SCARLET SCARF

Season of Cricket continues to rule the heart and soul of every Indian Fan. Just like how European countries are crazy for Football and Tennis, Indians are super aficionado of Cricket. I need not narrate the long history of Cricket which begins with the entry of British in India and the spread of Cricket which drew first the Parsi community of Mumbai towards it followed by launch of the Ranji Trophy being played (1935) and so on! Currently the season of Cricket is back in our neighborhood nation of Pakistan! That’s big and great news for all the Pakistani Cricket fans who are similarly die-hard people waiting badly to watch their favourite batsmen play Cricket! After a cricket drought of six long years, the rain of cricket is going to breed some fresh new grass on the Pakistani soil. This time it is the team Zimbabwe who has shown the courage to play versus Pakistan. Zimbabwe will play the first T-20 today (22 MAY) at the famous Gaddafi stadium in Lahore! Photo source: ww

In India crime against women is not a new thing. It has been witnessed right from the historical past in the form of events from Mahabharata to Ramayana.  This has sadly, time and again showed that the patriarchy rules on women irrespective of what she feels.  Kidnapping, Murder, Domestic violence, Gang-rape, rape, Abduction, Marital-rape, Sexual assault and the list of crime goes on and on! After being winked at by the security gunner of a Samajwadi Party, Sadhvi Pandey a 23 year old woman jumped on the Mercedes, tore the party flag on the car’s bonnet and smashed the windshield. How can one forget the famous comments of Samjwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yaadav on being opposed to capital punishment for rape, “Boys will be boys…they commit mistakes”.    Recently as reported in the Hindustan Times report, the Supreme Court of India refused a woman’s plea to declare marital rape a criminal offence, citing that the plea was for ‘personal cause and not a public cause’. Marital

By -DISHA MASHELKAR Forty two years of pain and suffering has finally ended for Aruna Shanbaug. The journey to Lord’s house has begun for her, who was mercilessly strangled by a dog’s chain and suffered sexual assault by a ward boy in the hospital. She was in coma and was helplessly left in the vegetative state for last so many years. The incident took place on 27 November 1973. It was the continuous effort of love and care which the nurses of KEM Hospital took for their colleague Aruna Shanbaug that kept her alive in this unbearable painful state. Looking at her state of pain, Pinky Virani a journalist and Aruna’s friend had filed for a plea to stop forceful feeding her in the Supreme Court. In other words, it was a plea for ‘Euthanasia’. But in 2011, the Supreme Court of India had rejected this plea filed by Pinky Virani and Aruna Shanbaug was left in this vegetative state and then became a responsibility of the nurses of KEM hospital who never gave up on her treatme