On 16th November morning, on opening Facebook, I came across a post in Gujarati which said, "The controversial speaker Kajal Hindustani, infamous for her provocative speeches, is scheduled to deliver a lecture on 'The Role of Women in Protecting Indian Culture and Shaping the Future' at Gujarat University in Ahmedabad. Concerned citizens have expressed apprehensions about whether Kajalben will spread hate or incite discord, as per her previous record."  The lecture was to take place on November 16th at 12 noon.

A recent Patna High Court judgment on alcohol ban in Bihar can as well be applied to Gujarat. As reported by a legal news portal, under the title "State's Alcohol Ban Led To Illegal Liquor Trade; Police, Excise, Tax, Transport Dept Officials Love The Ban As It Means Big Money: Patna HC",  the story by Malavika Prasad says that while quashing the penalty of demotion imposed on an inspector on the ground that he had been negligent in implementing the excise prohibition law, the Patna High Court observed that though  the law was passed with the objective of improving public health, "for several reasons, it finds itself on the wrong side of the history".

It was November 14, Jawaharlal Nehru’s 135th birth anniversary. While the national leaders everywhere – ranging from Congress’ bigwigs to Narendra Modi and Rajnath Singh – paid their tributes to the India’s first Prime Minister who also happened to be one of the most important freedom fighters, I was a little surprised: The Congress leaders in my state, Gujarat, seemed to ignore him at the place where mediapersons were called to interact with them.

I was quite excited when Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched what was called "the expanded Ayushman Bharat-Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB-PMJAY) scheme" for those  aged 70 and above, irrespective of their socio-economic status, with a benefit cover of Rs 5 lakh per year in empanelled hospitals across India. 

My Vadodara-based activist-friend, Jagdish Patel, who has long championed the cause of the victims of silicosis, a deadly occupational disease, has forwarded to me an interesting blog by the executive editor of Pulitzer Center, Marina Walker Guevara, written in the context of the U.S. election results, in which Donald Trump has won.

The Print has carried an interesting story , headlined “The Great Indian Sanitation Scam. General castes bag govt jobs, Valmikis do the work”, with the sub-head, “Across India, proxy, ‘badli’, or ‘ewaj’ work is rampant in sanitation jobs.” Authored by Shubhangi Misra, and though rather too long, I got interested in it as I was personally witness to an outrageous event, on how ‘upper’ castes react to sanitation work, which took place in June 2016 in Ahmedabad.

While the fever around that the Gujarati new year, Bestu Varas, which fell on the next day of Diwali, November 1, has still not fully subsided, with noise of crackers still heard in the urban area where I live, what appears strange to me how on the eve of every Diwali is how superstitions take round among believers. One of these I noticed is, people cook some bit of food on a day before Diwali, which is called Kali Chaudas, and place it on the crossroads.

The other day when I received a WhatsApp forward (it said "forwarded many times"), I got terribly worked up, even though I shouldn't have done it. I generally don't like such forwards as these seek to spread rumours. In fact, shouting out, I said, "Another nonsense from WhatsApp University... Why forward such unverified things?"