The Delhi Diaries

This is the first year of the YIF programme where sexual harassment training and workshops are mandatory. Considering myself to be as woke a feminist as they come, I thought that I was well aware of the sexual harassment and consent terminology and didn’t think that there was anything else I could learn. So what is the point of having these sessions? Led by Dr Madhavi Menon, all students were briefed on the Ashoka sexual harassment policy; what constitutes as sexual harassment, how to make a complaint to the Committee on Sexual Harassment (or 'CASH' for short), what the procedure would be and what the penalties are if a student is found guilty. She kick-started the session with a short video from AIB which challenged some of the pre-conceived ideas of courting/stalking and other themes that are propagated in Bollywood films. The batch was then divided in to groups and each watched a series of short films, produced by Ashoka students which mimicked real-life scenarios of incid...

As I was handed my passport containing my Indian student visa the embassy official told me that I was going to a fake university. She said that the one that I had listed was not on their register of legitimate universities. Ashoka university – the university that I am attending – is 7 years’ young in its establishment. In a country whose universities are well known and have gained veteran status, I thought that perhaps the register simply had not been updated. I had provided her with offer letters and other supporting documentation so I didn’t understand how she had arrived at this conclusion and more so, why she seemed so smug about it. As I stood there, delighted in having the visa in my hand but simultaneously trying to process this information, I wondered, could I have been hood-winked? In this age of fake news, nothing is concrete. And the real question to be asked is; why on earth had she issued the visa in the first place if she had red-flagged its authenticity? Embassy of Ind...