गिरानी पड़ी क्योंकि रख रखाव के अभाव में सुरक्षा की ��ृष्टि से उसमें स्कूल चलाना संभव नहीं था। आज जरूरत हैं की तत्काल इस स्कूल के लिए बजट पारित किया जाए और स्कूल बिल्डिंग शौचालय समेत का निर्माण हो ताकि बच्चों को बुनियादी सुविधा के साथ शिक्षा पाने का मौका मिल सके।

[mrin@herdesk @mrin_atherdesk]

Indian govt arrests kids.

[VINOD JAKHAR @VinodJakharIN]

शर्म आनी चाहिए BJP सरकार को!

महंगाई से परेशान जनता और बच्चों ने चीनी की बढ़ती कीमतों के खिलाफ आवाज़ उठाई, तो सरकार ने उनकी आवाज़ सुनने के बजाय पुलिस बुलाकर हिरासत में डलवा दिया।

जनविरोधी नीतियों से रसोई का बजट बिगाड़ने के बाद अब आवाज़ भी दबाई जा रही है।

महंगाई का जवाब डंडा नहीं, जवाबदेही है।

[Mohammed Zubair @zoo_bear]

Arun Yadav has deleted over 60,000 X posts since being named BJP’s IT cell member. Among the deleted posts are communal slurs, racist abuses & attacks on women. In 2022, Haryana BJP had removed him as IT cell chief over an Islamophobic post. @AbhishekSay

https://t.co/cDFDQxjdBv

[Dushyant Arora @atti_cus]

Muslim flat.

[Glenn Diesen @Glenn_Diesen]

Kiev is now openly discussing conscripting women into the military. The British media is doing its part to prepare the public for the idea—and I suspect it will ultimately be packaged in empowering feminist stories. Gender equality in being forced to die for NATO.