Shephali Bhatt

Creating a thread on all the Covid- and Lockdown-related stories I've done (so far), chronicling the pandemic's impact on Consumer Tech & Culture.

My piece in today’s @Mint_Lounge is on the wonderfully chaotic world of Old Twitter. Some of my longest friendships and most meaningful work relationships began here, and I’ll always be grateful for this network. Thanks @shaaqT, @b50, @Samit, @lavsmohan, @dhempe, and Naina for walking down memory lane with me. And thank you always, @ShephaliBhatt 🙌🏻 livemint.com/mint-lounge/bu…

Firebrand journalist and dear friend @annavetticad has won the Chameli Devi Jain award for best woman journalist of 2025. Anna is brave, her reporting is brave and she never backs down despite all the harassment that comes her way. Many many congratulations

A violent, communal mob confronts an old man. One man stands up against the mob to protect his neighbor. And the Court berates that one man for asking the FIR against him to be squashed. And asks him to "trust" the very same police force that let the mob roam freely, terrorizing people with impunity in the first place. Thank you BJP, for turning Indian into this. That you injected this poison while chanting the names of assorted Hindu Gods is the real insult that we Indians conveniently overlook.

The Voice of Hind Rajab (2025), dir. Kaouther Ben Hania

"The Voice of Hind Rajab" has nothing to do with India-Israel relations. The threat is Hindus seeing Muslims as human, like them. It would destroy Hindutva if Hindus and Muslims feel the same protectiveness and pain. The same anger over an innocent harmed.

Banning “The Voice of Hind Rajab” in India is a blot on our collective conscience. Those who claim to uphold the values of Gandhi are parroting the policy of Goebbels. Will looking away, shutting our eyes, prevent us from being complicit in the horror unleashed in Gaza?

For those who don’t know: Hind Rajab, a 5-year-old Palestinian girl, was trapped in a car during the Gaza conflict. She was killed, and the vehicle she was in was reportedly hit by 300+ bullets. -Hind’s cousin, 15-year-old Layan Hamada, made an urgent call to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS), stating that they were being targeted. A few seconds later, gunshots were heard, and Layan’s screaming abruptly stopped. -Hind was alive, and she stayed on the call with emergency services, pleading for help for hours. -The paramedics sent to rescue her were killed. -The decomposing bodies of Hind, Layan, and their family members were discovered many days later. -Her story became a global symbol of civilian suffering in war. -The Voice of Hind Rajab documents her story. It has been nominated for an Oscar for Best International Feature Film. In India, the Central Board of Film Certification censored the film. The reason cited was that it could affect India–Israel relations. (1)

SHE HAS A NAME!!!!!!! Eva Ramón Gallegos successfully eliminates HPV

From Ray's Mahanagar to Clooney's Up in the Air, job loss once demanded reckoning so much so that it'd take a film to contain it. Now, it often just takes a meme ✍️Wrote about how layoff humour, which started as a coping tool, is changing how we perceive and process job loss

You might not realize it, but we're part of the first generation of women with the freedom to build lives on our own terms-emotionally, financially, and independently, without needing a husband or children to define us. This level of autonomy is something many of our grandmothers and great-grandmothers never had access to. It's not just progress-it's power. Celebrate it. Own it. You are living a life they only dreamed could be possible.

As a woman, the more critical you are of men and the patriarchy, the better quality men you will have around you. I will not be explaining further.

Makes you wonder how we arrived at a point where layoffs could double as material for humour or marketing, anything other than the life-altering events they are meant to be. Story was out in Mint a fortnight ago livemint.com/mint-lounge/id…

If you know me, you’ve heard me talk about this story for months. @HeraRizwan reported from 3 states. We obsessed over every detail. Google's AI, designed for phones, is now rationing food to pregnant women. Read. Get angry. Share boomlive.in/decode/ai-faci… @pulitzercenter

One of my favourite quotes about life by Montaigne - “I want us to be doing things, prolonging life's duties as much as we can. I want death to find me planting my cabbages, neither worrying about it nor the unfinished gardening.”

This is the front page of today’s @timesofindia. Count the number of avoidable deaths.

Was it a moment or a movement? What happens after allegations are made public, but closure never follows? Who decides when consequences end, and on what terms? @NidhiSuresh_ traces what followed Bollywood’s #MeToo reckoning. thenewsminute.com/news/off-scrip…

The Nobel Prize in Literature was suspended in 2018. The prize was gone for a year because several women accused one man connected to the Swedish Academy of sexual assault, and the institution decided it could not hand out laurels for literary greatness while that stench hung in the room. The Academy restructured, and the prize resumed only afterwards. In Tamil Nadu, seventeen-plus women name a poet-lyricist publicly. The woman who spoke first gets banned from the industry. Chinmayi loses work, loses colleagues, loses years. Vairamuthu gets the Jnanpith. I have called out Naipaul for his regressive views, so I do not think I have some respectability boundaries at work, especially when this holds implications for all of us. So I will call out Vairamuthu. Here is what nobody will touch: the Vairamuthu-DMK arrangement. He writes their praise poetry, coddles their leaders with whatever honorific the moment demands. Stalin who avoids a crime scene like Kallakurichi where 40+ people died from drinking bootleg liquor visits a different kind of crime scene, calling on Vairamuthu at his home to wish him Happy Birthday. What is the message that it sends to women? The DMK thinks he carries Mukkulathor votes. He lobbies hard and makes sure that the party machinery is used to defend his so-called legacy and also protect him from any public criticism. This is not literature but a barter system in progressive clothing. And here is the deeper violence nobody is naming. Tamil is a two-thousand-year-old literary tradition. If a man accused by seventeen women gets such recognition, what is the message for women in literature? In a world where male writers already receive wildly disproportionate recognition, prizes, translations, festival invitations -- the Jnanpith panel choose this moment, this man, to represent the language? What are you telling every woman who writes? That the establishment will close ranks. That talent is secondary to political utility and shameless lobbying.