i tot són plors, suors, neguits.

you've seen the jokes. india is "dirty", indians are "everywhere", why don't they fix their own country. ok. let me tell you why, and what's happening right now while nobody's watching.

first, the history you skipped: britain ruled india for two centuries and drained it. economist utsa patnaik's research estimates around $45 trillion in today's money was taken. the india that got independence in 1947 was one of the poorest countries on earth. every "why is india like this" question starts there. you don't get to profit off a robbery and then mock the crime scene.

now, what's happening RIGHT NOW:

in may the question paper for NEET leaked. that's the national medical entrance exam. over 2.2 million students took it. cancelled. years of studying, families' savings poured into coaching, gone overnight because someone sold the paper. students died by suicide after. these were kids who wanted to be doctors.

and out of that came a protest movement. a gen z group called the cockroach janta party, started by a 30 year old named abhijeet dipke, got 22 million instagram followers within DAYS. they've been doing a sit-in at jantar mantar in delhi demanding education minister dharmendra pradhan resign.

and then there's sonam wangchuk. if you've watched 3 idiots, he's the real engineer the character was based on. built solar schools in ladakh. invented ice stupas so himalayan villages have water. spent his whole life on education. he's 59 and he's been on hunger strike for 17+ days now. reporters went to see him this week and he was too weak to talk. and the troll armies are calling him "anti national" and "foreign funded". a man starving himself for other people's children. that's the thing here, anyone who asks a question is suddenly a traitor.

it's not one incident, it's everywhere you look:

• infrastructure worth thousands of crores failing within months of the ribbon cutting. tunnels collapsing in regions where heavy rain is a guarantee, not a surprise.

• youth unemployment near 10% for ages 15 to 29, 13.6% in cities. in a country of 1.42 billion where more than half the population is young.

• only about the top 3% of indians earn above 10 lakh a year. meanwhile billionaire wealth keeps ballooning and the headlines celebrate it.

• manipur burned for over two years. an ethnic conflict, tens of thousands displaced, and the prime minister barely said the word manipur while it happened.

• journalists raided. critics' houses bulldozed. activists sitting in jail for years without trial under laws like UAPA. our press freedom ranking has cratered.

• even the petrol is a fight now, ethanol blending pushed through while drivers complain about their engines and get no straight answers.

and through all of it, the PM, who came to power on religious polarisation (americans, sound familiar?), travels abroad for photo ops and has not held one single open press conference in over a decade. not one.

what i'm asking:

if you're not indian: share this. our media mostly won't cover any of it because the big outlets are owned by the same billionaires the government serves. the only reason wangchuk's fast is getting any coverage is people refusing to look away.

if you ARE indian: speak up even if you're comfortable. especially if you're comfortable. join the protests. add to this, correct me, translate it. staying quiet is a choice when nothing in this post touches your life.

india is not "dirty". india was robbed, and it's being robbed again, from the inside this time. but it's also the country where a 59 year old will starve for strangers' kids and 22 million young people will rally behind a party literally named after cockroaches, because cockroaches survive everything.

we can still save her. but only loudly.

earlier this week Twitter user ppuccin0 tweeted about a fashion article that advised against tops with large floral patterns, saying the wearer was in danger of looking like a "ロマンティックおばさん," or a "romantic auntie." the tweet went viral with many agreeing that a "romantic auntie" sounded like a very nice thing to aspire to be, and some even posted illustrations or photos tagged with the trend

illustration by Toyota Yuu (author of Cherry Magic)

illustration by 141shkw/Sora Midori (author of Beautiful Curse)

photos by Takinami Yukari (author of Motokare Mania and Watashi-tachi wa Mutsuu Ren'ai ga Shitai or "We Want A Painless Romance")

illustration by m:m (mangaka of Matataki no End Roll)

illustration by ooinuai (mangaka of Onikui Kitan)

illustration by ma2 (mangaka of The Reason We Fall In Love)

BONUS:

and an edit for fun

The City Council of Alacant (the 2nd most populated city in the Valencian Country) has decided that from now on they are changing the spring school holidays to exclude local Valencian traditional days of celebration. Instead, they move it to Spanish Catholic days of celebration. Families will no longer be able to celebrate dia de la mona, instead they'll have free the early Holy Week. Another attempt to stop the tramission of the local culture and impose the Spanish culture.

In Catalonia, the supreme judge has dictated that all schools must now have their signs in Spanish. Until now, schools in Catalonia had the signs in Catalan (except in the Aran Valley, where they are in Aranese Occitan), as the language of education is Catalan (or Aranese Occitan). For the last decade, a series of laws by the Spanish government and rulings by the supreme judges have imposed a higher presence of Spanish outside the subject of Spanish, by law at least 25% of classes must be in Spanish, though in most schools the number is much higher. Some right-wing associations of parents have also sued schools and teachers if they considered there was too much Catalan, even when the amount was following the law. (Remember that it was already mandatory for all students to take the subject of Spanish Language and Literature, which has as many hours as Catalan Language and Literature, so it's not like Spanish isn't present). It is important to have Catalan in schools because it's the only way to guarantee that all people who have been raised here will know it. Everyone will learn Spanish as a first language outside of school anyway (since the streaming platforms, cinemas, internet, TV channels, etc. are almost exclusively in Spanish and there is the social pressure for Catalan speakers to address Spanish speakers in Spanish, but not the other way around), but since about 50% of Catalonia's young people were born outside Catalonia and Spain, it is necessary to welcome them into a school system where they can learn the local language. Without it, they won't, and Catalan will in a couple of generations suddenly become a minority. For a language that has also been persecuted, illegalized, and treated as inferior for most of its recent history, it is important that people can see the language in formal settings, see that it can be adequate for "important" stuff too, and not continue propagating the idea that "Spanish is for important/public things, Catalan is only to speak at home".

In the town l'Alcúdia de Crespins (also in the Valencian Country), the high school is named after the writer Isabel-Clara Simó, a key figure in Valencian literature. Now, the City Council has censored the name. They have removed the name, accusing the writer of being divisive (because she wrote in the Valencian-Catalan language and defended her right to do so).

Today, 7 more pro-independence people from Catalonia have been sentenced guilty for having taken part in a demonstration against the far-right Spanish supremacist group Sociedad Civil Catalana when they were hosting an event in a university campus under the excuse of doing a homage to Cervantes (Spanish writer seen as a national symbol). Even though the police report clearly states that it was the far-right Catalanophobic group who started shouting and pushing the counter-demonstrators trying to start a fight, the judge has considered that demonstrating against them is a criminal offense, and has added the plus of hate crime against Spain, because of the far-right's excuse of doing a homage to the symbol of Spanish culture Cervantes.

Amidst the protests against overtourism+gentrification in Mallorca, the Spanish military police has gone to the homes of two protestors and arrested them handcuffed, accusing them of being members of a criminal gang that targets real estate agencies. They are accused of having spray painted the façades of 5 real estate agencies, and the "proof" of their "criminal involvement" is that they had a banner that reads "SOS inhabitants. Stop overtourism!" at home. The military police have threatened that everyone who "commits crimes against Mallorca's touristic interests will be arrested". And yes, I'm including this in a post about attacks against culture because there can be no culture if the community is expelled from its home island to make way for rich Germans to buy second homes to leave empty half the year. 50% of houses in many towns of Mallorca are already owned by foreigners who don't live in the island. Just in the street where these two girls who have been arrested live, there are 5 real estate agencies. How does this make sense? Dictator Franco's plan was to turn Mallorca into a tourism colony, and years after his death the plan is still taking place.

Barn owls are beautiful animals, but they have a rather somber role in traditional Catalan superstitions.

"The term “labor digger” does not come from tradition or folklore. I coined it to describe a pattern I saw repeatedly in modern heterosexual relationships: men who bring little to the table except 8 hours of labor outside of the home and a paycheck, but expect full-course meals, clean dishes, warm beds, well-managed lives, and unending emotional support… in addition to their partners working the same 8 hours.