Indian Institute of Students

“I’m not an animal anymore” Yeong-hye is, in her husband’s opening words, "completely unremarkable in every way." She is a reasonably diligent homemaker, a reasonably attentive consort, not deeply unhappy and driven by no great passions. Her husband, Mr Cheong is an imperious dullard fully at peace with his own mediocrity. He chose her due to her unassertiveness and sheer blandness. Things begin to fracture and their staid lives are disrupted the day Yeong-hye throws away all the meat from the freezer and announces that henceforth she is going to be a vegetarian. The sole explanation she provided?  “ I had a dream.” The dream, divulged to us in fleeting, cursory glances, is dark, bloody and aggressive, replete with invasive images of brutality. Violence breaks out in her waking world, too, when her father tries to force a piece of sweet-and-sour pork into her mouth. And in revolt, she stabs herself. And it goes downhill from here. Other people are dragged in , ...

The year 2016 had a spicy opening, when the Pathankot attacks widely dented any notion of growing Indo-Pakistani diplomatic patch-up. It is an undeniable fact that the public perception continues to be mostly negative in all facets of discussion concerning Pakistan. On 18th September, during the change of army staff at Uri, four heavily armed terrorists evaded security and opened fire on the army camps: the result was inevitable, known, and antagonistic to Indian nationalistic sentiments. Nineteen soldiers were killed. The penultimate day of September witnessed something atypical: surgical strikes were orchestrated by the 9 Para SF of the Indian Army, in what can be called a cross-border operation of an unprecedented scale. The heliborne attacks were devised to eliminate the terror "launch pads" on the opposite side of the Line of Control. This was, in the most elemental of terms, a direct response to the Pakistani provocation after months of strategic restraint. Right aft...