Company In India Gives Women A Day Off If Their Period Is Painful—NPR Goats and Soda

by Abhishek Shah | Sep 21, 2020 | Narratives & Features, Portfolio

Public discussion of periods is still a taboo in many parts of the world. But this week in India, everybody’s talking about the topic. The reason: an announcement by a Mumbai media firm called Culture Machine: The company has announced that its 75 women...

What’s Making These Dogs In Mumbai Turn Blue?—NPR Goats and Soda

by Abhishek Shah | Sep 21, 2020 | Narratives & Features, Portfolio

Five dogs turned blue in Mumbai. That was a story that journalist Deepak Gharat broke this past week. He was following up on a story in the industrial zone of Taloja, home to about 1,000 pharmaceutical and chemical factories. Every week, there’s something going...

Do Peacocks Have Sex? Are Cows A Better National Animal Than Tigers?—NPR Goats and Soda

by Abhishek Shah | Sep 21, 2020 | Essays & Commentaries, Narratives & Features, Portfolio

India is having a debate about its national animals. Currently, the mighty tiger is the national beast and the peacock is the national bird. But the cow has recently been proposed as a replacement for the tiger because of its status as a holy animal. And this week,...

For India’s sex trafficking victims, family members often bear part of the blame—Public Radio International

by Abhishek Shah | Sep 21, 2020 | Narratives & Features, Portfolio

The numbers are depressing: Every 8 minutes a girl goes missing in India. Most of these girls are trafficked for sex, beggary or domestic labor. Unofficial counts put the number of victims of sex trafficking in India at 16 million — not counting the girls from...

Instant divorce is unconstitutional in India, finally —Public Radio International

by Abhishek Shah | Sep 21, 2020 | Narratives & Features, Portfolio

According to a Muslim custom that is rooted in tradition but not Islamic law, men have to say just three words to their wives if they want to dissolve their marriages. “Talaq, talaq, talaq” — and he’s divorced. But in India, a group of women petitioned the...