Could I at least get a hug?

In reading Mohan and Christina’s posts below, and comparing these to the reading on holistic healing, I can’t help but think about what it means to feel sick or experience pain. One of the excerpts from an interview with a patient includes the statement, “I think the acupuncture did gradually help, but, really, getting a hug from [Dr. Aparna] was the best medicine.”

Sickness and pain truly are such a personal matter and, as we’ve discussed in class, a truly personal experience. Like any other personal issues we are faced to deal with, we, as protective individuals, are selective in whom we let into our inner circles of “knowing.” Most often, we let into our inner circle not just a loved one, but a trusted loved one. This is someone who is going to care deeply about what we’re dealing with. They don’t want us to hurt anymore (physically or emotionally).

When I was a kid, I can remember having a high fever and my mom often telling me how she would take on the fever herself if that meant I could be rid of it. Even as a child, I knew this was not possible. But, the notion of it was comforting, endearing. It was a “medicine” that I greatly appreciated.

As an adult, I’ve dealt with some medical issues that have had no direct solution or remedy. To the doctor, I definitely felt like a statistic… “Based on your circumstances, and others like you, your chances of dealing with this again is at 75%.” In a mind-body-spirit consideration, is this type of feedback appropriate? I definitely felt like I was at a loss when I walked out of the office.

Directed to the doctor, a patient allows him/her into the inner circle of personal business... probably not by choice, but by necessity. When the issue is significant, personal, and painful to deal with, is the best response to that patient one, in which, you share with the patient where he/she falls within the national statistics? Or, would a hug and a glimmer of compassion amidst the unknown be the best?

The Haka, the Hurt, and the Work We Owe

The Haka, the Hurt, and the Work We Owe An Indian in Aotearoa reflects on resistance, complicity, and the solidarities we have yet to build Mohan Jyoti Dutta I watched the haka. I watched it several times, in fact. Each time, I tried to sit with what I was feeling before reaching for what I was supposed to think. Let me be honest about who I am in this conversation, because that matters. I am an upper caste, upwardly mobile Indian man. I am a professor at a university in Aotearoa. I carry the accumulated privileges of Brahminical socialisation, of English-medium education, of institutional access that was never designed for the communities I now write about and alongside. I say this not as confession but as orientation — because where you stand shapes what you see, and I have learned, through years of working with communities at the margins, that the refusal to name your own location is itself a colonial habit. The haka directed at Parmjeet Parmar did not offend me. It ...

Whiteness, NCA, and Distinguished Scholars

In a post made in response to the changes to how my discipline operates made by the Executive Committee of the largest organization of the discipline, the National Communication Association (NCA), one of the editors of a disciplinary journal Rhetoric and Public Affairs (RPA), Professor Martin J. Medhurst, a Distinguished Scholar of the discipline, calls out what he sees as the threat of identity (see below for his full piece published in the journal that he has edited for 20+ years, with 2019 SJR score of 0.27). In what he notes is a threat to the "scholarly merit" of the discipline, Professor Medhurst sets up a caricature of what he calls "identity." In his rhetorical construction of the struggles the NCA has faced over the years to find Distinguished Scholars of colour, he shares with us the facts. So let's look at the facts presented by this rhetor. It turns out, as a member of the Distinguished Scholar community of the NCA, Mr. Medhurst has problems with w...

The Substack and the Slur: How a Manufactured Crisis Toppled a Wahine Māori Political Editor

The Substack and the Slur: How a Manufactured Crisis Toppled a Wahine Māori Political Editor On the architecture of the Aotearoa culture-war machine, and the danger it poses to a democracy heading into 2026 There is a particular cadence to the afternoon on which the career of a senior Māori journalist at TVNZ is finished. It is unhurried. It begins with a tweet — in this case, a single image of a typed statement, posted by Maiki Sherman, the now-former political editor of TVNZ, on the afternoon of Friday, 8 May 2026, announcing that she had parted ways with the broadcaster. The post was terse, dignified, and final. As RNZ later reported , Sherman wrote that the scrutiny of the previous week had placed enormous pressure on her and rendered her role "untenable." The first wahine Māori to lead a major broadcaster's political team was gone. The story that finished her had not, ten days earlier, existed in any newspaper, on any wire, on any website you would consider mai...

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