Sohini Chattopadhyay @popeyed Twitter profile

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

3 years

We found a plasma match for our friend through Tinder. 🤝 Dating app 1, govt 0.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

2 months

It’s somewhat easy for those without personal loss to forget the gross mismanagement during Covid. But those who have lost, grieved, they voted with remembrance.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

2 years

People born in 2000 getting into masters programs. Let that sink in, PhD folks.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

6 months

Amitabh Bachchan finally marks himself a red flag.

Amitabh Bachchan

@SrBachchan

6 months

T 4898 - 🚩

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

2 years

Bombay dude on a dating app sent his 20 min TedX talk to introduce himself. 🤦🏻‍♀️

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

3 years

It’s disrespectful to put up a memorial statue of Netaji who is obviously still alive.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

3 years

So many pictures of funerals. What about the mortuary workers? Are they getting safety measures? Have they received hikes in their salaries? Will they receive insurance? Discussing the horrors of mass death without discussing the workers isn’t going to get us anywhere.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

3 years

Of course I am not lazy. I’m under the blanket because it keeps me safe from Covid. It’s really a giant mask, if you think creatively.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

1 year

A true love story for Indians this month: One winter morning in Calcutta, I was at the bus stand; pigtails, school uniform, all of 11 yrs. Too young to experience romantic love, till I felt warmth on my cheeks. I saw a cow. Cow had licked me. I screamed. Cow ran away. The end.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

2 years

Whenever I am on JJ Flyover, I get the tangible feeling of life passing by, and that there’s so much beauty in this passage.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

6 months

How do we define friendships between a person who is free, another who is in prison? In the last four years, a pandemic began, I started my research, finished my phd, got a job, started teaching. For the same four years, my JNU colleague Sharjeel @_imaams has been in prison.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

4 years

My PhD motto: “take care of the enemies: emotions”.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

4 years

I swear I came back to Calcutta just to watch the drama unfold as a BJP politician divorces his wife for joining Trinamool Congress, and says (rough translation): “people steal coal and cow, but I didn’t expect they will steal the lakshmi of the house”.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

3 years

I don’t care which city I land up in the future, but please please let it be a city where I can hang out at night.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

2 years

As a historian of the British Empire, I’m here for peak humor from Commonwealth twitter.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

3 years

I can’t explain the peripatetic lives we live as scholars to my non academic friends. We find homes in new places, with plants, friends, pets, partners. We move to research fields, grafting ourselves to new connections. It’s exciting, but also full of missing, a life in abeyance.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

9 months

Finally got notified that the doctorate degree has been awarded 😱 So now you can crack all the “is there a doctor in the flight” jokes. I moved back from Bombay (crie), joined as an Assistant Prof at Union College, and discovered trains between upstate New York and NYC.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

3 years

It’s irritating to tell engineers in India that all historians are not archaeologists, when I know the differences between a civil engineer and an electrical engineer (the electrical engineer is prouder unless bullied by computer science bros)

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

3 years

Gentle reminder that amidst the humongous tragedy that unfolds in India right now, the farmers are still protesting without redressal, social workers and intellectuals are still in prison without trial and without evidence.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

3 years

When asked what it’s like to be married to a freedom fighter and a communist, my grandma dryly replied that her partner could be a full-time intellectual because she had a full-time job. Happy 100th birthday, dida. Afterworld is probably a bit equal because of people like you.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

2 years

Columbia needs a note from a doctor exempting me from the booster shot. If I don’t get the note, they can de-register us. Here’s the thing. I sent emails clarifying I am in a country where boosters are not available. A simple Google search should ideally suffice, but nope.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

2 years

My maternal grandad’s brother was angry with the partition. After a year or so, he decided to cross the new border. He didn’t have papers and assumed a false identity to visit his village. The Pakistani army stationed at East Pakistan caught him, and he ended up being in jail..

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

2 years

Of home. We remember independence days through our ancestors. They taught us that our ideas of home are blurred lines between citizenship and memories, and that the fantastic story of the birth of India is also a story of exceptional loss.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

4 years

Welcome to 2021. Annual reminder: some of my friends and many many educators are still in prison in India.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

2 years

As a historian, I am excited that there’s a new object of periodization, the lettuce.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

3 years

PS: she’s doing much better so might not need further intervention.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

2 years

Mom watching Pathaan, while the end credit song is playing: “why are these people leaving the theatre? Are they mad that they want to miss watching Shahrukh dance?” She didn’t know about the post credit scene.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

2 years

Historians' works do not read as seamlessly as a history-inspired novel because our past is NOT about a single narrative with an easy resolution. Our chapters explain multiple causalities. They show through evidence uncomfortable and often conflicting truths.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

3 years

Folks (you know who you are): this is a FUN tweet about something nice that happened in weird times. You don’t have to troll me on DM. :/

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

3 years

My mother wrote short stories about people’s pets. There’s one story about my grandfather having to leave his dogs during the partition. She wrote them for my dad, finding new ways to make him a part of the world as he grappled with vascular dementia.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

4 years

Ironic. On republic day, a day when India acknowledged that power rests with the people, mainstream media is busy condemning people who protest to safeguard their rights.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

3 years

@SChiritescu A friend put the requirements on her bio and we found a Covid recovered dude 😂

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

3 years

I want a library, a cohort, the feeling that I am part of a program in order to write my dissertation. Being stranded far away, in a different time zone and staying each day all alone in archives and home to write makes me realise that dissertation is not an individual act.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

3 years

Help crematorium workers in India; this is an important initiative and it accepts USD.

Help crematorium workers in India survive COVID, organized by Raya Steier

As India grapples with the largest COVID outbreak in the world , bodies ar… Raya Steier needs your support for Help crematorium workers in India survive COVID

www.gofundme.com

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

8 months

Stadium ka vastu hi galat hai 😭

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

3 years

Petition in India to write “and” instead of cum to mean dual function. #ThoseWhoKnow .

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

3 years

Friends who are vaccinated, please don’t stop advocating for the rest of the world who hasn’t. It’s a global crisis, and the solutions can only come through equitable access to healthcare.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

3 years

The occupation of Palestine is the blueprint for technologically advanced forms of necropolitics. No doubt support for Israel trends in India.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

3 years

My mom is in the queue for the vaccine today. It’s full of 65+ folks discussing 2020 with irritation as they wait. One grumbled: “I want to get the vaccine just so that my son stops nagging me about the vaccine”.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

4 months

Growing up in Calcutta, I was irritated by those who left but expected the city to remain frozen in their past so that it’s familiar in their sparse visits. Today I saw a Calcutta cafe advertise they serve coffee with drones and I learnt to forgive the prev generation a little.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

2 years

The “exemption” form makes us choose between religious and health reasons for not taking the booster. What about vaccine inequality as a sufficient cause?

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

3 years

On the eve of the first day of WB elections, someone asked me “if not BJP then who”. a) why are you STILL asking this b) regional parties will uphold our federalism c) Honestly, I’d rather vote my 1 month old niece to to power than invite a party of genocidal megalomaniacs.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

3 years

I don’t know who needs to see this. And why, yes, you’re most welcome.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

4 years

Relative wants their son to talk to me about higher ed but tells I shouldn’t influence them into social sciences. No uncle, I bring them to the dark side only if you send me vials of an IITian’s blood, sweat of a management consultant, and your favorite Tagore’s science degree

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

2 years

I’m so excited for those who are applying for PhD programs this year but if you really want encouragement about your brave choice for heavens sake don’t talk to someone who’s on the finishing line BECAUSE WE WILL GIVE YOU UNHINGED RAGE thank you.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

3 years

I meet people who have lived in the same city for years, made lifelong friends they can hang out with, and I honestly feel a bit wistful about the possibilities of finding one’s own place. But I simultaneously miss the friends I have in all the cities I have lived in.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

4 years

What happens when we think of life and urbanization from the vantage point of the cremation grounds? I wrote a bit about my research here. PS: I didn’t choose the headline.

Scroll.in

@scroll_in

4 years

What researching cremations of the dead in colonial India taught me about life in our cities today

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

3 years

Is it okay to want to write the dissertation in memes?

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

3 years

Tough choice between BJP bros, and woke city bhadraloks who cite Marx on dating apps but are one unmatch away from voting for BJP. Keep calm and read histories of Calcutta from 1920s, dada.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

3 years

In 2016 when I moved to New York, I didn’t imagine I’d be living Mumbai in 2021. But a few visa renewal fiascos later, here I am, making home in a city I knew only as a researcher. Here’s hoping I write the city better. :)

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

3 years

In an archival note, I found a Bengali man complaining about a municipal rule, "SINCE ALEXANDER INVADED INDIA NO SUCH SURPRISE HAS FALLEN UPON THE NATIVES". Okay. I've found the title of my dissertation.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

2 years

While his wife and daughter remained in Calcutta. A year later, he was released. Legend has it that he must have immediately gone to the bazaar. Because he landed up in Calcutta with fruits and fish from Barisal. A helpful prison guard ensured he returned home with the taste...

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

3 years

I feel like I am an outdoor person whenever the city is on a brink of a lockdown.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

3 years

My grandfather, who was in Andaman jail for five years for his anti-colonial activities had once said that many favourite freedom fighters have smoked something at some point. Material history of India’s freedom struggle, anyone? Will be useful in today’s hyper-moralistic times

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

3 years

I need to re-learn how to sleep.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

3 years

What’s the name of the festival after Diwali where you have to sit with green tea, nasal spray and anti-histamine?

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

4 years

#twitterstorians of South Asia, are there any online newspaper database apart from Times of India and CSSSC periodicals that I can access from home? I’m particularly looking for Marathi, Bengali and Hindi newspapers and periodicals.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

3 years

So a PhD is 90% grant writing and 10% dissertation writing or what 😬

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

3 years

Episodes I can write: Emily Doesn’t Walk on the Streets Emily dates IMT Ghaziabad Guy, Goes to Cyber Hub Emily Has Panic Attacks on Highways Emily’s Private Power Grid Fails Again Emily Accidentally enters Old Gurgaon Office Laughs as Emily Says She Lives in Delhi. (Stop me)

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

3 years

Grief becomes a relay race being passed on from mourning one death to another.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

2 years

Starting my final year of PhD, and looking at years of absolute instability and uncertainty. How do people get through this without any hope to hold on to?

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

6 months

I get to hear of him from occasional communications with his brother. My life has moved towards new communities, friends, places, home; all the while Sharjeel who deserved all of this and more, has been in confinement for demanding democracy. On 28th Jan, it will be four years.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

2 years

Birth. Furious transactions of memes. Death.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

3 years

Mother and I speak about grief and love a lot. Recently, she told me that this is the longest time she’s been away from my father since his death in 2019. The longest before this was 1976, when he was posted in Darjeeling as a young geographer. 1/n

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

2 months

The JNU in me sees this as a personal victory.

Kaustubh Naik

@mundcar

2 months

Nothing feels as satisfying as seeing Smriti Irani loose.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

2 years

So many houses in my street are playing Lata Mangeshkar’s songs. Her voice as Kajol mingling with her voice as Madhubala, as Rekha, Sharmila. So many songs of love.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

2 years

Bridgerton’s postcolonial moment is this: the Bengali woman’s arsenal, the nightie, made it into British high fashion.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

4 years

For the 2396632th time, no. My archive is not Winston Churchill’s statue. Breaking statues is not breaking history. Instead, give historians from former colonies access to documents through grants and visa fee waivers (1/3).

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

3 years

On my father’s birthday, I want us to understand dementia a bit more, read about the various ways people age, like we all will. The Reddit r/dementia thread is excellent. Also a timely reminder that the Indian carceral system, reflecting it’s society, is brutal to the aged.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

3 years

Can’t believe this clarification is needed, but replacing one version of colonial power with another form of colonial power is not decolonisation.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

2 years

All I wanted was to be a financially independent strong woman who can have a secure future on her own, then I had to go sign up to become a historian.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

1 year

Necropolitics perfected in India: Trains collided, 300 or more people dead, RW twitter is busy blaming a mosque nearby for the accident which is actually a temple, or celebrating the railway ministry that has been defunding affordable mass transit, leading up to the accident.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

3 years

A very close friend is in the hospital with Covid, with others in the ward who are in their 20s and 30s. Indian govts expect our age group to be there for all the hustle, the rallies, the *economy*, while completely failing to protect at every step, be it jobs, safety or vaccines

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

3 years

Will be in West Bengal to vote, and thinking of my sheer privilege to exercise democratic rights in India. Workers who are compelled to be migrants because cities won’t house them are bereft of this in absence of postal votes; while here I am checking out intercity tickets.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

3 years

Dissertation will be a compendium of “found x materials but cannot find y because archives were shut so here take my hypothesis and desperate imagination”.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

3 years

Me to mother: I’ve left a very nice pair of shoes back in New York. It was perfect for summer. Mother: what will you need nice shoes here for? Well played.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

3 years

Increasingly feeling anxious about not being able to access vaccines in Kolkata while a few friends in other cities get it. A substantial part of my day is spent staring at/refreshing the registration page on my laptop, instead of doing other things that give me some peace. Ugh.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

3 years

Every morning I open CoWin before checking the news. Thank you for giving me the power to cope with disappointment throughout the day 🙏

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

2 years

Want Bollywood movies where women who are deep into some life drama with some guy can ALSO have friends who they can call up and just…rant about life.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

3 years

Antara and I have created a playlist with hyper energetic Bollywood songs so that we can write without immediately plunging into the depressive feels of our times 🤝 @Ria_Bhasha

Cow Tse Tongue

Cow Tse Tongue · Playlist · 360 songs · 168 likes

open.spotify.com

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

2 years

The pandemic PhD process is sustained by a community of fellow researchers who furiously send each other memes as symbols of solidarity. So glad to have found this gang ♥️

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

3 years

Hate the nineteenth century philosophers for making me think that I will write my most intellectual chapter when I ruminate with coffee in a pretty cafe.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

2 years

I keep on complaining about the rain, but then Bombay sky decides to be all dramatic.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

3 months

Not attending the commencement. My research doesn’t deserve to be belittled by anti-intellectual leadership. My community and heart lies with the students and supporting faculty.

fsjp-cbt

@Fsjp_cbt

3 months

Our statement on the actions on campus yesterday, including the arrest of 100+ of our students.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

2 years

There are very few words that cannot be translated… JU students: hold my dictionary.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

3 years

I’m looking forward to presenting at @ACSAMadison . But on a day my friend #Sharjeel ’s bail was denied, my paper seems far from reality. Those who are participating at the wonderful Madison conf, please spread the word about our fellow academics’ incarceration.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

3 years

Social science twitter, we need to rigorously analyse why a tv show should have the catchphrase “I told you not to get into keto diet”.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

4 years

Jokes apart, if this normalises break ups due to differences in political opinions, that will be a huge service to the society.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

3 years

Will activists against global warming win more likes than activists against incarceration? Who can do better on Tiktok and reels? Watch all this in the all new black-mirror-episode-but-for-real.

Film Updates

@FilmUpdates

3 years

Usher, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, and Julianne Hough will host competition series ‘The Activist’. Activists go head-to-head in challenges to promote their causes, with their success measured via online engagement, social metrics, and hosts’ input. ()

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

2 years

The real pomodoro technique is to write for 20 mins and then quickly lie down in panic for 10 mins to convince yourself that what you have written is trash.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

3 years

Realising that Bobby Deol songs help me gather the energy to write. This is definitely getting into the acknowledgement section of my dissertation.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

3 years

I wish I could just be old school sad instead of sad with self reflexivity.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

3 months

What is “ancient desires” if not yet another example of orientalism, a way of seeing the non-west as ossified in time and without history?

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

3 years

May there be a special kind of hell for Sanghis who quote Rumi.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

3 years

Tr: “hey you who post 🔥🔥🔥 emoji below girls’ pictures does Rammohun Roy know?” Someone please tell me who wrote this I cannot use 🔥 anymore.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

3 years

@sohinichat My JNU advisor Indivar Kamtekar once casually remarked that it’s funny that an entire airport in Calcutta is named after a person who’s died in an aircrash. 😂

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

3 years

Want to start a company that helps celebrities tweet woke stuff.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

3 years

Reading plague reports and thinking of how the pace of comprehending a disease rarely matches the pace of the viruses: Bombay Gov to London in September 1896: “no cause for serious alarm at present”. 2nd Oct 1896: “mild type” of plague in city. We know how the rest panned out

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

3 years

If tech is so cool please invent a gadget to massage the insides of the uterus because cramps are aaaaaaaarghhhh

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Sohini Chattopadhyay

@popeyed

3 years

WhatsApp is still down is this the final end to the public university system in India?

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