ATOMIC RAKSHASI
the Art of Rhea Daniel

Liberal feminism can’t seem to shake off the disproportionate value it places on desirability.  When we ought to be telling girls that it’s okay to be conventionally and biologically undesirable, and that one’s worth is inherent, we’ve been bending over backwards to convince all women and girls that all women and girls are beautiful and desirable, and in addition to that, all desirable traits are marketable.

While I’ve examined women’s roles in movies (because I felt there was such a dearth of complex ones), it jumped out at me how many men in Guillermo del Toro’s movies fit into archetypal fatherhood roles, their characters too being complex, sometimes contradictory.

In this episode of Rakshasi’s Ramblings , I talk about German writer Michael Ende’s children’s fantasy novel, Momo . In  Momo , the writer asks us to pause, to see time not as a resource to be hoarded, but as something we inhabit. Through the symbolic Grey Men and the innocent perception of young Momo, Ende unpacks how modern life’s obsession with productivity and efficiency corrodes our connection to the present. I explore how the book reveals the costs of our hurried exist

Should you come across a female narcissist, your safest option is to get away quickly; that is, if you even have the discernment to spot her. Not all of them are perched comfortably at the top and can’t always be identified by rank.

Why Choose the Bear?   The ‘Choose the Bear’ social experiment on social media, where specifically women were asked whether they would rather come across a bear in the woods or a man, caused such a reaction on the internet that it reached the news .   The question, farcical to begin with, places the hypothetical victim between two potential predators, one from the animal world and the other from one’s own world, that is, human civilisation, with its unwritten and legal rules

This one took a month and a half to complete because there were so many steps. Narration from my blog post "Somnophilia: More a Crime Than a Kink" https://youtu.be/VjxN1J1pHVc?si=vCXkQJC8yXSHB1Gj Comment Policy This space is for thoughtful, on-topic discussion. Comments that include links, sound like spam, or are intended to provoke rather than contribute will be deleted.

Vincent van Gogh, Withered Sunflowers , 1887 I had a classmate in college whose laid-back approach to work used to annoy me, but as I spent more time with her, her easygoing attitude began to rub off. I had chosen a stream that required an intense amount of labour, and putting one's assignments on a back-burner was a bad idea. After one year in her company, though, my approach to everyday life changed from an anxiety-ridden, forced discipline to an easygoing, placid existence

Henry Fuseli (1741–1825) The Nightmare 1781 Oil on canvas When I heard about Cee-Lo Green’s fall from grace , long after the incident that caused it, I began to wonder about rapists who prefer the corpse-like lack of resistance from their victims. Bill Cosby was another with a long list of roofied victims. It made me think, how socially inept do you have to be to incapacitate someone to the point where they can’t refuse your advances? I’m wrong of course. These are powerful m

The generic stalker has a relationship with his prey, and the relationship only goes so far as the prey gives. Anything is encouragement...

When I was in primary school, an English lesson hit me a little deeper than usual. It was the story of Gauri the Dreamer , generically known as The Milkmaid’s Dream . Gauri milks her cow early one morning and on the way to market, begins to think about how she would multiply her fortune when she sells her milk. She’d buy chickens with the profits from her milk business, the chickens would lay eggs and she’d earn even more money. Because of her inattentiveness, she trips and f