THE MERCURIAN TIMES

One of the major decisions taken in this year has been regarding the declaration of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel by US President Donald Trump, overturning decades of the US Foreign Policy. With this declaration, Trump directed his government to move the US Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.  New Delhi’s “yes” vote comes even as the NDA government’s proximity to Israel and the US has grown.  On account of this decision by the US, a resolution was brought up by Turkey and Yemen in the United Nations as to the “Reversal of Trump’s Decision”. 128 nations voted in favour of the resolution, 9 against and 35 abstained from voting. India joined other 127 nations in favour of the resolution, standing firmly with Palestine, despite immense pressure from the allies, US and Israel. Given the increasing inclination of India towards the US and Israel, India’s vote came out as an utter surprise to all other nations that suspected that New Delhi might abstain from voting in

PADMAVATI,  an Indian Epic Period Drama film,directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali is awaited by millions of people in India as well as abroad. But the  film has been delayed indefinitely because of a lot of revolving controversies.  While the various Rajput Associations,especially the Karni Sena, has claimed that the movie distorts the historical facts and shows Rani Padmini( the major lead character in the film, played by Deepika Padukone) in bad light,  Bhansali has clearly stated time and again that the film is based on a fictitious poem 'PADMAVAT' written in 1540 by a sufi poet Jayasi.  So where does the point of distortion of history comes?  Various historians have also said that there has been no mention of Rani Padmavati in any of the written  books of that period relating to the Rajputs or The Chittor invasion which took place in  1303, so it seems that the objections made by the Rajputi Associations are quite baseless. Moreover, the poem which serves as a base

#PRIDE “i want to 377 you like a star falling off the brown­ i want to feel you till my nails turn water i want to suck you seven different skies i want to be a squatter in your head when it sleeps when it’s dark i want to break laws with you in bed and in streets and in parks” -Akhil Katyal  1970 Thousands of people march into New Yo rk's Central Park during the nation's first gay pride parade on June 28, 1970 on the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall riots, when members of the gay community clashed with police who had raided the Stonewall Inn in Manhattan. 2017 Thousands of people gather with colourful costumes, balloons, flags, posters and placards on November 12, 2017 for the tenth annual Delhi queer pride parade.­ The crowd sang, danced and celebrated as people from all walks of life, identifying with different sexual orientations and genders got together at Delhi’s Barakhamba metro station to march till Jantar Mantar. “CLOSETS ARE FO

Words are so impactful that they can even bring war. They own a prowess which is non-ignorant. Yet isn't it injustice to end an emotional commitment by uttering a word merely three times? A marriage is a crucial affair and certainly it cannot be assessed as a profit and loss statement, neither a woman is an asset which can be discarded by a husband on an excuse of expiry of its useful life. Triple talaq infamously known as Talaq-e-biddat, a 1400 year old practice which allowed a Muslim man to legally divorce his wife by the pronouncement of the word ‘Talaq' thrice became a controversial issue in the year.  The practice was declared “unconstitutional” by the apex court of the country on August 22nd 2017. A bench of five judges passed its verdict in a split decision of 3:2 and asked the government to ban the custom by enacting a law. The issue attracted media attention in the past two years when a Muslim organisation, Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan (BMMA) launche

Miss World 2017 and Femina Miss India 2017 born on 14 may 1997 has left everyone bewildered with her wit and charm .  Born in Rohtak, Haryana, Manushi Chillar is perusing her medical career and is a trained classical dancer . She has many more feathers in her cap.  She was a celebrity speaker at 2017 Global Entrepreneurship Summit and was announced as the brand ambassador for 'Anaemia Free Haryana .' Chillar also began a beauty with purpose campaign project 'Shakti' which received government support of 18 crores and expansion by ensuring free availability of sanitary napkins for all girls in the government schools of Haryana by Chief Minister   of the state,   Manohar Lal Khattar. Newly crowned   Miss World   , she is using her medical background to focus much-needed attention on an issue that is often regarded as a taboo in Indian society.  The campaign's goal is to spread awareness about menstrual hygiene. She visited twenty villages for the

1 bitcoin=928817.94 INR, amused? Well the genesis of this cryptocurrency could be traced to 2009, with ambiguous origin alias Satoshi Nahamotu and this is how far it has travelled that too without any central banking or administration system. Not surprisingly, it is yet to be legalised in many parts of the world including India. Altcoins or better known as bitcoins were initiated as Peer-to peer electronic cash system to facilitate instant payments. Bitcoins are released into circulation through a process known as bitcoin mining which involves solving a computationally difficult puzzle and earning bitcoins in exchange or simply buying them.  And given that the current Bitcoin market is more volatile than a bag of  plutonium nitrate, multi-explosive, sound seeking projectiles , one stands a very good chance to lose a lot of money. Trading in bitcoins is done trough bitcoin wallet, even India has one such wallet.   Through worldwide Wannacry ransomware attack in May 2017, hac

THE GREAT SMOG OF DELHI -Ojus S indwani The capital of this country has been shrouded by smog in recent days and has become no less than a gas chamber.  It has been reported as one of the worst levels of air quality in Delhi since 1999. The U.S. embassy in the city, which routinely tweets air pollution levels in the city, recorded the air quality index (AQI) to be at 1,010 at 4 p.m. local time (5:30 a.m. ET) on Wednesday.  According to the embassy’s website , a score of between 301 and 500 is deemed "hazardous." We recently witnessed a firecracker ban in the city due to the already increased amount of pollution in the air and the reducing quality of air. But we were not even able to cope with that when to top it all of, farmers started burning crop stubble to clear their fields. This, in combination with current weather conditions of cool temperatures and low wind speeds, resulted in smog festering in the city. Delhi, home to nearly 19 million people, is among

Dark... No it ain't scared her But their concern did. Manifestly there was light,  Big big lights, Yet uncertainty for the bright. She lay there in white, And entrusted those emeralds with all her might. It was a pounding heart in the throat, But she had to feign for her beloved. A drop was naughty and tried to escape the eye, But her eye lashes played the spy. Knives and cuts, stitches and threads, Seems like her new acquaintance. Time ticked, and hours passed... When senses came, Pain ran in. Though she trembled and suffered She had won the battle  And defying all laws of nature, She is now a beautiful daffodil! -Devyanshi Agarwal 

The colour of the blood flowing in the veins : red, the number of bones in the body: 365, the air necessary for survival: oxygen, the liquid of revival: water, when all the basics needed for survival   is same and plain ,why does the distinction made by man make such a big ruckus ?? the distinction on the basis of birth, the distinction on the basis of the purity of the blood?? What blood? The red liquid made up of cells and fibro gens and coagulants ,the basic of every body yet differentiated on the basis of the family into which the infant is born into?  A dalit, a low born, an untouchable   should these words actually exist in the human dictionary? Last week a 9 month pregnant lady was murdered by Brahmin son and mother solely on the reason that she was a dalit who while loosing her balance in order   to prevent her fall took support of the bucket which was lying there at a convenient   spot to break her fall, the mother who according to the caste system prevalent in our co

-Devyanshi Agarwal I might not have wings today, but evolution in technology gives birth to a hope of having them one day. The term ‘ Digital’ has penetrated in our lives so swiftly that the growing use of cryptocurrency today does not sound bizarre to us.  It is a decentralized form of digital currency which uses encryption techniques in generation and regulation of units of currency. If internet would have been a country, then cryptocurrency might have been its national currency. Cryptocurrency is a peer-to-peer cash exchange system, free from any bank and government intervention. It uses blockchain technology to record all the transactions and the programmer needs to solve a mathematical puzzle to keep it secure. Currently, there are 3000 cryptocurrencies in circulation in the world.The first ever digital currency that came into existence on 3 rd Janaury 2009, Bitcoin, was developed by an unknown programmer Satoshi Nakamoto. His aim was not to invent a currency bu

-by Edith Newton The Indian subcontinent is home to multifarious sports with one being predominant, the game of Cricket! To be honest, and to do full justice to its ardent followers and diehard fans of great cricketers namely Sachin, MS Dhoni or Virat, Cricket has become just another religion in the nation! The Indian Cricketers today, are among those few people, for whom just the first name is enough to imply the scale of everything else, also making some of them having the highest brand and marketable value! Desperation of the nation to follow Cricket is touching such heights that it has become genuinely hard for the Indian nationals to believe and even remember that the National Sport of India is Hockey (let’s not forget that our national sport failed to qualify to the Beijing Olympics), and not Cricket! Except for Cricket and a little bit of Badminton (all thanks to PV Sindhu’s Olympic Silver and Saina Nehwal’s Commonwealth Gold apart from being former World No. 1),

Never come to DU with expectations! Because it’s magical and beyond your imagination! Being in a co-ed school and then landing up in convent college like JMC was no less than a shock for me. Yes I was scared, scared to be able to fit in. What if I just want to run away? Leaving the comfort of my home and coming to an all new city where you knew no one, it requires guts, and I’m glad that I did. Living away has a charm of it’s own. For once, all of us lazy kids get to do the adult stuff, stuff that helps us change, grow, develop, that actually gives us the feeling that we’ve grown up. But all of this has it’s own perks. The freedom, I will never trade that for anything in this world. Coming to a girls college, people threw all kinds of opinions and stereotypes at me. But I’m proud to say that I didn’t let any of those things get to me, I experienced it myself and yes I’m glad I came here. All my friends in other co-ed colleges still mock me, say things, stereotype a g

The ‘ESC’ key sighed                                                                                               As the index moved aside.                                                                         The ‘Del’ key was horrified,The ‘Click’ was more like a high tide.                                                                                                                         I ponder, what would it be like? If the keyboards could talk, Speak, cry and sigh! An absurd idea? I know! Are these cubicles supposed to act beyond their row? But Hey! Not a bad crazy thought, A weird fantasy, though! ‘Spacebar’ being the low pitched of all, ‘Enter’ roaring in the highest pit of all ‘Shift’ be a little calm, The ‘Alphabets’ not causing any harm, Well, beware! The ‘Backspace’being the furious one! And ‘Alt’ always so high on standards. While the ‘Arrow Keys’ are nice landers, ‘Caps Lock’ never coming down cloud nine. Though rest are fi

Let’s laugh in whispers  for the world shouldn’t know that we’re together And when the sun sets a darker shade of purple let’s fade a little into forever  let’s run on sands  that take us nowhere  we’ll reach where we’ve wanted to be all along  let’s paint our hearts a little darker  so that they don’t resemble the broken ones  let’s call this night our own and pretend that we’ve been here before so when the silence hits  and the hush takes over  we’ll probably know where to go  let’s scream with our footsteps  that are a bit too chained  so that when the cage breaks  we’ll not call it home  let’s be the music that we’ve never heard  and change the lyrics  to call them hope  let’s strum our heartbeats  a little faster  sit on the stars  and run after the moon  let’s count the breaths  that we never took  and dance on tiptoes  before we swoon   let’s get drunk on our scars  chase