Nihar
If sindoor is a vestige of patriarchy, then the peace, comfort and technology that we currently enjoy should also be attributed to patriarchy. Following the same rationale of “oppression olympics”, birthdays, western attire and even your English podcast can be termed vestiges of colonialism.
Better journalism, less wokism.
Sonali
Bug report: I use the Newslaundry app on iOS and can never find the YouTube link for the podcasts on the podcast page.
Sreekanth
Hello Hafta panel. I had sent a letter a month back or so chiding my fellow subscribers for overloading you with letters after seeing you struggle to figure out the best way to read them. I was never a fan of the proposal of a special episode as that would eat into regular Hafta discussion. But I now see that you have an extra episode every few weeks going through the letters and I think that’s awesome. I would like to withdraw my previous remarks and encourage subscribers to write as many letters as possible as this means more Hafta episodes.
Kudos on the stories on police brutality. I would be very happy if that is a constant ongoing track in NL-TNM rather than just a time-bound project. Good work everyone.
Arthi
Hi NL team, I am appalled by Manisha’s views on sindoor. Marriage, mangalsutra, makeup, sindoor are very much all markers of patriarchy. Just because it is hard to distinguish them from a culture doesn’t mean they cannot root from a system of gender discrimination. Gender discrimination itself can be very much a practice of the society making it its culture. Later on in the discussion Manisha says sindoorwali women can also say “what the fuck”. A sense of the obvious contradiction of the two must say something about what a sindoor symbolises and so what it imposes. Perhaps all these practices of patriarchy could be justified in history but they should certainly be questioned today.
Keep up the good work, NL team.
Kirti
Hi NL team. Writing to you for the first time. On the special feedback episode aired on May 21, there was a heated discussion on married women wearing sindoor and mangalsutra being viewed as patriarchy. I somewhat agree with Manisha. I don’t know about others, but for me, a choice was always there. My mother never wore mangalsutra or sindoor but my father never objected to it. I haven’t taken off my mangalsutra since I got married in 2018. I wear it out of choice and not because I was asked to. What appeared patriarchal to me was that two men on the panel were so hell-bent on making Manisha accept that sindoor is patriarchy while she disagreed.
My views on burqa are the same. If a woman likes to wear a burqa/hijab, then it should be seen as her choice, not patriarchy. Please leave it to the women.
Abhinandan, you get offensively aggressive when someone has a different view than you. You calling a panelist ‘aunty’ proves that. You should be more accommodating to other people's ideas.
Radhey
प्रणाम वालेकुम Lovelies. To avoid word limit, short feedback. It’s been more than six months, whenever I’m checking out NL and NL Hindi YT channels, 70 percent of the time I found I’m not subscribed to the YT channel. I believe I’ve observed it for other 2-3 channels. But for NL it’s constant. Now this month, every third day I'm seeing this. Possibly it’s a glitch. Please raise it with other subscribers for feedback.
Ashwin
For NL tech team: Anytime I have to pause an interview/video on the NL iPhone app and then come back to it later the app refreshes and I lose the timestamp. It has made me stop watching almost all videos on the app. I prefer to watch Hafta on YT or Spotify. Could you please look into this? I don’t recall this being a problem when I had an Android phone. I am using IOS 18.4.1.
Pranith
This letter is mostly meant for Shardool.
As life gets busy I find that I have more time for consuming video game news than actually playing them. As much as I would like finishing my playthrough of RDR2 or Ghost of Tsushima, I find that shorter story focussed games are my jam. Eg: What Remains of Edith Finch, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, Gone Home etc. What are some of your favourite smaller-scale games?
Eagerly awaiting a NL gaming focused podcast hosted by you. I’d love to contribute in any way I can
PS: Have you tried The Blue Prince? Everyone calls it a GoTY contender but it just isn’t clicking for me.
Dipankar
Hello,
Thanks, Shardool, for his recommendation What Gorbachev Heard.
The Ukraine war will be the precursor to many conflicts to “correct historical” wrongs, and should be understood beyond the “West betrayal”. The Middle East is on, and Taiwan may be next. NL may look at a detailed coverage spanning:
1. USSR states, like Ukraine (except Russia), were not part of the guarantee discussions.
2. Russia’s narrative of a 1,000-year+ Slavic culture, with Kyiv, is the cultural driver.
3. Ukraine was part of the USSR only post-revolution, and seceded in 1991 as per the constitution.
4. The Ukrainian famine in the 30s, despite being a breadbasket, and the angst.
5. Handing over the nuclear weapons against a Russian guarantee.
6. Drastic shift in Russia from Gorbachev to Putin (stability to expansion).
7. Dramatic economic development of Poland and Hungary after joining the EU and NATO.
8. The engineering talent of Ukraine, which Russia craves.
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