'If you're going to tell me what a lame fossil I am, save it,' says Mitali Saran.
'From exile in India, he keeps the Tibetan cause blazing on the world radar.' 'He could take himself very seriously indeed -- hundreds of millions of people do, after all.' 'Instead,' discovers Mitali Saran, 'he is a joyous, laughing beacon of dissent, both political and spiritual.'
'I would like to extend a heartfelt mea culpa to Mr Modi and his associates.' 'I'm sorry for having been so critical -- I didn't know, I didn't know...' says Mitali Saran.
'Paying my taxes, diligently repaying my loans, following the rules, scrupulously doing things by the book, when there's this big, beautiful world of unregulated chicanery I could have indulged in for years before just flying off to greener pastures, like Lalit Modi, Vijay Mallya and Nirav Modi,' says Mitali Saran.
'I can barely see anything in the news about the farmer protests, and all I've seen of Nirav Modi is that he can't come home because he's busy, and that the CBI is writing letters begging him to please at least call the Indian embassy, no?'
'First sold to us as a voluntary scheme for government subsidies, Aadhaar has since sprouted multiple heads and tails, horns, fangs, warts, and a nasty case of halitosis.' 'It is unacceptably intrusive, our data is hilariously unsafe, and fraud, corruption, and criminality is rampant,' says Mitali Saran.
'One is trying to be an upright citizen with a fresh-faced liver, in full possession of her faculties, but if ever one has needed a stiff drink, it has been now,' says Mitali Saran.
'In this moment, many women are incandescent with anger at the injustice of it all, and are done with being patient. They want to breathe.' 'They've decided to set fire to this toxic oxygen, and to make it as uncomfortable for men as it is for women,' says Mitali Saran.
'As I watched Sacred Games, I kept flinching at the thought of all the thorns poised to lodge themselves in the sides of the thin-skinned,' says Mitali Saran.
'The greatest danger is that the current crisis will clear a little, we'll be able to see our hands in front of our faces, and with great relief we'll forget all about it and willingly breathe poison until next November', says Mitali Saran.
Garbh Vigyan Sanskar's logic: Have sex when the right planets are lined up; stop after you get pregnant, notes Mitali Saran.
'Some semi-literate lunkhead tweeting at Rs 2 per tweet from a dingy basement in Chennai or San Diego accomplishes nothing, but give hundreds of thousands of them a time, date, and talking points, and they can create a wall of sound -- a nonsensical wall, perhaps, but one that is heard, and that can occasionally prevail just because it's there,' says Mitali Saran.
'As an idea, cleaning up India is a good one,' says Mitali Saran.
'The 2019 battle is a battle for the kind of India that we want to live in.' The Congress's long history is pockmarked with sins great and small, but Mr Gandhi has the advantage of representing a new generation with a relatively clean slate, and a chance to redefine contemporary perception,' says Mitali Saran.
'It promises to get much, much darker before the dawn.' 'But at least dawn has a fighting chance,' says Mitali Saran.
'There is space for many faces and many tongues in this Republic of ours. But it only has one Constitution, and its citizens are vigilant,' says Mitali Saran.
'All my life I've walked into hotel rooms and headed straight to the tea tray to make myself cup after relaxing cup of tea in that kettle, never once considering that somebody may have boiled their undies in it,' says Mitali Saran.
'The wonderful thing about being a liberal is that you can go ahead and be the very last one left standing.' 'So go ahead and fling social media faeces at us, tell us how irrelevant we are, and accuse us of opposing Modi to be cool,' says Mitali Saran.
'Already, the BJP treats the Constitution like the unpopular old uncle at the party, whom everyone pays lip service to and then proceeds to ignore,' says Mitali Saran.
Glimpses from Archana Rao, Quirkbox and Sahil Kochhar's collections at Lakme Fashion Week Summer Resort 2016.
'The thing we fondly call FB has come a long way from the cute baby dimples it had in 2006.' 'Today the dimples are long gone and FB looms over us as Mr Hyde, designing the news we see with algorithms that determine what we might want to see; allowing companies to empty our pockets as we hug it good morning and to lobotomise us as we sleep,' says Mitali Saran.
'People who pooh-pooh privacy are like those kids who are so busy getting the right selfie that they back all the way off the edge off the cliff, and then look all surprised on the way down,' says Mitali Saran.
While it's important for the courts to enjoy public trust, says Mitali Saran, the only way to protect the institution is to scrupulously prove its credibility.
'Here's a list of the things we should be reading more about in the media,' says Mitali Saran.
'The time has come, my fellow citizens, for us to pause in our selfish little lives, take a breath, and contribute to creating this opportunity for fundamentalists to achieve their full potential,' says Mitali Saran.
The least the Opposition can do, for India's sake, is try to offer one, says Mitali Saran.
'Maybe, if Mr Modi can fire over Patel's gigantic shoulder, people will start to think that he is very much like Patel?' 'It's a long shot, but the Modi sheen has worn awfully thin, and after five years and a long, much-frayed rope, he faces real accountability from voters.' 'He needs any help he can get,' says Mitali Saran.
'The BJP's election campaign promise of development isn't dead, it just doesn't look anything like what was promised.' 'The results are plain to see, which is why so many of us wake up with a knot in our stomachs, wondering what fresh new hell the day's news cycle will bring,' says Mitali Saran.
'Guys, you're going to say, Who cares what the world thinks? We're the best, it is our destiny to lead the world; look, everyone's doing yoga, everything the world has was originally ours.' 'But let's get real -- you care deeply what the world thinks,' says Mitali Saran.
'I'm a little fuzzy on the details, but I know that everyone is behaving as if they've just discovered that their favourite grandfather is a peeping tom,' says Mitali Saran.
'Thank you to those citizens of India who, every single day, quietly, anonymously, and decently refrain from targeting, hounding or murdering their neighbours, no matter how much they want to; and thanks also to those who loudly stand up for each other in the face of threat,' says Mitali Saran.
'It would be nice if we could all just take a deep breath and focus on the only feeling that really matters, and for which previous generations worked a very long time at great cost: Freedom,' says Mitali Saran.
'As I suspected, I had way, way too much clothing, which you would never know from what I actually wear,' says Mitali Saran.
'And if you think this is alarmist nonsense, you are helping it happen,' says Mitali Saran.
At a party, Mitali Saran -- with wild exuberance -- decided to jump through an open doorway, from the living room to the terrace, and found herself in the doctor's office the next morning!
'I pack my water, biscuits, books and tent, and take my place in the queues.' 'Every time I get close, cash runs out.' 'Deserted shops, my dry bank, the empty ATMs -- this entire gigantic shitstorm is now more real and easier to process,' says Mitali Saran.
The Right to Privacy judgment reinstates the individual as VIP, says Mitali Saran.
I'm a single Indian woman, I have unpredictable hours and overnight guests, I'm stubborn as a mule and I like practising the drums,' says Mitali Saran, who is house-hunting these days.
