hi! can you recommend some books by indian writers? both fiction and nonfiction. thank you

Hi! I read your other message and here you go (I've also linked other asks where there are more relevant books mentioned)

Fiction

[x] | [xx]

Serious Men by Manu Joseph — about a low-caste man in a chawl in Mumbai and all that he does for his son to escape the limits of his position; satire on caste and class, scientific education in the country

Raag Darbari by Shrilal Shukla (trans. Gillian Wright) — really, really good satire on an village in the north a few decades after Independence; looks at how systems fail on ground, how clearly incapable most of them are at dealing with problems; also about the early years of the nexus forming between criminals, politicians, and businessmen and corruption taking root

High Wind by Tillotoma Misra (trans. Udayon Misra) — about a Sanskrit scholar who in the 19th century moves to colonial Shillong; explores the changes happening in Assamese culture and society during the time, how different communities and 'tribes'

A Burning by Megha Majumdar — how the lives of three people intersect at the crossroads of law, justice, class aspirations and in an increasingly volatile political atmosphere

Baluta by Daya Pawar (trans. Jerry Pinto) — a memoir by Pawar about being a Dalit and how the identity changes as it moves from the village to the city

Name Place Animal Thing by Daribha Lyndem — it's like a bunch of character portraits of people who are all connected to each other and together they paint a picture of one girl who's growing up in a turbulent community in Shillong

The Lives of Others by Neel Mukherjee — an old and joint family in Kolkata in the 1960s; looks at how it adapts or fails to; it's really good at how it shows a very distinct social class in decay in specifically post-Independence Kolkata but also at the same time could be about similar stories of the zamindar/landholding class unravelling elsewhere

A similar but older take on the joint family decaying in Maharashtra is Old Stone Mansion by Mahesh Elkunchwar. I read the original and I do vaguely remember there being a translation, but I'm not sure so do check that out. I think it'll be in this.

Battlefield by Vishram Bedekar (trans. Jerry Pinto) — about a Hindu man and a Jewish refugee who meet on a ship going from Europe to Hong Kong just before World War II; looks at what it means to be in exile, what it means to aspire to nationhood

I would also recommend the Aleph Book Company series on Greatest Stories Ever Told. I've only read a few but they seem quite well curated.

Non-fiction

about northeast India | the revolutionary movement | military history | [x] | colonisation and aftereffects |

A People’s Constitution by Rohit De — how people experience the constitution; how they participate in the legal and political process; really great because it takes the constitution beyond its documentary role

India Trilogy by V. S. Naipaul — An Area of Darkness, India: A Wounded Civilization, and India: A Million Mutinies Now; one of the best commentaries on 20th century but post-Independence India; also very different from other commentaries because Naipaul worked to see the country as something other than a former colony; also great because you get to see him traveling and changing his mind and arguing with himself over the three books

Sixteen Stormy Days by Tripurdaman Singh — about the first amendment of the Indian Constitution which has been a controversial one given that very soon after the Constitution being ratified, it put curbs on freedom of expression and property rights and gave birth to the Ninth Schedule

India: A Sacred Geography by Diana L. Eck — how precolonial and ancient Indians imagined the geography through religion and vice versa; how Hinduism and generally Indic religions are closely tied with the land

India Unbound by Gurcharan Das — it's a personal economic history of sorts where he looks at the post-Independence economic growth (or lack thereof) through the routes his life has taken; really good because he brings to a table the experience of living in a 'mixed' economy and can really get across why 1991 was such a big deal

Castes of Mind by Nicholas Dirks — essays on how caste and race interacted to reorder the social structure in colonial India; how law, policy, politics, and profit all worked together when it came to matters of social categories and identity

The Eastern Gate by Sudeep Chakravarti — sort of journalistic history on how 'mainland' India has seen the Northeast, how insurgency took root; how conflicts have been navigated, solved, worsened

Modern South India by Rajmohan Gandhi — South India from the 17th century to the 20th; a little information heavy at times but useful

Our Moon Has Blood Clots by Rahul Pandita — memoir on the Kashmiri Pandit genocide; also see his Hello Bastar if you're interested in the Naxalites

Kanshiram by Badri Narayan — a biography of Kanshiram and through him looks at Dalit politics and the whole world of OBC and Dalit consolidation

The Emergency by Coomi Kapoor — like India Unbound, a personal account of sorts of living through the Emergency; and she was a journalist then so it's really in-depth

Army and the Nation by Stephen Wilkinson — the relationship between the Indian Army and the Republic; how India has managed to keep the military establishment away from politics unlike Pakistan

Happy reading!

sometimes it’s better refrain from deep introspection and allow yourself to just be.

Real bummer that the fallout centaurs dont talk at least a little bit while crawling around.. I think they should say stuff like "HEY THERE, SPORT! WHAT A NICE SUNNY DAY! WHERE ARE YA GOING?! HEY! HEY COME BACK, I WAS JUST TALKING TO YOU!"

or "PLLLEAASSSEEE HELP I THINK THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG WITH ME, COULD YOU HELP ME GET UP? I-I-I- THINK MY LEGS ARE BROKEN!"

And the dog and human head ceantaurs could talk to themselves like "WHoooos a Good Boy?!" "Wooof" "YES YOU ARE!"

Or they could just parrot stuff.

i've never understood what people mean by rehabilitating pedophiles - do you mean to say rehabilitating sex offenders? because not all child molesters are pedophiles and not all pedophiles become sex offenders. if you mean "make a pedophile no longer a pedophile", that's straight up impossible.

now personally as the unfortunate child of a sex pervert (criminal version) - I don't automatically associate any sexual urge with abuse, but rather voluntary actions of the person (the choice to abuse), which is one influenced by more than sexuality. for example, abusers targeting children in a vulnerable position in the nuclear family.

when I was 16 I planned to kill my dad for the first time, genuinely. now at age 25, safe and far away from him, I find myself thinking, "if he dies, there is still an endless amount of people out there exactly like him, and no fantasy in which they all disappear can be reality".

the fact? we currently have no concrete understanding of the 'nature' side of child abuse. the side your local restore-law-and-order politician loves to bring up. Born Evil. but when I look at a picture of my dad as a child, and when I look in the mirror and see a person now devoid of humanity, I have to wonder, when? because I know it wasn't always.

you can misread this post any way you want,i've been through and seen enough shit to be numb inside, so maybe I come across as a complete sicko here, who knows! but I truly believe the only "cure" to abuse is a society in which no one is left vulnerable to be victimized, and autonomy is respected...and maybe one where we can have these conversations without people living in a fantasy land where you can somehow remove paraphilic disorders or whatever you want to call it

In case you have little choice on having to use Windows 11.

Option 1: Guide to basic install de-bloated Windows 11 (by Chris Titus, with video and blog article)

Option 2a: Use a script to de-bloat Windows 11 (by simeonsecurity. more digital literacy. check "how to install" section)

Option 2b: Use a script to de-bloat and harden Windows 11 (by simeonsecurity. more digital literacy. check "how to install" section)

Note: If choose Option 2, choose either 2a or 2b. not both.

Choking Safety

I've been seeing some kind of scare-mongering type posts going around about choking during sex, so I wanted to address how to approach choking in a safe way. Choking is not a 0 risk activity, but it is also not so dangerous that you will just randomly die either. Anyone who does martial arts will confirm that thousands of teenagers are being successfully trained to choke each other safely (for self defense) every day! There's no reason you can't learn to do it too.

First you should be familiar with some basic anatomy of the neck and throat:

The carotid veins on both sides of the neck and the trachea/windpipe in the center are the most important things to be aware of. If you want to enjoy the psychological element of having someone's hands around your neck with relatively little risk, you can do "choking" play that avoids putting any pressure on those arteries or the trachea. As with all choking play, safety is highest when both parties are fully sober. I'm not actually sure if there are people out there who are into having the windpipe or trachea blocked. This tends to hurt like fuck and cause an autonomic choking response. You'll know if you went too far center because generally the bottom will be like "WTH". I don't know if there is a way to do this play safely or not as I don't have experience with it. It probably carries some risk of the trachea collapsing which would be a hospital trip for sure. Most choking play is done with the intention of cutting off the blood supply to the brain by applying pressure to both the left and right carotid arteries. This type of choking is not really "breath play" because of the way it works (though many people refer to it that way.) This creates a pleasant light headed feeling, but is also where the higher risk comes in. It often doesn't take long for a person to lose consciousness once these arteries are blocked, often less than 10 seconds. Sometimes getting completely choked out is the goal, sometimes not. Either way, the top has to pay very very careful attention to every aspect of their bottom's body language. Once you realize that a person has lost consciousness, the choking must stop immediately. Because of this: the most dangerous way to do this kind of play is alone. (hence all the auto-erotic asphyxiation deaths you hear about) It goes without saying that intoxication also dramatically increases the risks. It's not recommended to lose consciousness this way on a regular basis. It's just not good for your brain to repeatedly go through, especially in rapid succession. Generally, the more time spaced out between this type of play: the better. Though some people may have medical conditions that make the risk higher, as long as you stop choking when you reach the desired headspace, this play is approachable. Anyone who's REALLY into the idea but feels unsure or scared, I highly recommend taking a few martial arts classes. MMA guys do this to each other all the time! For sports! The key is just stopping at the right time. There are two main ways to go about blocking the carotid arteries. The main one used in martial arts and self defense is the rear naked choke.

This type of choke is incredible effective at choking someone out quickly and easily. The forearm and the bicep are squeezing each artery until the desired effect is achieved. The risk here is how quickly it works in combination with not being able to have a visual on your bottom's facial response. When someone loses consciousness they will go limp and begin twitching somewhat. This is normal, and you should stop immediately if you notice those signs. The more common method of choking play during sex is what looks more like typical choking. Facing your partner, using both hands.

You want to find the arteries with both hands, and use the meat at the base of your thumbs to apply gradually increasing pressure upwards towards your partner's head. You can keep the thumbs tucked to avoid accidental pressure on the windpipe. (Though this is not required so long as you remember not to apply pressure to the windpipe.) This type of play has a few safety benefits. First, you can see your partner's face so it's more obvious when you can see they've hit a headspace that is desirable. Additionally, it's just a little more difficult to find the arteries and push up on them correctly. If your goal is to get a little light headed without losing consciousness, this is more easily accomplished with this type of choke. However, losing consciousness is still a risk and both partners being fully alert will ensure the lowest risk environment. I know choking play is incredibly popular, even 'vanilla' people participate in this type of play on a regular basis without really knowing the technical details. Most of them don't get seriously hurt...but knowing what you're actually doing with risky play is a base component of risk aware consensual kink. Anyway I hope people find this helpful! Happy choking!!

Statement from Emory University protestors (X)

feeling the need to post again about this. i'm standing with every single person who is protesting for palestine right now. especially all the people at these universities setting up encampments and having guns and police brigades pointed towards them. these are PEACEFUL protests and should not be threatened with tear gas, force, or even snipers pointed at them. palestine needs our voices more than ever. we're nearing 50K marytered palestinians when there shouldn't have even been 1.

if you personally cannot protest in public for whatever reason it may be, at least voice your support for protesters who are and also voice your support for palestinians. they need your voice. their voices are getting silences constantly online whether through suppression or the IOF marytering them along with everyone else.

i stand with every palestinian in the world. i stand with every protester in the world speaking for palestinians.

FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA, PALESTINE WILL BE FREE!!!!!

Katy O'Brian in Love Lies Bleeding (2024)

At times the “viral” travels of the concept of homonationalism, as it has been taken up in North America, various European states, Palestine/Israel, and India, have found reductive applications in activist organizing platforms. Instead of thinking of homonationalism as an accusation, an identity, a bad politics, I have been thinking about it as an analytic to apprehend state formation and a structure of modernity: as an assemblage of geopolitical and historical forces, neoliberal interests in capitalist accumulation both cultural and material, biopolitical state practices of population control, and affective investments in discourses of freedom, liberation, and rights. Homonationalism, thus, is not simply a synonym for gay racism, or another way to mark how gay and lesbian identities became available to conservative political imaginaries; it is not another identity politics, not another way of distinguishing good queers from bad queers, not an accusation, and not a position. It is rather a facet of modernity and a historical shift marked by the entrance of (some) homosexual bodies as worthy of protection by nation-states, a constitutive and fundamental reorientation of the relationship between the state, capitalism, and sexuality. To say that this historical moment is homonational, where homonationalism is understood as an analytics of power, then, means that one must engage it in the first place as the condition of possibility for national and transnational politics. Part of the increased recourse to domestication and privatization of neoliberal economies and within queer communities, homonationalism is fundamentally a deep critique of lesbian and gay liberal rights discourses and how those rights discourses produce narratives of progress and modernity that continue to accord some populations access to citizenship—cultural and legal—at the expense of the delimitation and expulsion of other populations. The narrative of progress for gay rights is thus built on the back of racialized others, for whom such progress was once achieved, but is now backsliding or has yet to arrive. I have thus theorized homonationalism as an assemblage of de- and reterritorializing forces, affects, energies, and movements. While the project arose within the post 9/11 political era of the United States, homonationalism is also an ongoing process, one that in some sense progresses from the civil rights era and does not cohere only through 9/11 as a solitary temporal moment

— Rethinking Homonationalism, Jasbir Puar

Linkin Park - Breaking the Habit (2003)

$120 left to get the abortion pill in time (due to an assault a few weeks ago). Job training has been delayed by a week. I'm dealing with pregnancy sickness and we're still working on clearing Roman's ear infection. This pregnancy still has me beyond terrified and I'm trying to get this before i have to get the surgical procedure. I'm doing card tarot readings and @scarsofbeauty and @saturnpandora are doing art commissions.

$80 left!

pp: [email protected]

ca: $kendyhoney (my ca is still acting up)

I am so sick of every program ever sticking their shit in "my documents" bitch maybe I want to put my video game saves and image program plugins in a different fucking folder

this is like the v reason it is a -danger- for Black trans women to engage w chasers or even the dl types who pay more attention to the homies than the ppl they desire. It has been known for decades that antiblackness and transmisogyny (transmisogynoir) are the driving cause behind what makes a major portion of these chasers decide to kill us after desiring to be with us: shame, fear of being ostracized or killed themselves, unreckoned with internal trans- and homophobia as well as the fetishization and disposability of Black trans women are all factors at play and yet white trans ppl called us fascists on here for saying we did not think it was some great honor for a supposed tme “ally” to refer to themselves as a chaser on here :/

hmmm . I'm thinkin about my Apoptosis draft (which I started before the MW reboot) and how I'm gonna handle Gaz. like I can't decide if I just want to shove Kyle Garrick in there, bc I think he'd fit pretty well in Apoptosis. orrr if I want to hit 09!Gaz with my Negrofication Beam like I've been doing everyone else. and then writing him to be more in line with his canon 09 personality. what we had of it anyway. idk I do like 09!Gaz but Kyle already has so much more personality to work with and I love him soooo much. so I could just Put Him In.

but then the question becomes. do I want a Black!09!Gaz at all or do I want to insert Kyle into everything. I'm torn. both options sing 2 me. also inserting Kyle opens the door to maybe inserting reboot-specific characters. backwards compatible Farah and Alex and Rudy and Ale and them. the possibilities are truly endless...

em.ill.e