Alia breaks down while talking about sister's depression

Mumbai, Dec 2 (IANS) Actress Alia Bhatt, who is normally seen in a cheerful mood, broke down into tears while talking about her sister Shaheen Bhatts battle with depression, saying she felt terrible as a sister for not understanding her plight.

At a recent event in Mumbai, Alia got emotional as she got on the stage along with her sister Shaheen to talk about mental health. They also discussed Shaheen's book "I've Never Been (Un)Happier".

Alia said that despite living with Shaheen all her life, she got to know about what her sister was going through only after reading the book.

"I felt terrible as a sister. I didn't put myself out there enough to understand her," Alia said.

"I have only believed that she is the most brilliant person in my family. To some extent, she has never believed that about her own self but that always broke my heart. I was sensitive but I feel guilty for not understanding as much as I should have," the actress added.

Several videos from the event showing Alia break down, and Shaheen trying to console her, have gone viral on social media.

Alia later took to Instagram to post: "No better feeling than talking about your sisters first book! Shaheen you are brilliant and I love you!"

India not a country for women: Anoushka Shankar

Mumbai, Dec 4 (IANS) Sitar player and composer Anoushka Shankar has reacted to the barbaric gangrape and murder of a veterinary doctor in Hyderabad saying India is "no country for women".

Calling rape a global epidemic, the composer tweeted: "This is a global epidemic. And India in particular is no country for women. And I'm enraged. And I'm numb. And I don't know what to keep doing. I want to scream and yet for once I feel voiceless. Because nothing fu**ing changes and women are being raped every minute every day."

Anoushka posted a series of tweets venting her pain and anger at the brutal incident and once again pointed a finger at how such incidents repeatedly keep happening in our country and yet nothing changes.

Reminding everyone about Delhi's Nirbhaya gangrape case of 2012, Anoushka wrote: "Nearly seven years ago to the day, the world mourned together over the horrifically brutal gang rape and murder of Jyoti Singh Pandey. Just how the earth's axis changed after the 2004 tsunami, I felt an emotional axis bend at this point in time."

She continued: "My own life changed with her attack. This to me was the real beginning of the women's movements we've seen in recent years. I felt her attack in my own body and ended up sharing a video about my own sexual abuse. This was part of a wave of women in rage and pain demanding change."

However, despite introducing new laws and setting up new courts, the scene of women's safety in our country remains unchanged, feels the sitar maestro.

She tweeted: "India made new laws and set up new courts and people demanded justice. And yet... Where is the change? This week it was (Hyderabad victim), gangraped and burnt and murdered. In the last year alone I've cried over eight year olds and twelve year olds meeting similar fates."

While Anoushka has expressed deep pain and a feeling of numbness, which she is going through after learning about the Hyderabad incident, singer Sona Mohapatra and filmmaker Alankrita Shrivastava have blamed the patriarchal mindset dominating Indian society for such crimes.

Alankrita said: "In our country misogyny is accepted, violence against women is normalised and patriarchy encourages crimes against women", Sona feels that the society is unnecessarily preachy towards women who are constantly told "how to behave, what to wear, what time to come home at."

Why Asha Parekh never got married

Mumbai, Dec 4 (IANS) Legendary actress Asha Parekh has shared a personal detail about her life. She has revealed why she chose to remain single all her life.

"I know I admitted to being in love with Nasir Hussain in 'The Hit Girl', but as much as I loved him, I could never consider breaking up his family and traumatising his children. It was far simpler and satisfying to be on my own," Parekh said in an interview with Verve.

"Make no mistake, it wasn't like I didn't want to get married. In fact, my mother was very keen on it and had even assembled my trousseau in advance. I met my share of boys but the end result was always the same - they weren't the right kind of men for me. Over time, my mother also gave up her dream of seeing me as a bride because whomever she showed my horoscope to would say my marriage wouldn't be a successful one. It was not the kind of thing I believed in, but it did grant me some semblance of peace," she added.

The 77-year-old also shared her views on how today's generation look at love.

"Today, people are falling in love and getting out of it without so much as a decent conversation about it because they don't have tolerance. Marriage is not all rainbows and butterflies; you have to give in to your partner's whims every now and then, and that's a two-way street. I feel that today's youngsters burn out too fast and call it quits over trivial issues, which shouldn't be the case.

"People mistake the thrill of early love for a relationship that is capable of braving storms and get disillusioned when they find out that their partner isn't perfect. Polygamy is becoming quite commonplace today and for someone like me who believes that love is eternal and all-encompassing, it is quite shocking. Maybe we are evolving as a species or maybe we've just forgotten how to love," she said.

Priyanka: Serving as Goodwill Ambassador privilege of my life

New York, Dec 5 (IANS) Actress Priyanka Chopra Jonas was honoured with the Danny Kaye Humanitarian Award for her philanthropic work as UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador for Child Rights.

She was felicitated with the award at the 15th annual UNICEF Snowflake Ball on Wednesday here.

Priyanka even took to Instagram to share what the award means to her.

"I am in awe of the tireless efforts and unwavering commitment of the people who work for #UNICEF. Thank you for allowing me to be part of this journey. To serve as your Goodwill Ambassador is the privilege of my life.

"Special thank you to Geetanjali Master, UNICEF India, Marissa Buckanoff, my UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Chief, Henrietta H. Fore, UNICEF Executive Director, Caryl Stern, UNICEF USA President and CEI, and Charlotte Petri Gornitzka, UNICEF Deputy Executive Director | #UNICEFSnowflake Thank you to my team for your constant support," she wrote.

Congratulating his wife, Nick Jonas said that he is proud of her.

"I am proud of who you are and the good you've brought into the world as a goodwill ambassador with @unicef @unicefindia for over 15 years now. You inspire me every single day by just being you. Congratulations my love," Nick wrote.

On the film front, Priyanka was recently seen in the Hindi film "The Sky is Pink". She is currently shooting for Netflix's "The White Tiger" along with RajKummar Rao.

New book examines caste interplay in Mumbai dance bar ban

By Vishnu Makhijani

New Delhi, Dec 5 (IANS) The ban on women dancing in bars in Mumbai is an example of the 'caste governance' of our times and the Maharashtra government may be considered as working toward maintaining the proper caste order in the upheaval caused by globalisation, a scholarly work on the subject says.

"The legal ban on bar dancing can be seen as the 'caste governance' of our times. In keeping with the argument that the caste system is not a voluntary social system but is implicitly and explicitly upheld by the state, often by force, the Maharashtra government may be considered as working towards maintaining the proper caste order in the face of upheaval caused by globalisation," Sameena Dalwai, an Associate Professor and Associate Director, Centre for Women, Law and Social Change at Jindal Global Law School, writes in "Ban & Bar Girls - Performing Caste in Mumbai's Dance Bars".

The ban came into force on August 16, 2005 and the Bombay High Court declared it unconstitutional on April 12, 2006 but did not stay the ban. The Maharashtra government moved the Supreme Court, which overturned the ban on January 17, 2019. More than 75,000 women were affected and the bar industry has not been able to recover to its heyday.

The book contends that the social, political and economic upheaval of the 1980s and 1990s generated an atmosphere of insecurity; fears surrounding visible changes in habitat, lifestyle and normativity were expressed as an attack on culture and bar girls came to be identified as the "folk devil" in this moral panic.

But, while banning dancing in bars, the state government allowed prostitution to continue "effectively encouraging women to replace dancing with prostitution. In this scheme, the government reinforced the ability of upper class men to have sexual access to lower caste women, and for free. The real objection was not to men accessing the sexuality of these women but to their having to pay for it. The state's action, thus, reinforced the traditional caste-based status quo between upper caste men and lower caste women," says the book, published by Women Unlimited, an associate of Kali for Women, and released here on Wednesday.

The author also notes that by deploying their "caste capital, i.e. the hereditary skills of dance, drama and seduction, traditional dancing women were able to occupy and rule the dance bar market. To this extent, bar girls can be viewed as a 'performing caste', carrying out their obligatory caste occupation in a global capitalist market. However, while their relationship to the customer is defined through the market, and they acquire money and status through their occupation, bar girls challenge, transform and redefine the caste hierarchy by the use of caste capital".

At the same time, "though continuing with caste patriarchy, bar girls were able to challenge and reshape it. The very skill that made them play their role in perpetuating caste and gender hierarchy has, arguably set them free. Their skill set, or what I call their caste capital, rose in value during globalisation due to the willingness of customers to pay for erotic entertainment. While the women negotiate their skills and sexuality via the market, they are not confined by their caste position", Dalwai explains.

She also argues that the binary of good woman/bad woman is based not only on the actions of individual women, but is preordained by the caste and gender interface that has already characterised lower caste women as women with unfettered sexuality.

"A deeper consideration of caste and gender politics, however, allows us to go beyond the old rhetoric in the dance bar debate; the globalisation angle here is not about culture, but about occupation, the scope of which is predetermined for each caste group within the occupational ladder," Dalwai writes.

Thus, it is not the threat of "subaltern female sexuality", as one expert put it, that the Maharashtra government responded to but the "occupational and class mobility offered by dance bars that enable lower caste women to move beyond their preordained position, that poses the real threat", the book states.

Through its six chapters, the book deals with issues like "Contextualising the Bar Girl", "The Dance Bar in the City of Dreams", "City of Opportunity: the Barline for Bar Girls", "The Cultural Politics of the Ban", "The Legal Response", and "The Ban & Its Effects".

(Vishnu Makhijani can be reached at vishnu.makhijani@ians.in)

Women good at recognising cats' expressions: Study

Toronto, Dec 3 (IANS) Cats have a reputation for being hard to read, but a new study suggests that women and those with veterinary experience were particularly good at recognising cats' expressions.

For the study, published in the journal Animal Welfare, researchers at the University of Guelph decided to look at how well people were able to read the expressions on cat faces.

"The ability to read animals' facial expressions is critical to welfare assessment. Our finding that some people are outstanding at reading these subtle clues suggests it's a skill more people can be trained to do," said study lead researcher Lee Niel from University of Guelph in Canada.

"This study is the first to look at the assessment of a wider range of negative emotional states in animals, including fear and frustration, as well as positive emotional states," said Mason.

For the findings, the research team recruited more than 6,300 people from 85 countries who were asked to watch 20 short online videos of cats from a collection of 40 videos, gleaned mostly from YouTube, and complete online questionnaires.

The videos showed cats experiencing either positive emotional states (situations the cats had sought out, such as being petted or given treats), or in negative states (such as experiencing health problems or being in situations that made them retreat or flee).

Each video was focused on the cat's face - its eyes, muzzle and mouth. None of the cats showed expressions of fear, such as bared fangs or flattened ears, since these facial expressions are already widely understood.

Participants were asked to judge whether each cat was in a positive state, a negative one, or if they weren't sure.

Most participants found the test challenging. Their average score was 12 out of 20 -- somewhat above chance.

But 13 per cent of the participants performed very well, correctly scoring 15 or better -- a group the researchers informally called 'the cat whisperers'.

These people were more likely to be women than men, and more likely to be veterinarians or vet technicians.

Younger adults also generally scored better than older adults.

"The fact that women generally scored better than men is consistent with previous research that has shown that women appear to be better at decoding non-verbal displays of emotion, both in humans and dogs," said study researcher Georgia Mason.

Surprisingly, being a cat lover made no difference at all, since reporting a strong attachment to cats did not necessarily result in a higher score, the study said.

The finding that some people are skilled at reading cats' faces suggests that others could be trained to do so as well.

Rishika Lulla: OTT's growing appeal may cause cord-cutting from TV soon

By Natalia Ningthoujam

New Delhi, Dec 3 IANS) Many Indians are immersed in the digital world and the increasing appeal of OTT platforms in the country might lead to the cord-cutting sooner than expected, says Rishika Lulla Singh, Chairman, CEO - Eros Digital.

"India is one of the fastest growing entertainment and media markets globally and is expected to keep that momentum. As data and digital infrastructure have become exceedingly accessible even in small cities of India, the market for OTT has widened enormously. As over-the-top (OTT) video streaming platforms invest heavily in creating original content and with easy access to mobile data, the number of online consumers is increasing rapidly," Singh told IANS.

"The increasing appeal of OTT platforms might lead to the cord-cutting sooner than expected. Also, as compared to our western counterparts, India is still catching up with regard to the quality of content produced, consequently, there is a long way to go," she added.

Eros Now has a lot of content (movies, music, TV, originals) to provide to its more than 177 million registered users. It has now partnered with YouTube Music.

"We have always been collaborative in nature and this partnership with YouTube Music further enhances customer experience by offering an extensive music library in conjunction with our large catalogue of films and original shows," she said.

Eros Now aims to cater to millennials as well as post-millennials worldwide by offering innovative services and content and emerge as the "most preferred digital destination for quality entertainment".

"YouTube Music is one the most preferred platforms for music across genres and languages and its extensive content catalogue compliments Eros Now's massive movie, originals and Quickies library. Users will also get access to YouTube Music's catalogue including tracks in English, Hindi and nine other Indian languages (Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi, Kannada, Malayalam and Bhojpuri). The tie-up has opened-up an inimitable avenue for customers to avail the best of both - movies and music under one platform," she shared.

"Also, from the brand's perspective, it is a huge win. It's the first time in the world, Google has formed a partnership of this nature or scale. YouTube and Eros are together driving the subscription market in India and hopefully, this is a model that would be replicated globally.

"YouTube has a funnel of close to 325-350 million consumers in India that come to the platform on a month-on-month basis. We have got 23.5 million paid subs and 177.7 million registered users. So, through e-mail communication, and push notifications on our existing services, we will be cross-pollinating the fact that YouTube and Eros Now have come together with a subsidised pack," she concluded.

Shweta Tripathi to launch anthem on menstrual health

Mumbai, Dec 3 (IANS) Actress Shweta Tripathi is all set to come up with an anthem on menstrual health.

She has collaborated with a leading sanitary napkin brand to create awareness around menstrual hygiene for all girls and women out there, emphasising on using the right products, keeping physically healthy, active and clean.

"The silence around the subject baffles me and at a ground level, that's what I wish to change. I want to contribute in changing the taboo around the subject. Dreams don't have deadlines. Career cannot have deadlines. Age is not a deadline for a woman. I am happy to join hands with Whisper to change these perceptions.

"We have created an inspiring anthem that will feature regular women conquering the world without getting bogged down the norms and rules of the society, which is far from sympathetic towards women. I want to actively work towards the empowerment and physical well-being of young brave girls and women," Shweta said.

On the film front, Shweta will be seen opposite Vikrant Massey in the sci-film "Cargo".