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Yesterday, as the country was gripped by agitation and protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), one photo gave us hope. It is the photo of a young woman giving a flower to a policeman in Delhi.
From Bollywood personalities like Mahesh Bhatt to the ordinary twitterati, everyone retweeted that picture, shot by Photographer Saurabh Trivedi.
Some saw her as a symbol of hope and some even called her the flower child. I had the pleasure of having a tete-a-tete with the young woman herself, whose image has made such an impression on people.
Meet 21-year-old Shreya Priyam Roy. She is a student doing her Masters in history from Delhi University. Her placard read, “Dad thinks I am in my history class. He doesn’t know I am actually busy making it.” Besides her studies, Shreya is a standup comedian and a mural artist. She also dabbles in production design.
During my conversation with her, Shreya says that she does not consider herself an activist but an ordinary, college-going girl. Yet, she also recounts that she has been to protests before and does keep raising her voice. She protested when she was in the third year of her graduation, when her college tried hiking the fees. Shreya says that there are so many who are unable to pay their dues and their only way to a good education is an affordable fee structure.
Shreya recounts that over the past one year, she has seen how her friends in JNU and other Universities have protested against government policies. When she saw how the students of Jamia and Aligarh Muslim University were being harassed, her outburst reached a tipping point. When the CAA was passed in the parliament and the NRC was being talked about everywhere, she with her friends decided to join the protests in Delhi.
Shreya recalls the events of 19th December when the protests were called in Delhi. She wanted to go and join them at Lal Qila or Mandi House. However, the Government declared section 144. She waited at Bengali Market to meet her friends to join the protest at Jantar Mantar.
She says, “Though I have been to protests before, and this time I saw people going in twos to protest, but something felt so fearful that day. There were policemen around everywhere.” Once she headed to Jantar Mantar she got some flowers to present to the police officials. She adds, “The flowers were meant to humanize the whole protests including the policemen. My friend who was with me is Muslim. And his father is in the police force. That also made me somewhere understand that they were just following orders. Throughout the whole protests, the media has been trying to project the students as some miscreants who while away their time creating ruckus or engaging in anti-national activities. Through this simple act I just wanted to tell that we are just students trying to voice our opinions.”
And while she went to give the rose to a policeman, she saw that someone photographed her. She recounts, “I felt awkward being photographed and ran away post that. I was still in the protest when I started getting tags on Facebook and phone calls from friends. I wasn’t expecting it. And then the shares and tweets kept continuing.”
She says that though it went rapidly viral, she would like to be remembered as an artist and not so much for the picture. Shreya calls herself a feminist and says that her stand up comedy talks about her everyday life and the perspectives of people around her.
As our interview comes to an end, Shreya wishes that her image opens up the conversation around the protests more, and helps to vindicate the students.
Though Shreya will move on to other things in life, this image of a young woman standing with a rose in front of a policeman will remind us to love, in times of hate for many more years to come.
Image credits Saurabh Trivedi
Proud Indian. Senior Writer at Women's Web. Columnist. Book Reviewer. Street Theatre - Aatish. Dreamer. Workaholic. read more...
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UP Boards Topper Prachi Nigam was trolled on social media for her facial hair; our obsession with appearance is harsh on young minds.
Prachi Nigam’s photo has been doing the rounds on social media for the right reasons. Well, scratch that- I wish the above statement were true. This 15-year-old girl should ideally be revelling in her spectacular achievement of scoring a whopping 98.05% and topping her tenth-grade boards. But oddly enough, along with her marks, it’s something else that garners more attention – her facial hair.
While the trolls are driving themselves giddy by mocking this girl who hasn’t even completed her school yet, the ones who are taking her side are going one step ahead – they are sharing her photoshopped pictures, sans the facial hair, looking nothing less than a celebrity with captions saying – “Prachi Nigam, ten years later”.
Doctors have already diagnosed her with PCOD in their comments, based on photographic evidence. While we have names for people shamed for their weight – body shaming, for their skin colour- racism, for their age- age shaming, for being a female- sexism, this category of shaming where one faces criticism for their appearance has no name. With that, it also has zero shame attached to it.
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