Not just girlfriends

It took a lady to come to India from the US to present us with a ‘real’ picture of lesbianism in our country. In her film, The Journey (the original Malayalam film is called Sancharam), director Ligy Pullappally presents the tale of two girls in rural India whose friendship turns into adolescent love. Kiran and Delilah (above) do not, however, titillate the audience with steamy scenes. Instead, Delilah’s mother beats her mercilessly when she comes to know of the relationship.

Pullappally wanted her film to be a counterpoint to fluffy lesbian flicks such as Girlfriend. An incident that she had read about ? that of a girl who killed herself after it was discovered that she was lesbian ? prompted her to make the film. “Homosexuality has little to do with the action or inaction of the opposite sex,” said Pullappally in an interview. The Journey has won several awards already and is scheduled to come to India soon.

Red alert

Trafficking of women and children is on the rise in West Bengal, says a recently concluded research by National Human Rights Commission, UNIFEM and the Institute of Social Sciences (ISS). The shocking figures show that 22.9 per cent of trafficked girls start prostitution at the age of 16. To discuss the report, ISS, the West Bengal Commission for Women and UNIFEM organised a seminar last week. The seminar discussed legal issues, rescue and rehabilitation of trafficked girls and preventative strategies. In this context, the district police’s initiatives in tracking down such girls was lauded. But the city police came under flak as they have not been able to rescue a single girl from Sonagachhi in the last two years.

Nilosree Biswas

Courage under fire

Harshini Kanhekar didn’t really want to be number one at everything. But that’s a tag that she’ll be stuck with all her life. The country’s first woman firefighter isn’t complaining, though. For the 23-year-old fire engineer, lifting heavy equipment and performing strenuous drills are all in a day’s work. Three years ago, Kanhekar (far right) was the first-ever woman student to get admission in the fire engineering course at the National Fire Service College in Nagpur. Here’s wishing there were more of her kind.

Men at work

And now, a men’s movement! The founders of the ‘Forum for Men, Emancipation and Politics’, launched in Bern recently, promise to represent men’s interests at the federal political level in Germany. Though their working and living conditions are created by a system dominated by men, yet it does not represent many of their interests, says Andi Geu, social philosopher and a founder member of the forum. Geu also says that the primary goal of the forum is to achieve more gender democracy and equality between men and women. And we thought the feminists were doing that already!

Super jeans

How often have you worn jeans and thought it made you look fat? Not just because you’ve put on extra inches, but because you felt the jeans didn’t do you justice? Paige Adams-Geller might never have had those problems ? she was a Miss America contestant, and had such perfect proportions that every denim company wanted her to be their model. After eight years of modelling for such brands as 7 For All Mankind, Habitual, True Religion and Guess, she knew her denim. And that is why her new denim-line ‘Paige’, experts and fashion journalists say, brings out the best of your butt, even if you’re Miss Average.

The Times, London

Overheard... that women write more polite e-mails than men. At least Indian women do, says a research paper by IIM Ahmedabad, which scanned e-mails sent by men and women in the same department. Well, we always said women were nicer, didn’t we?