The Blog of Cafe Dissensus Magazine – we DISSENT

Archive for ‘March, 2015’

Us and Them

By Amartya Banerjee
There is a lively school of thought in West Bengal that my father describes as “not Marxism, not socialism, not even secularism, but Denial-ism”. Without singling out any person or party, there is present, a pattern of justification which says that “Everybody is to blame, save us.”

Chapter 3: Game Plan

By Nilanjana Dey
Diana and Apollo were waiting eagerly at ‘The Den’ for the brief. Apollo noticed Loki’s strand-connection. The strands did look like limbs of white ants. Diana kept tapping her feet on the ground and spared occasional glances at the door expecting Loki.

Nirbhaya and Korpan Shah: Two Stories, Two Trajectories

By Nandini Ghosh
Korpan, on the other hand, is just the opposite of all that Nirbhaya represented – a mentally ill man, with little education and no stable job, hence with very few aspirations in life. Moreover, the aspersion of theft of a mobile phone made him more culpable for the crime he was accused of. It is almost believable that a mentally ill man with little money would be prone to committing such a crime.

Ending the Practice of ‘Witch-Hunting’ in Assam: An Interview with Archana Bhattacharjee about Birubala Rabha’s Work

By Joyce Yarrow
‘Witch-hunting’ in Assam involves branding a woman as a witch or daini, mostly based on the declaration of an Ojha or Bez (quack doctor).This usually happens when villagers approach the village Ojha about someone who has a chronic ailment and the Ojah identifies a woman as the source of the sickness and she is branded as a daini or witch.

Chapter 2: Loki’s Den

By Nilanjana Dey
Diana and Apollo looked around the dusky lanes as they tried to figure their way in. The entry had four doors and all looked the same. They were wondering which route to take.

Chapter 1: The Outcasts

By Nilanjana Dey
The city of white ants, Sopora, just woke up to a new technology. The new communication team – ringers – was all over the city, trying to attach strands and fit receivers that would connect each and every part of the city. And also other white-ant colonies. This way they would be able to network with one another much better.

The Banality of Evil: Nagaland Lynching

By Riti Das Dhankar
As these images were splashed in newspapers and news channels, one saw a crowd of thousands of men finding pleasure in inflicting pain, making videos, clicking pictures, dragging a dead man tied behind a vehicle and then hanging his body. How could a crowd of humans target a defenseless man, kill him, and find pleasure in doing so?

The Mars Club Member’s Daughter

By Achyut Dutt
Jyoti Singh’s rape hasn’t changed anything in India. There is that Guinness Book record that India still holds and will continue holding – of being the place where every 20 minutes, there is a rape. That works out to 72 rapes a day, a nice round figure.