Can the Election Commission step up to the plate and exert its Constitutional powers with non-partisan conviction, asks Mitali Saran.

'The great wheel of democracy has turned full circle, and it feels just like being back in 2014, but with less hope that someone out there is going to save us from ourselves,' points out Mitali Saran.

'We cannot win peace among our people by treating them like the enemy,' says Mitali Saran.

'The Republic is currently captained and crewed by people who seem interested in the safety and well being of only a select kind of passenger, advising the rest to swim for Pakistan,' points out Mitali Saran.

This whirlwind of activity only confirms that rushing around creating an impression of pompous busy-ness is not the same thing as solving problems, argues Mitali Saran.

'Some semi-literate lunkhead tweeting at Rs 2 per tweet from a dingy basement in Chennai or San Diego accomplishes nothing, but give hundreds of thousands of them a time, date, and talking points, and they can create a wall of sound -- a nonsensical wall, perhaps, but one that is heard, and that can occasionally prevail just because it's there,' says Mitali Saran.

'The 2019 battle is a battle for the kind of India that we want to live in.' The Congress's long history is pockmarked with sins great and small, but Mr Gandhi has the advantage of representing a new generation with a relatively clean slate, and a chance to redefine contemporary perception,' says Mitali Saran.

'Maybe, if Mr Modi can fire over Patel's gigantic shoulder, people will start to think that he is very much like Patel?' 'It's a long shot, but the Modi sheen has worn awfully thin, and after five years and a long, much-frayed rope, he faces real accountability from voters.' 'He needs any help he can get,' says Mitali Saran.

'In this moment, many women are incandescent with anger at the injustice of it all, and are done with being patient. They want to breathe.' 'They've decided to set fire to this toxic oxygen, and to make it as uncomfortable for men as it is for women,' says Mitali Saran.

'I don't care how accomplished you are, and I don't care about your career which has burst into pretty flames.' 'I do care about all the women you've abused and scarred and made life hell for,' says Mitali Saran.

'Politicians try to be the leader fish, pulling the country along -- except that they try to knock other aspiring leaders off their course as they go, says Mitali Saran.

'As I watched Sacred Games, I kept flinching at the thought of all the thorns poised to lodge themselves in the sides of the thin-skinned,' says Mitali Saran.

'As an idea, cleaning up India is a good one,' says Mitali Saran.

'It promises to get much, much darker before the dawn.' 'But at least dawn has a fighting chance,' says Mitali Saran.

'Already, the BJP treats the Constitution like the unpopular old uncle at the party, whom everyone pays lip service to and then proceeds to ignore,' says Mitali Saran.

'The BJP's election campaign promise of development isn't dead, it just doesn't look anything like what was promised.' 'The results are plain to see, which is why so many of us wake up with a knot in our stomachs, wondering what fresh new hell the day's news cycle will bring,' says Mitali Saran.

Because the Andaman Islands are gorgeous!

'The thing we fondly call FB has come a long way from the cute baby dimples it had in 2006.' 'Today the dimples are long gone and FB looms over us as Mr Hyde, designing the news we see with algorithms that determine what we might want to see; allowing companies to empty our pockets as we hug it good morning and to lobotomise us as we sleep,' says Mitali Saran.

While it's important for the courts to enjoy public trust, says Mitali Saran, the only way to protect the institution is to scrupulously prove its credibility.

'When a country's humanity and morality levels are this low, it has a disease so deadly that it could die,' says Mitali Saran.