Writing on Sand

Healing hiatus: the other name for my Writer's Block

2012-01-15T07:13:00.001+05:30

So many times over the past several months have I opened the blog post page, hoped to write something, and not done it. For those churning out thousands of words in a day, it may sound silly. For those outside of writing profession, it may not even exist.

After all, what is a professional peddler of words supposed to do? Write. Is it not?

But I could not. The desktop screen would stare at me, taunting. My fingers would want to vent all rage on the keys, pound them ceaselessly - about life, about problems, people. Still, I would go blank. They call it writer's block.

No regrets about what happened at all. Some blog readers have often asked me what happened to the blog. The blog was always here. It was I who was away. I have no apologies to offer. Absolutely none. Because I am not sorry.

Am not sorry, because what happened was something beyond my control. Destiny hits you hard when you least expect it. You walk into its menacing mace, completely unprepared for a blind turn, or a walled mirage. And fall. It takes time to heal from a fall, whatever its form. What defines us, is how soon we push ourselves to get up after that fall. Here I am.

I thank each reader, for enduring me through the absence. Frustrating as it can be, to open your favourite blog, almost by habit, and find no updates - thank you for that faith in me.

So where was I all along? Let's say, on a healing hiatus - completely health imposed and all that's associated. In future posts, I may end up writing about this whole complex process of healing. For now, all I want to say is, your belief got me this far. Thank you, dear reader.

I have finally keyed in something. Have I finally gotten over my writer's block? If yes, you deserve credit.

Quarter of a year, and tales untold

2011-03-08T23:38:00.000+05:30

A whole quarter of the year went by without me blogging. It feels like words forgot me. Or did I forget them?

It's not as if I did not want to blog. My thoughts through the day have however been preoccupied with what to eat, how to make it, how much to rest in the day, will i make it through the day? Has my health condition improved? Or has it gone down the dumps again? Will I make it to the stationery store closeby to buy some craft material? Does the vegetable I had for food have enough nutrients to cure my illness?

I did something today, that I never did before during the course of my treatment - sought out an online support group. Reading through others' experiences, mostly from another part of the globe, has thrown up some universal facts about the medical profession - that doctors across the globe just don't seem to have enough time for their patients.

Patients, are at loss to know the methods of treatments, the diet they must go through, if their condition is curable, incurable, persistent, intermittent, will it bring more pain or is there hope? All the same, it was such a relief to see a support group! In times of internet aided loneliness, relatives who live in the same city but are caught up with their own troubles, and the rarity of true friends in a new city, such groups come as solace.

I am not sure if I will write in the same things that I wrote about in the past, when I began this blog that is.
For some strange reason, priorities seem to have changed, issues that concerned me earlier no longer concern me the same way now. I wrote about issues, problems of the world, unhappy people, poverty, abuse, politics. I am now concerned about wellness, positivity, happy thoughts, interiors, decor, natural treatments and the like.

I do not as much as know if I will pen as frequently in this blog. But one thing I can say - Writing on Sand, is part of my identity, even if a virtual one. Am thankful to the readers who have been patient with me. Am hoping, you endure me further too. Pray I write.

Ganesha and the nut

2010-10-28T13:10:00.003+05:30

The elephant God is a design delight. Expressions based on him, his form, shape and size, emerge practically everyday in millions, pan India. The Shravan-Karthik season is a perfect time for innovative designs to emerge from the closet.

My most recent find was something I chose not to pick up, but just admire at the craft stall. Ganesha.

Look close. This Ganesha is special, because he looks every bit the kind who is not assaulted with chemical paint, but emerged creatively from nature's own gifts - traditional ones at that. It's the areca nut, or betel nut as it's lovingly called in the South, that finds its way as offering to married women during festivities. The entrepreneur's knack of using it to carve out divine shapes did not go in vain.

This set, is of Radha Krishna. Some beads and sequins have found their way to adorn the otherwise natural looking deities. Beneath them, is a tiny Ganesha. These pictures are not of best quality, but I loved the way this artist put together divinity with things so earthy you would love to have on your showcase. They have the tribal feel, spelling brains at work with devotion.

On my second visit to the crafts bazaar at Valluvar Kottam, they had all vanished.

``woh ek aurat aake sab kuch le gayi - dusshera ke liye. kuch bhi nahin choda'', said the stall owner. Good work does have its takers! Only wish there were more such pieces!

Pic Courtesy: M Radhika

Should worship mean grandeur?

2010-10-26T13:13:00.001+05:30

It's a question haunting my mind always. Should prayer and worship be austere or spell grandeur? I mean, are not those people who feel closer to God, those who give up mundane pleasures in life? Are not such people what we would term, simple in their ways of life? Should devotion mean having to own crores of rupees and donate it to temple in lieu of some privileges such as darshans, poojas and the like?

It's something I have been thinking of always, but with the festive season pre-occupying our heads now, and the general `herded' feeling in the bargain, am battling the arguments in my head. These are times when display of devotion seems to matter more than devotion itself. While I do revel in the doses of creative expression of such devotion, obsession with the what pleases the eye, too much love for glitter - these are things that sooner or later put me off. We humans hanker a great deal after symbolism. It's fine. The problem is, when we judge people by it.

I faced such a dilemma the evening before one of those important poojas, for me personally. The Saraswathi Pooja. The day, that falls around the time of Vijayadashami, is when people decorate their vehicles, pull out their books, tools and worship the lot in all earnestness. In Chennai, there were times I'd gape at cycle rickshaws, the most common mode of transport two decades back. Their wheels would be decorated with festoons that you would envy.

Shocking pink, lemon yellow, white, red, orange...shining papers! My eyes that usually got stuck with the glitter-gold mirrors of sweet shops would feast on these wheels that looked so lovely when they moved! So much in contrast with the grave faces of people who rode them or travelled in them! And so smooth when the rickshaw man pedalled them!

Why would not one want to decorate their home too on a festive occasion of this sort? And why not go more organic? Need of the hour! Your responsibility towards planet earth! Time to press the pause button....Oh no! Guilt has its ways!

The organic dream got shattered though. It's not like I had enough money to spare for strung flowers whose prices dramatically shot up from Rs 10 a foot to Rs 20! Overnight! It's not like I had the energy to travel all the way to places where they sold banana leaves and coconut-flower festoons! Goddess Saraswathi deserves worship. But when your body's so weak, all you can do is with what is around home.

Worship with love. Yes it happened. Worship with the internet to aid you. True true - it's possible! A few dining table mats - fabric and bamboo, that rarely got used because we have not bought a dining table, found their way for decoration. A bunch of flowers that hubby bought the day before still stood fresh to welcome the Goddess! He did manage to get me some flowers, though a lot less against what I'd normally use. Still, I knew we did not need a cartload of flowers to display worship! I spent an hour making a rangoli too, with some old packets of colours, some rice flour, kumkum and turmeric.

Am not sure how pleased she was with me that day. I hope she was! One only hopes Gods are happy. No measure to indicate it! But something good happened that day. I cannot remember what. Thanks to her!

I've had my share of symbolic worship. And liked it too.

Here are some pics:

- underneath the pale mustard colour cloth, actually a blouse-piece, are books my husband and I hold to our hearts, and a newspaper

- kumkum and turmeric - my saviours, for the day!

- these beads, my favourite rosary ever since I picked them up at Shirdi, are a treasure for chanting!

My mind does not rest still -the question continues to haunt, long after the pooja - should grandeur in symbolism mark worship, or austerity? If it must be austerity, why do we humans end up killing each other in the name of God? Why do we judge our own dear ones by what they wear and how they wear, to worship?
--

Chennai Diwali Season means `shopping nightmare'

2010-10-25T14:15:00.001+05:30

Kolu and Deepavali season is when Chennai comes alive. It's that time of the year when setting foot, I mean literally setting foot in the T Nagar-Mambalam area becomes a challenge. It's the festival of lights, but even if lights are not many, clothes rain for more money.

It took my bhabhi and brother two and half hours to manoeuvre their way in and out of Ranganathan Street, for some garden and zoo toys that they needed for their toddler son's school project. I am not surprised.

Andheri's station walk-ways in Mumbai get overly crowded and take a few minutes longer to get you out too. But the crowd their is multi-purpose seeking. You have office-goers, housewives, students, shoppers, businessmen and a whole lot else. Chennai's T Nagar-Mambalam hopping crowd has a sole purpose in life, in the run up to Diwali - Shopping.

I remember one of my own adventures with my cousin some years ago, prior to Diwali. That day, we took a train from Chromepet to alight at Mambalam, only to realise that the stairs connecting the platform to Ranganathan Street were so packed, it took us half an hour to do that one minute distance!

A trip to RMKV Silks this weekend reminded me of that nightmare. Standing near the elevator at the ground floor, I saw the shop's long array readymade garments spread out before me. But not quite. Human heads occupied every inch of space available other than those inches meant for the garments. Families. By families I mean the Thaathaas, Paattis, wives, sisters, cousins, brothers, brothers-in-law, babies, toddlers, school kids, and their shopping bags from the other big silk and garment stores out there in that half a kilometer stretch on North Usman Road. Such a sight makes you gasp. Don't ask me if it's merely for air, wonderment, exasperation, or dismay at such craze!

Human beings love clothes. Human beings in Chennai love silk. They love to wear silk to temples, weddings, birthdays, friends' homes, and even when they're cramped in crowded buses. Despite the sweat and thirst.

Stepping out of the air-conditioned comfort of the silk store on to the very warm and humid air outside, I noticed a family, probably from outside Chennai, bag and baggage, and bold-print covers and bags of clothes from other stores.Sigh! Another family out on a wedding shopping excursion!

A few yards on, is Saravana Store. Yeah, the all famous Saravana Store of the Saravana family, that owns restaurants in so many cities outside of India! Till that moment, I had thought RmKV resembled a vegetable market, all the noise and chaos included. Saravana Store, draped in the IT-firm like glass and metal, was different. With those garish Diwali offer banners, it invited you over to what I'd not call a fish market, but a bee hive. Once in, I bet you'd find it hard to get out before midnight. Such was the crowd! Such was the melee.

It's a store I have wanted to visit for the last few months. The mere sight of that bee-hive I chance-glanced from outside has scared me off. Am not sure if I will visit it for a few weeks more now.

As for the traffic on my way back home, hubby and I had to grumble through Pondy Bazaar's crowd for about half an hour before we finally breathed near Mount Road. To shake off that frustration, we actually headed to Elliots Beach closer home. Guess what! Crowds and more crowds here too. For a minute, I did not miss Juhu Beach of Mumbai. It looked every bit like Juhu Beach, except that this one had more people, but was spread out longer too. Hawkers, ice-cream carts, dogs, fish-fry stalls, beggars, rich and poor, restaurants and stand-by astrologers...

Yeah, I did manage some sea air. And liked it too -- watching the sea shine under white moonlight. Relief.

Navaraatri South style - dolls dazzle

2010-10-19T15:05:00.000+05:30

I miss the dazzle of dandiya nights in Mumbai, where every housing society goes overboard to decorate its premises, and people decorate themselves in colourful dandiya costumes for the navraatri revelry.

Nevertheless, I decided to soak in the homely elegance of painted dolls that mark the nine days' revelry on the east coast. Dusshera, Navraatri and kolu are synonymous with the south. Gombe Habba in Bangalore, Bommalakolu for many households in Andhra, and simply kolu in Chennai.

During those early years when I spent a week at my granny's place in Chromepet (suburb in Madras - the erstwhile name of Chennai), I'd visit homes of complete strangers in our street with granny to gape at the floor to ceiling magic of painted dolls - Gods, goddesses, kings, queens, men, women, even dogs, besides the `park' made intricately on the floor.

I remember how one such `park' had a beautiful pond with ducks floating on it, apart from the mandatory hill temple, road and house, all fixed on sand spread on floor to make a big rectangle. My guess is, they used a kid's big sized lunch box to create a swimming pool. That image stayed with me for a long time though. Those days, a lot of homes used wooden planks to form the steps in odd numbers - of three, five, seven or nine steps.

Times have changed. Slotted angle metal racks that come in bluish grey have replaced wood, plastic boxes have replaced the brass and silver utensils that women gifted with the `vettelapakku' or `tambulam', the size of such steps has come down with the shrinking size of rooms at homes, and the next-gen IT employed nomads cannot as much as dream of lugging mud dolls from city to city.

Still, a lot of people have held on to the tradition rather ferociously. This time, I had the opportunity to visit three homes with kolu. Not a great score that! But the experience was lovely. I went with the wonderment of a Mumbaikar and familiarity of a Bangalorean.

My dream: may dolls made of eco-friendly material dominate the collections as soon as possible.

--
this picture above is of kolu at my neighbour's home. Lord Balaji and Padmavathy stand tall on the highest step, followed by goddesses Lakshmi, Durga and Saraswathi.

this doll is the charming Goddess Annapoorna looking lovely in her green saree. It is something I have not found in the many homes that I visited so far. Notice Ganesha and his big sized mouse beneath her. A lot of times, Ganesha idols bought for worship during Ganesh Chaturthi make their way to become part of the doll crowd.

creativity overflows at this time of the year. this picture is of my neighbour's intricately made rangoli, with - can you imagine what? Salt crystals! Rub in a bit of colour and salt tends to absorb it. All you need is a packet of those myriad rangoli colours that sell in our traditional markets.

This set of dolls too, is something I have never come across - Ravana Sabha. It's the scene from Ramayana where Hanuman perches himself on his own long tail in the court of demon king Ravana.

The park set. An innovation. My sister and I would struggle at roads for the park. We'd think of charcoal, but who on earth in an urban defence colony would sell charcoal! Those days, felt paper, or velvet paper as we called it, was in vogue for craft projects at school, so a black velvet sheet did the trick for us. This set, at the apartment of my neighbour who lives opposite mine, has recycled plastic that does the job. Just spread sand over a sheet of cut garbage bag and be happy! The hill-mound has Lord Ayyappa perched on top, with the 18-steps leading to him made of gold paper stuck on to a pale yellow chart paper. Notice the all swanky car parking lot, belonging to the household's darling, a shy boy of five.

Pandaripur's Krishna and Radha have made their way to this Chennai home - actually at my aunt's place.

No kolu is complete without Chettiar and Chettiamma, flanked either by fruits made of mud, or household utensils and provisions. This set of the classic couple has a fridge to cool them in Chennai heat!

Ganesha made of leaves, either as pictures or idols, has grown common over the years. This one at my aunt's place, is a flower design - all earthy hibiscus at that.

Displaying dolls alone is not enough to celebrate the nine days. Women have to offer food such as boiled and flavoured beans, channa that is locally known as sundal, peas, sweets and other such delicacies to the Gods. They have to be worshipped every day. Of course, even in this worship, creativity rules.

Pic Courtesy: M Radhika
PS: More related posts to follow

The power of a chocolate ad

2010-09-28T22:43:00.000+05:30

My nephew, two years and a quarter old, is yet to pick up speaking. But toddler will just not stop trying.

Ask him how a crow crows, and pat comes the reply `Khakha Khakha'. And does the usual `bow wow' when you ask him how a dog barks. He is not scared of dogs. He goes after them making noises that he alone would understand. And the dogs - they would rather sheepishly walk away than get messed up by the mini-sized human. The first time he saw a monkey on a recent picnic, he was curiosity in abundance. Like most of us adults, he does not like the `kaklaati' or cockroaches. A lizard could scare him off too.

His grandmother, aka my mother-in-law asked him how a squirrel makes sound the day before. His answer, `Ai Aao Uuuuuu' meaning, `I love you', his latest acquisition in vocabulary. She was confused and shocked for a minute. What on earth made the chit of a kid dole out these three all-romantic words for a squirrel?

That's when she remembered - it was that ad. There were hardly any squirrels around home, so when the Kitkat ad with animated squirrels played on TV one day, the whole family stood still to watch it those few seconds. She showed him what a `squirrel' was. When he gaped at the TV screen, little did anyone imagine he would associate those squirrels and the Michael Jackson style steps, the Kaate Nahin Kat-thi number and the crooning, with `I love You'. The ad is refreshing, among the hundreds of stereotyped images of housewives and celebrity infested ads we are forced to watch. But then, what power it holds!

If a 45 second ad could leave such a deep impression on a child's mind, imagine what the oodles of violence and sexist imagery fed to us 24/7 could do!

I miss this

2010-09-13T19:33:00.000+05:30

An average Mumbaikar can quickly recognise this all familiar pic from the Malabar Hill. Overlooking Girgaum Chowpatty beach, it's a perfect picture postcard shot.

It's been over eight months since I set foot in Chennai to make it my `home'. It's a place I have felt close to even when away. After all, I was born here. I like the rides to Besant Nagar beach, the fact that unlike earlier when `beach' meant an hour's maddening traffic away, this one is a 10 minutes' hop skip and jump by a bike. I have in a sense, grown to accept the saree clad, sans make-up crowd out here, though I must admit Chennai's changing.

One look at the city I left behind haunts me still, never mind the fact that it takes just a night's train journey to reach my parents in Bangalore now. Nostalgia, madness, whatever you call it. I miss Mumbai. Madly at that.

Teachers are `powerful'

2010-07-27T22:20:00.000+05:30

A well-behaved three year old returns to school after falling ill for a few days.

Since his digestion abilities took a beating over the sick days, the boy prompts his teacher exactly at 11 am, that he needs to use the toilet. So what's the big deal about a toddler alerting his teacher about this? The deal is: a school help or ayah must accompany the kid to the toilet and do the needful.

The teacher is irked. She summons the father and demands an explanation for the child's `outrageous demands'.
Her grouse: ``We hardly have a few toilets in the school. We cannot let your child alone use it everyday. Please ask him not to use the toilet here during class hours!''

The child's father is astounded at these ridiculous allegations against his three year old bundle of joy. After all, he had paid a hefty fee for these very things - clean toilets, good grooming, sufficient attention to the child! He gulps his anger and sends his wife over for a chat with the teacher. This is an elite school in Chennai, something everyone around assumes, is a passport to great life, education at its best and blah blah.

His wife fumes at the teacher's behaviour, but makes it the next day to school, for a similar lecture.

The child is told not to go `number two' in school back home. And he understands.

The next time his aunt asks him if he likes his school, pat comes his reply. ``No Number two in school.''

Teachers, are powerful! Three year olds have no right to keep using their school toilets! They `better' control their bowels.

Uh Oh!

2010-07-24T20:26:00.000+05:30

After about a month of being on sick leave, nothing excites as much as the day you're returning to work.
That feel of being...normal, is so relieving!
What if the day wills otherwise, and throws you back into the spiral of ...problems! First, you set out of the house, and have to rush back because there is this gnawing dermatitis. You discover it has spread on parts of body you least expected it to.
After suffering a day, you want to revert to your dermatologist. She insists on seeing you again. But when you land at the hospital, she's not around. The nurse informs that the doctor fell ill. ``Could you please try tomorrow?''
The next day, you realise that the doctor, has been hospitalised. Whoa!
I want to get back to work. And after four weeks of becoming bed-bound, and home-bound, the last thing I want is this.
But yeah, I wish the doc a speedy recovery, irrespective of my skin troubles.

Mahi shows way, bye the bye

2010-06-29T02:00:00.001+05:30

It's been over a week since Mahi Way, the Yash Raj sitcom ended.

And for once, I loved the way a weekly soap ended! So unlike Jassi who was abused with a disappointing makeover, so unlike the ocean of serials we get bombarded with - shaadi, dulhann, jewellery, glycerine, phamily...joint family...

That clincher of its one liners! ``Khud se milke khushi huyi...'' (happy to meet myself/inner self whatever)

Thank God it did not quite end in the `happily ever after' (read married) style. Cleverly packaged old story. But a story narrated well. And so unlike Yashraj known for its chiffon clad heroines against snowy mountains! So unlike a banner that prided itself on doe-eyed beauties instead of real thinking women! Waiting for more from the banner.Chak De and Rocket Singh spelt hope...and so did Mahi...

Pic courtesy: Sony Entertainment Television

Five ways to sell your sitcom soap

2010-05-22T07:21:00.001+05:30

Wanna make a TV sitcom and don't have that best-seller brainwave? Don't just worry. Here are five essential spices you add to that real boring elongated shots inundated daily soap on TV. It's been a couple of years since Kyunki... left TV, but the rules only got modified.

1. Have a cute looking, bright eyed kid breathing innocence. Avika Gor (Balika Vadhu) is passe. Kids rule just about everything on TV - soaps to sops, reel to reality shows! Comedy, tragedy, anchoring...they're goddesses, school kids, or sometimes merely accessories in a crowd of characters, but have them you must.

2. Cling on to that....`Cause'. You may use your soap to load oodles of glycerin, glorify the new villain-protagonist to hilt, show violence in just about every frame to get eye-balls, but just go ahead and mention generously before the episode begins, that `this serial is to depict ....cause', ideally about women or children.

3. This is a rule you dare not ignore. Always always always, begin your soap outdoors, Agra, a village, slums of Mumbai, the fields of Punjab, anywhere rustic and real enough. But do that only for the first few episodes. And quickly make sure you shift the protagonist to a grand haveli, a rich family, between oppressed household women with heavy make-up. Glorify everything opposite of the cause, but just mention that, for posterity's sake if you must.

4. Have five episodes of tears and one episode that hurts your nerves less - a dash of comedy. Never mind even if the comedy is drab.

5. If one episode of a sitcom has monologues of what the heroine/ hero wants to do further, no harm in getting them to repeat similar lines in the next episode too. After all, stretching those scenes is what matters! Of course, this must be with the all-necessary metal-beats that make it look like an epic war scene, while all you do is focus on the heavily made up heroine's eyes, or hero's boots. Now, that's a lesson as ancient as Ekta's soaps.

Pic courtesy: Rainbow Skill

Coffee woes in Coffee Day's hometown

2010-05-19T12:57:00.002+05:30

On a rainy evening in the end of April, my friend and I caught up at her Infantry Road office and walked to Mast Kalandar for a bite.

Interesting: our choices on the menu card were simply not there, and the staff didn't seem to care.
So out we walked, to our `good old' coffee day a few yards away.

A man in his mid-40s was perched on the sofa by the counter, and got busy writing a report on plain paper, as his wife watched bored.

We settled down, in spite of my friend's anxiety to rush home to her baby. ``God knows how long it's gonna be before we catch up again...''

Five minutes. Ten minutes. The boys wouldn't turn up. We tried catching their eye. And they tried avoiding eye contact. When we did manage, my friend gestured to ask how long it would take...the staffer, instead of hurrying up requested for more time! Whew! It never never happened at Coffee Day before!

My friend was prompted to walk out. We wondered aloud who the guy there was. `Some big shot or their big boss I guess..' Speculation time. Was he `the great Siddhartha' who owned the Coffee Day chain? Am sure we'd not have been so unsure if the real Siddhartha (Buddha) was around. A few more minutes flew by. The staffers still didn't care. `It's probably their appraisal...pay hike or not kinds...' we continued speculating.

I mean, why would they be bothered if their customer was a mother wanting to rush home, and still hoping to catch up with a friend over coffee? Even if they didn't, they should have bothered to take an order.

``You know what, let's just leave. I am in a hurry,'' my friend decided finally. We walked out and noticed that those insensitive guys blankly watched us leave. It just did not seem to bother them! We were shocked. ``Look how nasty! I am not going to come back here,'' my friend declared, hurt like crazy by this.

I was undecided. A week later, am in Chennai, reading the Business Today cover piece on Coffee Day Siddhartha. It says he plans to become the market leader and add many many outlets more globally. Sigh! My friend who's seen the cover too swears it WAS Siddhartha at Cunningham Road Coffee Day. Am still not sure.

I've been a Coffee Day patron for ages and a loyalist specially when out of Bangalore. Does the man really care? I stuck on to Coffee Day despite the deteriorating service attitude over years. Call it that Namma Mannina Maga (our son of soil) sentiment. Looks like CCD just lost a customer though. (Or is it more?)

PS: Watch the Ranbir Kapoor starrer Rocket Singh once, for lessons on service in the market.
Pic Courtesy: CCD website

That 50:50 feeling

2010-05-01T00:00:00.001+05:30

Today, my dad retired, two days short of his 41 years' government service. His boss, a no-nonsense person, described my dad, an `icon'. Must admit it's a proud moment one hears this about a parent.

Two days' on, my second innings at work begin, after a two year break.

On the same date as my dad began my first innings, 41 years back.

For the woman who I am, brought up fighting stereotypes, this is a moment I've waited for - when a parent leans on you for support. Yet, when the moment dawns, fear overwhelms every other possible emotion.

Can he, who rarely stayed away from work, manage without it! His colleague joked this evening, ``Welcome back!'' They know he'll rush back to work first thing after this. Still, official `super-annuation', as they fancifully call `retirement', is the thing.

As for me, it's divine forces that got me back to where I belong - work. And I officially re-start now. Whether fear of the new workplace is bigger, or that of shouldering responsibility back home, is hard to tell.

There's happiness too. When he received accolades from the boss of his organisation, I was not away at a workplace and pining for leave, or crying over not being there for him.

Despite this, swinging between fear, fervor, and joy, I look at the tired eyes below the grey mane that rest for the night, worry-lines intact.

Miles to go...before I sleep.

have not really been away

2010-04-25T09:51:00.000+05:30

A great many have wondered aloud about my `absence' from Writing on Sand. I must admit I have opened the URL many a time, but something would deviously turn up just as I'd mull typing those golden start words.

In the meantime, have opened blog meant largely to put up my earlier pieces from Tehelka, and probably my future pieces. Starting May, I will officially return to what I love the most, journalism in a daily newspaper, although it never really left me in the two years that I've stayed away from newsroom frenzy.

It's strange that with the second innings too, I am as jittery and nervous as when I began, exactly 10 years back. It's all the more reflective when I note, that I'll join my new organisation exactly three days after my dad officially leaves his organisation after serving it for over 40 years! Hard to think of such a service span in these years of hop-happy professionals.

This time round, am counting on family support. When I was fresh from college, it was flight from family that triggered dreams. Will key in more in the coming days.

Finally, a home

2010-03-11T12:22:00.000+05:30

At the moment, am sitting before the screen, surrounded by cardboard cartons still waiting to get unpacked.

A window by the workstation and a window ahead of it. The flowering branches of mango tree crown it close enough for a peaceful view from my second floor, a coconut tree and a curry leaves tree flank it.

It's a home my husband and I virtually grabbed. For, in this part of Chennai, a home advertised today is gone tomorrow. It's that time of the post-recession phase when companies begin recruitments `cautiously' in official terms, but robustly, in my view. The settlers arrive, despite a humid weather that keeps you perennially hungry. The settlers, are quick to grab homes, ideally closer to their workplaces. Adyar, Tiruvanmiyur and Velachery - this belt is the closest to the IT City near Sholinganallur. And represent what Koramangala went through in Bangalore a decade back.

Home rents, have shot up over the last six months. We had that bitter experience, of losing homes we really liked, while it took a couple of days to arrange the money.

We walked through 10 homes before settling for this one. The difference between them all and this, is that it has a soul. After a tired day, I can find peace here. It is airy, with even the kitchen boasting of three windows in all, besides wardrobes in the bedrooms.

The business of Home Hunting in Chennai

2010-02-15T12:08:00.001+05:30

For the last week, my husband and I have split hairs in an exercise we should have ideally enjoyed. It has drained us out in a way though.

At the moment, as I mentioned in my previous post, we live in a matchbox of a house. It's not its area that bothers me, but the callousness with which the builder has put boxes called the bedroom, bathroom and kitchen together to give it the name - 2BHK.

It also bothers me, that of all the fixtures and fittings, the wash-basin tap in the bathroom leaks enough to fill up my 20 liters' bucket in the day. As for the kitchen sink that occupies a third of the kitchen work table, my maid has a tough time washing utensils. The pipe underneath it cannot take water gushing down. It simply gives way. As a result, that water spills on to the kitchen floor. Obviously, the home owner gave no thought to the plumbing aspect of it!

My workstation is a room that thankfully has breeze from the ocean flowing in. At times that there is no breeze, I can switch the fan on. For five minutes. The fan will stop rotating beyond that.

The all magical solution to our problems at the moment is about finding a better rental home to live in, so that we waste no time in the fixtures and fittings mess, and get on with other important things in life.

The house hunt bit has thrown up some interesting revelations about Chennai and houses here, in the last week.

Rental homes are up for grabs and move `faster than hot cakes', as an acquaintance put it. With the economic slowdown slowing down and IT firms on a recruiting spree, the settlers are here, and grabbing anything in the name of four walls that comes their way. Most of this workforce looks like bachelors. And that, has translated into an illogical hike up of rents in the suburb and nearby ones that I live in. These suburbs, are the closest to the IT Corridor that lies outside of the city limits.

Our trouble. We look for a home with a deposit anything under 13k, only to discover things amusing about how these home owners indulge in daylight looting! It is exactly what happened in Bangalore through the IT boom.

A home owner my husband contacted, spoke with ease about how he was choosy with his prospective tenants. ``I need people of my wavelength and am happy you match it,'' he said. The points mentioned in the internet ad were good too - accessibility to bus terminus, beach, shops and hospitals...the predictable sale punchlines.

A roller-coaster ride through the neighbouring suburb later, we discovered the directions pointed to a place hardly a few streets away from our current home. That was not what made us laugh.

Something eerie about the building we stared at, while the woman who had to walk us through the flat came by. The gate opposite that independent house was shut and so were the windows. There were inmates within but we had no clue who they were. Our guide led us through the compound's edge, into the two feet wide backyard that traditionally housed the toilets and wash area of that building. There, through a staircase, we were led into a 1 BHK that this clever guy passed off as a 2BHK.

I must admit the kitchen was `awesome' as my husband put it. I quickly opened another door to look into the wash area-cum-balcony. It opened into a common stairway, the door of another home staring at me on the face. We heard girly giggles and chatter from that room. What could this quite be?

``It must be a hostel,'' my hubby concluded. He was scared outright. We hastened out. On our way out, my husband looked at a notice pasted on the door at the entrance, that proved him right. Women's hostel!

``I don't want to get accused of leching at women,'' he panicked, and we rode away in hurry. To think of, the guy did not hesitate one bit in converting one of those hostel portions into a rent-worthy flat, instead of making the life of other inmates more comfortable!

We have still not been lucky on the home hunt after that, but discovered, that if you do not want to pay up a princely one month rent to the broker, you could try local tailors and watchmen who man apartments. They double up as part-time brokers, because they, after all, are in the know about vacant apartments more than neighbours.

Why I pine for my Mumbai Home

2010-01-19T21:08:00.000+05:30

I have umpteen reasons to despise the present home I live in.

The most important of them is, that the windows in my new home make me feel a prisoner, literally. The hall window allows me air utility from its one by four feet vent. In reality, it's a shutter window but will let in only that much air! What a difference from that MHADA home's hall that had the best of windows I have known!

The kitchen is my other eyesore. For a couple who cook together, this kitchen is an apology. It allows only one person to stand comfortable and my gas stove occupies most of its slab space. If I were to do an about turn from the gas, the kitchen shelf is on my face. Negotiating this space is like opening a lock with handcuffs on. Is that what the builder perceived the kitchen should be like? A box of suffocation?

My hall window opens directly into the terrace of the building next door (hardly a feet away). I bear the brunt of the day heat, and am forced to pull the curtain when I find men around there.

A bedroom that looks more like a store room space with its crammed up walls, thankfully has a window facing east. It means cool breeze. Only, I cannot look out of the window. It opens into a dirty backyard of a building, and another hideaway home.

The terrace above my second floor home is a breather. I can finally dry my clothes in the open! And look at the Kalakshetra buildings popping out of the trees in that compound, to dream of possibly spending time there!

The other boon is of course that a ride to the beach is five minutes away!

Am back: Writing from Chennai

2010-01-18T18:43:00.000+05:30

For starters, apologies to those waiting for a post from me at Writing on Sand. It's been a neat 20 days since I posted.

My world's turned topsy-turvy in the meanwhile. New City. New Culture. Newer People. I've known this city since I opened my eyes, and yet it feels like I have landed somewhere out of my world. And cry at every image I remember of those sweet Mumbai moments! Chennai. East Coast. Off East Coast Road. How does that sound?

Chennai, where if I chose to sit by myself in a bus, a respectable old man would come by, have the audacity to tell me where I `should' be sitting. If it was Mumbai, I'd have snapped at him, `Tumse matlab?''

It's Chennai, which has perceivably given such characters moral sanction to question women's choice in public spaces. After his consistent pestering, and words I get to hear like, `Looks like you are an educated woman. Why are you not listening to me?', I show him his place politely.

`Am new to this city and I feel safe in this part of the bus. I am comfortable here and am your co-passenger. If you want my seat, go ahead and take it. But stop torturing me like this.''

He is zapped some chit of a woman could talk back that way. I am equally perplexed someone had the time and cowardice to pick on a passenger!

Chennai's good side exists too! The suburb I live in, is vibrant, cosmopolitan, and yet, culturally rooted. The best part over Pongal festival was that I spent three late evenings at Elliots Beach in Besant Nagar, grooving to folk-fusion and classical-fusion beats by bands playing out as part of Chennai Sangamam.

The fire-cracker show at the end of the finale, was the best I've seen till now.

The temples, reverberating music, friendly neighbours, and some lovely local cuisine nearly make up for the civic harshness and that gnawing feeling on roads that I am watched by hungry eyes.

Yet, nothing like those precious moments at Marine Drive.

A tear in my eye

2009-12-30T20:59:00.000+05:30

I look out of my window, for that all familiar night view of my suburb. Lights making those skyscrapers look like tall matchboxes shining with glow-dents.The only difference between today and my home as always, is that the scant furniture that gave it that ultra-home feel is out. My luggage has moved out. The kitchen is empty but for some plastic bottles that I used to store water. And walls full of memories. Twenty-four months is not a long time...

With a tear in my eye, I moved the last of my belongings from that apartment. From a complete stranger who set foot in the mad city, got overwhelmed by it, hated it, and grew eventually to love it, I have grown many times over in Mumbai.

When I arrived, my neighbours had shut their doors on my face. When I left, I had the same neighbours open their doors to give me that all friendly smile and say those words I love - `visit us when you come to Mumbai' and a bunch of other friends who said their emotional byes. The city does weave its magic! I've moved bag and baggage from the city I grew to adore, rather reluctantly.

Two years back, it was the fear of the new that gnawed me away when I arrived Mumbai. Now, it is fear of the familiar doing exactly that with Chennai.

Very soon, I want to return to Mumbai. For many reasons. One of them, is that Mumbai made me a winner at a profound level.

When I left Mumbai, I no longer felt a migrant. I felt, at home. Mumbai, I salute you!

Ruchika case: Thank You...

2009-12-24T01:01:00.000+05:30

It is with utmost sincerity and deepest regards that I address this letter to the government of India, the supreme power, to the judiciary, the almighty, the politician, who surpasses all these, and the cop, who enjoys the love and benevolence of the politician.

Thank you so much sirs, for telling me, a survivor, what exactly I must expect of the system if I dare approach it for as serious an offence as Child Sexual Abuse. Thank you Constitution, for me not having to deal with those three horrible words at all in law books.

Thank you judiciary. Really, really, thank you! Blessed art thou....need I say more?

Thank you, for thereby allowing millions of offenders out there in homes, enjoying the tender bodies of vulnerable children for as many years as they can. Thank you, for letting them inflict gnashes on the bodies of girls, threatening them artfully, touching them all over, many a time even boys! Thank you, for showing me my place. And telling me that should I commit suicide like Ruchika and should my parents pursue the case as dilligently as her parents did, they would still be hounded by the system that favours the offenders rather than their daughter. Thank you for telling me right away, that at the end of such a battle, it is my parents who will cry still while the offender has the ....last laugh.

Thank you cop. You are the last word around us! You can smile easy when you are faced with a laughable jail term. For all I know, you will get treated like a king out there! After all, have you not been the one in control of thing, right? Unleash your colleagues on us hapless souls. They could satiate their lethal appetite too, and get away with it!

Thank you politician, for blessing the offender with such lovely stars that he can smile away for eternity. You, are the almighty! You walk and the cop follows! You bless and the cop becomes blessed! Bless the cop more, with some more favours for his family members, some more promotions!

Cop, should I understand that you have women in your family too! Probably women who you may in remote possibility, love! And women who you're slapping on face and saying exactly what you'd love to, that you can have your share of fun, others of your breed can have their share of fun, and women, yours or theirs, would have to put up with it!

Thank you Government, I mean, Government of India! Thank you, for doing nothing, nothing at all except for throwing empty words in the air, when it comes to the safety of women in this country. Thank you for telling me, a woman, that I would have been safer if I was not born at all. If I was killed before birth, I would not be lusted after by hungry wolves out there even if I wore a burkha, is it not? And they have a right to touch me at the slightest possible chance! If God never made me, I would not be prone to vultures out there in buses, offices, worse, homes, isn't it?

Thank you for letting me know that your prized politicians will fight tooth and nail against a 33 per cent reservation bill for women, while ensuring that women's safety should only be as far as suiting their sexual and emotional needs, 100 per cent.

Thank you all those families, who've sent out messages to your children, that should they report to you about someone of your ilk molesting them, you WILL NOT believe them. God knows what you will do, but you will ensure IT IS swept under the carpet. And let another perpetrator have his share of lust and beastliness, thanks to your ability to silence your child.

Yours...sincerely..

Gimme a break please!

2009-12-19T23:44:00.000+05:30

Wondering from what? It's from travel that I want a break.

My travel schedule began on November 18 to Bangalore. After a few days in my home city, it was time for a quick stop at Chennai and from thereon, to Hyderabad. Back to home sweet home (wish I could call it home longer) Mumbai in the first week.

In the second week, divine design ensured I did not have enough time to sleep - a quick trip to Chennai for a housewarming, wedding reception, my wedding anniversary and sibling's birthday. Am back in Mumbai, to the warm embrace of these walls going empty soon.

Post-Christmas though, I've to be on the travel mode again - to Chennai for God knows how long. Trust me, travel has meant bus journeys, train sojourns, flights, and taxi-rides, car trips, not to forget the night-marish auto-rickshaw rides (at Chennai). The only mode of transport left, as my sister puts it, is by water. She hit on a brainwave if we didn't get tickets from Chennai to Mumbai - `Let's try the ship!'

Whew!

`You've been more busy on the travel front while out of work than when you were employed!' a friend remarked recently.

Can't agree more! Am praying I get back to that all familiar work territory (career) soon. As for travel....am sleepy, tired, exhausted...no more adjectives in my head. I love travel. After all this travel, I long to laze around at home. Yaaawn!!

For want of a decent bathroom

2009-12-15T19:51:00.001+05:30

Half way into an 18 hour wedding event, a minor skirmish broke out between the bride's family and the groom's. The sides avoided using loud voices or bad words, but all the same, it put the bride's family in a spot. And caused some embarassment for the groom's family.

The chain of events that led to it sound ridiculous, but show social insensitivity that could kill when profits, not customer welfare, rule the minds of those in a business.

The problem: An 83 year old matriarch who her family loved dearly, who struggled to make it to her grandson's wedding all the way from Chennai, had to use the toilet, a WC, because of her frail health.

Of the three allotted rooms with attached bathrooms for the groom's family, only one had a WC. As fate would have it, or rather the callousness of the wedding hall management, it went unfit for use on the day of the wedding.

The groom's uncle, who arrived the earliest with his family, noticed it and pushed for immediate repair, before the wedding guests made their entry. The management turned a deaf ear. The bride's relatives were too caught up in other issues in the run up to the event.

It is not as if the groom's family did not inspect the premises earlier.A few days before, the venerable matriarch's son visited the wedding hall, checked the toilets and other logistics. Relieved that she would not have to struggle, the son left. In any case, with the toilet left unusable, all the hard work looked wasted.

The bride's family took it easy too, as everything else was going fine. Meanwhile, intermittent pushing by the groom's uncle for `fixing' of the WC continued even as the guests arrived and the granny too.
A few workers and a plumber arrived after a whole hour of pestering. And realised that the bathroom overhaul was impossible in the next few hours. They vanished feigning false promises of coming back with the equipment in a while.

Winter chill prompted her to want to use the bathroom, two hours into the event. The shy octogenerian tried to hold herself for as long as possible. She did not want to bother her family.

When she mustered courage and decided to ask, all hell broke loose. It suddenly dawned on everyone that another toilet with a WC had to be located. Instantly.

The wedding hall officials were probably around, but who had the patience to `organise' something at the last moment?

The granny's daughter and groom's mother lost her cool . ``Try and understand. She (mother) cannot hold up for long. It's our problem is it not?'' she snapped at the bride's aunt and uncle who were in charge of the event. The groom's uncle who had been after the workers till now, gave them a piece of his mind too.

By now, the grandmother was embarassed, struggling hard to maintain a dignified posture, swallowing her feelings.

Brainwave: The bride's uncle offered to driver her down to his quarters, five minutes away, where some more guests were lodged. After some convincing, the groom's family agreed. Accompanied by her relatives, the matriarch who wanted to hide away in shame by now, walked slowly to the hall's main gate with her stick. Someone else came with the news that she did not have to travel so far after all. They organised the use of a bathroom at the flats opposite the wedding hall.

Putting each step forward carefully over carelessly thrown construction debris that was used to make a pathway near the hall, granny walked through the compound to the apartments block across. The concerned flat was at the rear end of that compound. She walked past strangers in that home, used the toilet and got out as quickly as she could. Once out, she expressed guilt to the bride's relatives to put them through such trouble, only to be hushed by her grandchildren. ``It's not your fault granny,'' they tried to reason.

The bride's aunt apologised about putting her through such trouble too. The matriarch returned to her seat slowly. Time for some lunch. The dining hall was upstairs. Ideally, she would have loved to dine with her family and friends upstairs. The bride's family was wiser by now and organised a few tables and chairs on the ground floor.

If one takes a quick look at this chain of events, it is easy to pass the blame on the people present there. The core issue that went unnoticed was simple: that before an event of this magnitude, the wedding hall management did not bother to set the WC right. Or if it was not possible to set it right in case of some damage just the day before, they did not bother to inform the concerned customers. Any event that sees a gathering of a few hundred people always requires more rest rooms - not taken care of by this hall management.

They probably presumed that like everything else that is compromised during such events, the toilet bit would be swept under the carpet. Wedding halls sure are a profitable business!

More often than not, when such places are designed, the presumption is that any guest who walks in to the hall is able bodied, can put up with shoddy service, climb stairs with ease and still pay up the hefty tens of thousands besides shelling out extra money for related labour charges.

It is true we have wedding halls that are built much better, charge as high as Rs 1 lakh for a day's use as rent, have more guest rooms and look more grand. More bathrooms and clean rooms with storage are a welcome respite. The tragedy: Such halls are less sensitive to the needs of elderly, the wheel-chaired and the sick too. How many such venues for instance, can boast of elevators? Or ramps for easy access from one floor to another?

How many such halls can come any closer to having toilets that suit the needs of the disabled and the elderly? A common grouse among builders who get such halls built is that it is not cost-effective (read profit oriented). Even by their own argument, all it takes is one wedding hall owner to advertise features that are friendly on the elderly and disabled, and it could help kickstart a competition. At this venue too, a ramp would have been ideal for its design.

Moreover, can providing features such as ramps, disabled friendly toilets, and other such help be measured against currency notes that one gets in return?

Most families that organise celebrations on a scale upward of a 100 guests can be assured of at least one or two people for every hundred who need help in climbing, moving about, or even elderly who are forced to stay put in their homes because such venues are less friendly on their needs.

Should we then get stuck up with a convenient mindset that everything comes with a price?

In the Indian tradition, no marriage is complete without the blessings of elders in the family. Would wedding hall owners then want to put a price on the blessings by elderly mothers simply because they became frail rearing their children?

Time to revalue and revamp our wedding venues. After all, for want of a WC, a wedding would have got stalled!

Auto tales across cities

2009-12-11T17:25:00.000+05:30

Mumbai autorickshaws are called `ricksha' by the local commuters.

Chennai rests easy with the name `auto'.

You can hop into a Mumbai autorickshaw in the dead of the night. He will drop you home and give you back the exact change.

You can hop into any autorickshaw whose owner agrees to ply you at night in Chennai, except that you will flag a 100 autos before you get one.

As for the change, forget it. In Chennai you are charged in multiples of Rs 10 for any destination. Autorickshaw drivers are Gods here. After settling for Rs 210 on a distance that could cost you just Rs 100, be sure that about half a kilometre into the designated spot, the guy will start his extortion tactics, saying you did not mention the destination would be so far, or that the distance is a kilometer in excess! He'll make sure he argues with you endlessly.

He will start his emotional blackmail, in the typical Chennai autorickshaw bargain body language. He will make you feel sick, especially if you're used to the no nonsense mumbai rickshaw drivers' business wisdom of being done with the deal and walking off.

Am in Chennai at the moment, and an hour after that argument and hearing abuses from that guy, wondering if I should have slapped him.

He used the conversation I had with my husband in three languages, which meant - Hindi, Tamil and English, against me. It's horrifying to note that what I talk on phone with someone else in the capacity of a passenger could be used like this! I heard words like `people from other cities being a pain on autorickshaw drivers out here'.

Such a far cry from Mumbai autorickshaw rides where I can talk freely while on move! And not hear a word of abuse.

Autorickshaw drivers have magnified the reason I dread Chennai. I feel, unsafe in Chennai - the same city where I spent umpteen childhood summers. The city I was born in.

This city, is where I will move in to shortly, and makes me palpitate in fear.

---

If you ask me why I did not avoid an autorickshaw ride given the infamy that guards these guys anyways, I had less choice - afternoon hunger and exhaustion from a journey prompted me to hire it instantly.

Kids today....did you say?

2009-12-07T02:40:00.001+05:30

Am in the middle of backstage madness at my cousin's wedding, splitting hair over the non-stop movement through the door and keeping an eye on some jewellery camouflaged in messy old travel bags.

Guests, mostly women, are moving in non-stop to change into sarees, while some need to use the bathroom. Still others need to dress up their children.

The sight of two pretty little girls waiting to get dressed for the wedding is not just soothing in the middle of all the rush, but a welcome respite. They are my nieces who I am not in touch with.

I offer to dress up the seven year old niece, yearning to know the seven year old I have not met since she was a few months. Between a polka dotted orange salwar kameez and a simpler looking pair of clothes, I suggest the former for her. She listens to every word I say to her mother, about the dresses. And insists on wearing ornate orange over a duller red!

``Wear this later, the other dress will look good on you too,'' her mother tries reasoning.

My venerable little niece puts her foot down.

``The other dress is not tight enough! I need a tight one!''

I am stumped. Whoever said figure consciousness is for 16 and 18 year olds!

I offer to give a touch of kohl to her eyes, and hear those all familiar words `I too want kajal!'

It's not her, but her kid sister, all of four years!

Just like her elder sister dresses up well, the doe eyed kid sister wants to look her best too, and will do anything to compete with her sibling!

After every dash of kohl in their eyes, each of these sisters rush to the dressing table, take a close look at their eyes and clothes. Their attention to detail could give models a run for their money.

For the younger sister, I suggest she can continue wearing her existing traditional paavada or the South Indian skirt paired with a red choli for a while, and switch to her pale copper sulphate blue chiffon ghagra choli later. Am relieved that she does not protest. Her mother and I hope she forgets about the dress bit in the excitement of group games outside the Green Room.

An hour later, am still monitoring the movement of people, clothes, beetel leaves, turmeric and kumkum that need to get distributed, savouries that need to be packed, gift-clothes, and the likes.

The younger niece and her mother return.

``She hasn't forgotten the other dress in all her running around! Made it a point to come and remind me about her blue dress..," her mother sighs.

Kids these days did you say?

If four year olds can become so conscious about their looks and beauty, imagine the kind of damning impact that our popular media imagery has done to them! Print, electronic or online, ads, films or serials, they are such powerful weapons to discreetly thrust stereotypes and shape popular notion about beauty!

Would the two kids have been so particular about the clothes they wore if they were born about 20 years back?

I Found my Indian Meera

2009-12-05T20:09:00.000+05:30

My quest for an Indian Meera has ended. In my blog post dated November 8, I had spoken of the disgust at finding Meera figurines imported from China.

During my sojourn to Hyderabad this week, a quick trip to Shilparamam, the permanent crafts bazaar threw up the Meera surprise. I got the statuette at half the price quoted for Chinese make figurines. The Indian made piece has its little defects, but looks Indian, and feels homely, unlike the Chinese make Meera. At the moment, she sits pretty in my studio room.

The tourist spot is a good getaway for those in need of home shopping, ethnic wares and some fun. My only disappointment was with the artists who were doing spot portraits. It's hard to digest a piece of low quality sketch from an artist, who insists he can do a better job if you cough up Rs 100 more!

Am still wondering, would the Chinese buy Indian make figurines of their saints and deities if we dumped the products on them?

Wonderment

2009-12-01T18:13:00.000+05:30

Is when a toddler who can barely speak words, walk-dances the street outside your home, and gets excited when he looks at the daylight moon.

It is as if moon is his friend he wants to converse with, or that ball he could play with.

He stretches his arm out in the moon's direction and tries hard to ....Catch it!

Yes, he thinks he can catch the moon! Yet, when the faraway `ball' stays elusive, he does not feel disappointed. He continues trying.

And with no sense of failure whatsoever, he half-screams in delight. No words to aid his amazingly expressive ecstacy. No sulking over not being able to get what he wanted. Only pure joy of knowing that the other exists out there. That friend. That Moon.

He holds no reserve in communicating to you about his `friend' though. He looks at the moon, at you and nods his head in a way that you understand it just right.

Sometimes, life's lessons come in packages a foot and half high.

A wedding in family

2009-11-29T15:23:00.000+05:30

It's close to two years since I tied the knot.

In a few days, a cousin I am fond of will do himself the honour. For all my opinionated struggle against too much ritual during those hectic days, I find myself advising this cousin to calm down, get more flexible, and become more sensitive to his future wife!

It was sheer team work by family, extended family, friends and relatives that saw me through that nightmare. Yet, when I look at my wedding snaps, it feels dream-like. What's heartening is that such teamwork has returned to see through the next happy family event too, despite distances, ego tussles, and everything in between.

The problem of books!

2009-11-28T00:52:00.000+05:30

Am I hoarding books? Have been tempted to ask this question to myself after facing some tough comments on the books I own.

I really really love books. Just that I do not end up reading most of what I buy. It's moving time and I have not the heart to give a single book away. Some are gifts. Some are author autographed preciouses. Some I hold on to dear life for life's lessons. When the question of having to part with them comes, I cringe, argue, put my foot down and stick to transporting them, whatever the cost.

They are what I turn to in times of depression. They are my friends. Just being around them soothes my creative senses. Have been tempted to google about it though, and it threw up some interesting results.

A piece in Bellaonline talks of doing away with book clutter.

Another one talks of how not to hoard books. Ouch.

After months of waiting for a bookshelf at home, I became the proud owner of one. For a short one month. And realised it was time to give it away. Couldn't spend a fortune transporting it, could I?

We've been busy selling away things we cannot move. As I sleep on the floor at night surrounded by bundled books, am dreaming of my own new home library, chic home office and a cozy armchair already. In another city. Only wish I face no more questions like, `why so many books?'

Suspended animation

2009-11-26T01:39:00.000+05:30

Am not sure even if these two words describe the state I am in. Am a woman. Married. Am I a housewife? Noooo. I work from home. For peanuts. In between my umpteen races between the kitchen and computer, computer and door, door and phone...

I work endlessly. I write away. And wonder why I am not earning a salary. At times I envy my neighbours. Housewives, who religiously make efforts to fit into roles assigned to them by their families, friends of families, stereotypes and the like.

Yet, an hour into conversation with a neighbour, I find reality hitting hard at me. For a non-believer of discrimination on the basis of caste, she insists that caste should exist, that a mistake by someone in a lower caste is more punishable than if committed by someone of a higher caste. When I retorted that day, that all are equal in the eyes of God, she didn't know what to reply. Playfully, this friend just hit me and left the place. She said arguing with me was difficult.

I returned to my PC, shocked at what she and her peers would have been taught by their parents in her village. Of those prejudices that get instilled so early in one's life that despite technological progress, and celebration of the Indian economic growth story, they gnaw at us on all sides.

I am a journalist. Without a job at the moment. Waiting to get called after many applications. At times I celebrate my unemployment. At times I cry over it. At other times, I reason it out, rationalise, and make peace with it. I think of the numerous things I get to do now, because of this luxurious tag. Yet, I know I am not meant to be home-stuck. And not out there in the city. The city called Mumbai. The city busy remembering four digits - 2,6, 1, 1. Read 26/11.

Am I a Mumbaikar? Yes I am.

Will I ever belong to another city. I want to. I doubt if I will. For, Mumbai has become so much a part of me that falling in love with any other city just as easily will be difficult.

Yet, I am not in Mumbai now. I am to move out. And find myself in another empty apartment, another home to make before I set out looking for jobs. Another city. Another people. Thank God it is still, an Indian city I will move into.

So here I am. I don't belong to a city (reality bites). I don't belong to a job. I am in between homes. Juggling roles. Hanging in the air. Is it bliss? Am I being naive?

Not sure. But there's a parachute I am clinging on to - hope.

Godsend!

2009-11-23T23:13:00.000+05:30

You are rushing between guests, greeting people, rushing around with arrangements for a housewarming ceremony.

Something's bothering you. Your left eye waters non-stop. A dust particle got stuck in the eye the previous evening and causes it pain so bad it embarrasses you in front of the guests. No amount of washing your eye has helped. When talking to your guests, you have to pat that irritable eye with the hanky and it makes them think you are crying. Why today? Why this when your father-in-law's dream home is seeing those meaningful prayers and umpteen friends have dropped by?

Just when you decide enough is enough and get set to rush to the nearest eye doc, a member of your extended family walks up to you to check what's wrong. She, is an opthalmologist! And thinks its conjunctivitis. You explain. She rushes you to the nearest faucet, inverts your eyelid with such expertise that you don't mind more pain! And gets you to wash the particle out. Washing is more painful. But in a minute, you've returned from hell!

She quickly jots down an eye-drop prescription. God does work miracles!

Flying high

2009-11-19T15:49:00.002+05:30

How exactly does one explain a river of blue-grey cotton balls meandering over a greyer landscape?

Am soaring high in sky. Above the grey landscape below, and above the spectacle of grey cotton clouds fluffing up like a river heading seaward. Ahead and a little beneath the horizon is an ocean of cotton balls.

Above this horizon, a distinct line between grey cotton and picturesque pale-pink and pink-gold flanked by pale sky blue, sums up for twilight. That pre-dawn spectacle is such a rare treat? However often one flies, getting to watch sun rays play magic is a treat in itself.

The colours change dramatically as the sun shows up, its golden pink tinged rays hitting fluffy clouds to sihouette them with golden white. It is as if these clouds are sun-bathing.

My eyes are drooly from lack of sleep at night. I have woken up at 3.30 am, done a mad rush to the airport with my husband, said those hurried `byes' and got into the plane even before darkness dimmed. All I want now is sleep, while the sun rays hit reluctant eyes.

Nature's visual gift outside of my plane window tempts me on however, to stay awake and lose myself to it. Guess the lack of sleep and wait at the crowded security lounge, waiting in a long queue at the airport Coffee Day to pay 70 bucks for a cup of coffee, and finally drag myself into the plane...it was all worth it!

Pic Courtesy: Photography Blogger
Pic: Days Between by Oblivious Dude

Ten things I like about Mumbai

2009-11-17T18:43:00.000+05:30

As the weeks roll by and I come to terms with my departure from this city slowly, I look out of the window into that distant horizon, those umpteen buildings, the winter fog that throws a white veil over them, and recall what exactly makes my heart ache at the mere thought of leaving Mumbai. Ten things I like and love about this city:

Vada Pav - you're not a Mumbaikar if you have set foot here and never had the Indian burger that comes for as less as Rs 4. The closest it got to a burger was at Jumbo Vada Pav joint that I relished, near Malad station. Jumbo joints are of course spread all over Mumbai.
Salad Carts at Bandra, Sandwich vendors by the roadside at every other suburb - no other city can boast of such quick snacks that cost less, to fill their hungry tummies
Local trains - need I say more? For all the trouble in veering through those crowds, fighting to board that Ladies bogie, walking the length and breadth of the platform in the hope of a less crowded coach, and the accidents I hear of every other day. I love. Sorry, I adore the local train network here, just as I love the bus feeder system too
Autorickshaws - don't be surprised. They are rickety. You jump when they ride over potholes. They could kill you with their reckless speed too. But guess what, I can hop off on the Western Express Highway at 4.30 am and be sure I can find a guy who will drop me home safe. Not an extra penny. I've lost count of how many times I used autorickshaws for commute here, but can recall hardly once or twice when I fought with the rickshaw guys. At Bangalore, I'd have to flag down a 100 rickshaws before getting one at night. Chennai, forget it. Delhi....don't ask me.
My suburb - Yeah. I love my suburb Goregaon. It's the greenest den in the concrete jungle out here. It's a place that made me get overwhelmed at first with the city, then hate, and finally love the city. It made me move from calling Mumbai, the Godforsaken, to My Mumbai.
Marine Drive - that necklace of lights with the distinct promenade...one place in the mad city where you don't need to pay to perch yourself for hours! The most memorable moment here was when I walked nearly the entire stretch from Nariman Point to Girgaum Chowpatty beach (that spans two stations on from Churchgate) and felt `Freedom'.
Crawford Market - It's true Mumbai is an expensive place. A trip to Crawford Market will defy that notion. It reminds me of City Market and Chickpet in Bangalore. The golden rule: Don't step into the fancy looking shops on those streets. Stick to smaller shops, the pavement stores, and bargain hard. Some of my best buys have been from Crawford.
Colaba Causeway, Fashion Street, Elko Market - Colaba Causeway and Fashion Street, the two reasons you won't mind a long journey to town, and Elko Market, the shopper's heaven for clothes at Bandra besides the overdone Linking Road and Hill Road (Elko is on Hill Road though). Colaba Causeway is a visual treat with its old world feel and new world clothes, Fashion Street is where you get tired shopping for Western Casuals. Elko, my recent discovery is where I want to keep returning to.
Chembur to Vashi ride - for Navi Mumbai residents who must travel to Churchgate, it's hell - the sheer distance of the commute. But that ride on the bridge over Thane Creek, with sea stretching out on either sides while you approach land, is bliss. It's lovely.
Safety - I feel safe in Mumbai.Promise. Am saying this in spite of that nagging fear at times on the local train platform or on a local train (terror threat?!) or Raj Thackeray's goons. It's a city with an active underworld. That doesn't matter to me as much as, when I don't have to pray non-stop on my auto-ride from the Goregaon station to home. I can go to any goddamn part in the heart of the city and hop into a taxi at 10 pm without fear. I can return to Goregaon station at 12.30 am and not have the least doubt about flagging an autorickshaw. Try that in Bangalore or Chennai. Autorickshaw drivers will demand the moon out of you and still make you feel they did you a divine favour by ferrying you home at that `devil's hour'. That's besides your doubt if you'll reach home at all.

I've lots more about Mumbai on my platter. But these things kind of sum it up.

Ten days to go

2009-11-16T21:39:00.000+05:30

...and the date 26/11 will return to haunt the city, the state and everyone possible. Mighty are the monuments of courage. I salute, those who lost their lives, limbs, loved ones, irrespective of where they died - at the Taj, Oberoi, CST, Cama Hospital, or Nariman House. Or the streets those beasts stalked for that matter.

Yet, these three silhouettes stand tall as one glares at them from sea, bruised but undaunted. Life, goes on.

Children's Day gift!

2009-11-14T14:02:00.000+05:30

Children and their parents, especially those of tenants, have been called over by the housing society I live in today.

It's not to celebrate Children's Day.

Last week, some children in their mischief collected some dry trash and set fire to it, unfortunately close to the car park. The cars did not catch fire, as they were a safe distance away, but the walls near the fire went black.

So, the society heads chose November 14, Children's Day, to give the children their peace of mind! They decided that all children need to be reprimanded for what some of them did.

It's India

2009-11-12T09:29:00.005+05:30

It's India. And not far from Mumbai. It's at Gharapuri, aka Elephanta Caves' island, east of Gateway and a 45 minute journey by ferry. This toy train, saves you some sweat by riding you for about a kilometre.

If you're a Mumbaikar, it's `train instinct' that works as soon as it halts. You make that mad rush into it with the crowd.

Brainwaves of Desperation

2009-11-12T01:10:00.000+05:30

Water scarcity drives me mad. Specially after three decades of existence with fairly less water trouble, and some years of absolutely no water problems.

This morning I got desperate. The taps ran dry as usual. But there was cooking left to do, some utensils needed a wash, my hair needed some shampooing...sigh. So what should I do? End up starving another morning? Or order food from the local food joint?

Hunger does get to you at times. I may not be able to reuse water that I just washed down on veggies, but I can use it to soak some utensils, or still better, use it to flush the toilet!

A worn out night gown I ripped apart, washed it, dried it. And filtered the water I had just washed vegetables with. This water I managed to use for little things like dipping my hands to rid of something sticky. To cook my favourite dish with gherkins, I steamed them in a small cooker instead of boiling the pieces directly.

To chop the pieces I am in the habit of using the cutting tray, a bowl to keep aside unwanted ends, and another to transfer chopped pieces into. I did away with the tray and devised another method to cut them. The chopped pieces of gherkin I transferred into a party paper plate, the unwanted ends went to a newspaper that partly replaced my cutting board.

After steaming the gherkins in saline water, I moved them to the pan for a quick fry, but did not throw away the water. The used water came in handy to make myself a yummy tomato onion soup, in the same cooker, with no nutrients lost. My method of cooking brown rice was rather fuel consuming though, and took up more water, but I guess there must be ways to work around that trouble.

The whole exercise was rather time consuming. And when water poured down from taps in my building, I was asleep too, and missed storing it. But then, I am learning quick. And a hunch says I may end up writing how-to survival pieces in water scarcity times!

I did not shampoo my hair today. Guess it gets reserved for the morning when taps will run water! My brainwaves in desperation did remind me a thing or two though - of those science projects at school which spoke of something basic - water filtering with sand and charcoal.

A google search has brought about some interesting results. Did you know that the water purifier industry will always tell you that home-made water filters are not good enough? Obviously it would! Hits their pockets doesn't it!

Here are some links:

Homemade Charcoal Water Filter

How to make water filter at home

Life around the faucet

2009-11-10T21:04:00.000+05:30

It is hard to believe that while outside of my window, winds lash, rain pours incessantly, my taps are dry.

Strange game of hide and seek this. For a colony that enjoyed 24 hour water supply, home bound like me keep their ears in the direction of faucets even while working, to hear that sweet music of water from the tap.

I am not sure what the reason behind this is: regulation of water supply of plain housing society internal politics, or genuine short supply of water in Mumbai's lakes. For some reason, I go into a frenzy when I have to wake up early every morning after a late night's work schedule, only to find the tap went dry long before.

A couple of days back, the supply was turned off at 8 am instead of 10 am. This morning I woke up at 7.30 and rushed to open the tap, only to realise the supply had stopped five minutes prior. True that I store water too, but that's not a relief still.

Is this a sign of things to come? Hard to imagine.

Meera for Sale

2009-11-08T10:31:00.003+05:30

Meera for Rs 600! Wow! It is as recent as now.

Prices on Chinese make Indian Gods have come down a great deal! Am saying this because last year, when I asked for the price of a Meera figurine, the shop-keeper near Sai Baba shrine replied with some sarcasm.

`Yeh to bahut sasta hai...', and expected me to ask how much.

`Kitna?'

`Barah Sau (Rs 1,200).'

He knew I would not buy it. No one probably bought that piece for a few months now.

And when I saw the Rs 600 label, I yelped for joy inside.

Hey, I've grown up dreaming of owning a Meera idol all my life. I am hankering after symbols here...worldly temptation. To me she is the ultimate symbol of selfless devotion, and love that has no labels. More than that, she represents strength unlimited. She questioned overdone stereotypes inflicted on women from ages. And came out trumps.

But then, those years, I heard of the price ranging between Rs 20 and Rs 40. And knew that when I got a job, I'd buy it with my own money. Even if it is a decade on, it cannot rise to such absurd amounts! I know I am hankering after symbols here...worldly temptation.

For years I did not find these statuettes in markets that I frequented in Bangalore, and even during those shopping adventures at other cities.

And when it came to the market shelves, I ran out of money to splurge on my fancies. Reality sunk in slowly over last few years, that these stunning come-back idols were not Indian, but made in China. They looked lovely yes, but I somehow still believe that if the symbol is Indian, I would rather not support an imported product to satiate my love for owning her image.

Retailers who'll stock only Chinese idols even if you ask for Indian makes, have learnt enough by now, that a chunk of their customers will not buy Chinese make idols.

So they will swear and lie to you on face, that the idols are Indian make. The shop-keeper who showcased Meera among the umpteen other Indian Gods said the same thing - Indian make.

Look close into the picture as I did. Meera's features here give away. She reminds me of Chinese heroines.

Move time: Lock Stock and a Barrel full of memories

2009-11-08T00:01:00.003+05:30

Many months passed since the apartment I live in became a home. Eons have zipped by, since I stopped fearing this cluster of umpteen cities and began loving it.

Just when it was about time that I brought in things from my parents' home, and came to terms with the idea of settling down, it's time to move.

How exactly does one bade goodbye to a city that becomes home, where you've lived a lifetime in two years and yet cannot get enough of it?

How does one think of setting home in another city when most of what you loved about life came on a platter in this city?

I love Mumbai. When I set foot here first time, I got fascinated by its sheer magnitude. The next time on, I feared it, hated it, and hated it all the more when I had to collapse after a train trip to Churchgate.

Today I look forward to going to Churchgate. By train. By habit. Terror threats or no threats, I love climbing those Goregaon station stairs that once scared me outright.

It will be a few weeks before I wind up. I guess however many posts I write over the next few weeks, it will hardly do justice to what I have felt and lived over the last two years. Yeah two years. They vanished. And many things got not done in the city - difficult for my `been there done that' cravings.

Guess I will make up for some lost time now. At the moment, am letting the thought of moving out, sink in.

Abandon

2009-11-07T01:07:00.003+05:30

Is when you rush to embrace the ocean.
Is when you run without having to answer for your strut.

Pic Courtesy: Subhransu Das
Location: Aksa Beach, Madh Island

Papers are Passѐ

2009-11-05T19:18:00.004+05:30

My doorbell rang. I wondered who it could be at that late morning hour. Was it a neighbour?

`Kaun hai?' I yelled from my hall. And managed to decipher only the word`....hai' from a man behind the door. I opened the door anyways to find the courier guy. For a change, he looked more like a company executive, not a starved employee who struggled to ride in hot sun.

I picked the envelope from him. The norm, is that courier guys instantly hand out stapled log sheets that I fight against signing. I don't like mentioning my mobile number on those precarious papers either. In style, this courier personnel flashed a palm top and asked me to sign in with the stylus! For a second, it made me the customer look small with its maze like feel.

`Yeh to modern ho gaya ji!'

`Haan madam, abhi yehi dete hai,' he said, almost apologetic.

I took the stylus and tried pressing it against the touchscreen. Not all of the strokes would show.
He hit `clear' and let me sign again. Better this time.

`Press karna madam.'

Technology does not necessarily mean convenience. This time I asked him to make do with my signature that looked 90 per cent complete. So he requested me to write in my mobile number with that signature.

Personal safety trick you may say. But I avoid listing my number. My husband's number turned saviour.

`Kitne ka hai?' My curiosity would not let me shut my mouth up.

`Ek Laakh ka hai madam!' He said this with the look of that huge burden of responsibility in safeguarding it.

His company did not mind paying it. The gait was different. Polished compared to other courier deliverers.

As I shut the door, my thoughts swung from - will my signature be misused, to why a company would allow such expensive gadgetry to be used by these employees.

If something were go wrong with the machine, they would be made to compensate. Was it just about style? Or clever ideas to get signatures and mobile numbers? Maybe courier delivery merely got techno-savvy.

Divine and the devout

2009-11-04T23:48:00.003+05:30

Signs of devotion. Signs of eternal joy. Signs of thirst, as God watches coy.

Pic Courtesy: Radhika M

TV War: Ceasefire

2009-11-04T00:54:00.003+05:30

`When I get to earn lots of money,' I began.

Hubby D knew it was one of my potshots aimed at him. I continued undaunted, `I'll buy another TV.'

His non-stop jibes over the months at my preference for Balika Vadhu over IPL, or a reality show over action movies have moved me up the wall.

Our dislike for each other's perception of entertainment is mutual.

He hates daily soaps. I cringe when he watches WWE.

I watch reality shows even if I don't like them. He prefers cricket anyday.

Among films, I love romantic English movies, while nothing less than an action flick would satiate his appetite.

I don't react much to these daily fights until it is about his switching to some vulgar comedy from Tamil cinema. Believe me, I have nothing personal against those comedians or the language. I laugh at some of the forced jokes too. But as a viewer I find a lot that is demeaning in these jokes. Am stunned too, that they tend to get away with some of the worst statements they can make about women. To my surprise, I find women in my extended family and elsewhere too, enjoy these jokes. When I think of children growing up on such toilet humour, I want to hide away.

Not sure if I am being an escapist. Over the last few weeks, it is less TV and more internet at times I should be spending time with my husband. Home TV wars are a norm more than dismissable domestic incidents.

They are intra-family assertion of power - over what the person perceives as entertainment, depending on that person being male, female, elderly, child, etc. Home TV wars are a symbol of dominance over the remote. Women win these wars at times. Men get to control it in the name of cricket, most times.

I have begun to perceive TV, cricket and crass Tamil Comedy as the `other' of late. Dinner time, I gulp down morsels rather than look up at the TV, not out of any major grudge, but tired with those things I don't perceive as entertainment. In any case, I no longer enjoy watching Balika Vadhu. Reality shows tend to bore me too. Serials tend to drag on so much I would be happier watching them once a week - only to catch up with story progress. Or have I simply given up?

Can peace be made about over the years? Time will tell in my house. But if I have the money...

My other blogs

2009-11-04T00:26:00.002+05:30

Blogging of late has been an exciting creative experience. Those little thrills range between going over hundreds of blogspot templates, trying out those things that remained a mystery for me in wordpress, and trying out new templates, to actually starting new blogs.

I have started two new blogs after a lot of pondering over. And they are linked on the right of this page - Cerebral Toothbrush, and Insights.

Three reasons:
this blog has made me break barriers, yet is a limiting experience for certain pieces I would want to write.

this blog is more personal in nature and although the other two blogs are my personal perspectives too, they will be different from this.

niche is the buzzword in any sphere of life today - blogging included. the two other blogs help me grow as a writer and help you enjoy my pieces too, in a different direction.

Readers who have kept me going, please give me your feedback on the two other blogs. My blog Cerebral Toothbrush is only a layout for now. It will grow soon. That's my word.

Night Lights

2009-11-02T02:00:00.003+05:30

It's how beautiful my suburb Goregaon looks on a festive night. Stretching across, down the hill into Malad, these concrete buildings give a reason to smile at night. At the horizon, is the sea. I, am on cloud nine.

Pic Courtesy: Subhransu Das

Is this true?

2009-10-31T13:59:00.002+05:30

I paid deposit for my internet broadband in April 2008. A year and six months later, I am shocked.

The cable TV operator who supplies the net line to us actually responds to my complaints, and a maintenance guy lands up at my door in half an hour!

If the main server supplying bandwidth is down, they actually inform me about it. They even call back to check if the complaint has been addressed! Or if the connection has been set right.

What a difference from those hairsplitting hours and days I lost yelling at them, and lost time on precious work that I could do too!

Is it that my tricks and stunts at getting them to renew my account every month or repair the line paid off? Or reporting non-stop to their bandwidth provider about their callous attitude did the trick?

A hunch tells me it could be a drop in the number of connections. The internet line provider was a monopoly out here till recently. Some friends I know switched to wireless internet because of such bad service.

During the Diwali weekend, this provider spent a fortune on pamphlets advertising his broadband packages. Competition works!

Just in case you wondered why I put up with shoddy service for a whole 18 months, some friends suggested a move to a bigger company's broadband service when they saw me going through torture in the name of broadband internet.

I had a sound reason not to. When we moved in to this home, I called up the big companies for a connection - hoping for that quality stamp on them. Two out of the three I called up said they had no `feasibility' in my colony. With 168 homes in an enclosure and 10 such enclosures on a single road stretch - meaning not less than 50 per cent of them for potential customers, I don't know what they meant by no feasibility.

The third company had only six months and three months package options, which meant I pay lumpsum. I wanted to tell them I was newly married, and had no money left to pay them such huge sums. It would not matter, would it? I would look a fool too. Why would they be concerned about my not having money?

I took heart by deciding not to give them business for as long as I could.

Birds on my window sill

2009-10-30T10:20:00.002+05:30

Indoor moments can be fun at times!

A pigeon waits for that opportune moment when you've left the window partly open, and flies into your room only to head for the slab above, even if it meant pushing the curtain away with its beak.

All your pleas to leave fail to get those mercy looks from the bird. What do you do then? Show gestures, to indicate the way out, Air India Maharaja style. It will not budge.

The next thing, play around with the window shutters a little. This time it knows there is some trouble in waiting. So when you make space for the winged guest to leave, it obliges. And hops to the window sill, perches on the grill ahead, and flies away.

Pigeon mornings in this part of my colony no longer begin at forlorn spaces. These days they flock to the inner walls of the storm water drain near my building. With the water turning to just a trickle after rains, they love its cool in the day, when these buildings shade over the drain.
...

Pigeons in my colony have grown smart over the months. Yesterday afternoon, they perched themselves outside the curtain to check for any noise from this room. In careful movements, they moved to the window sill just behind the curtain. A pigeon partly pushed the curtain to check for perils if any. What this one and its friend were not aware of, is that I was watching their silhouetted shadows clearly from my room.

When the bird tried to move in, all I said is, `No', like a teacher chides her student! Can you believe the pigeon moved back in as many steps? And came by again to check on the noise! I repeated the `No'. Now it gave up. And flew away. Its fellow pigeon waiting flew after it.

Which language is superior?

2009-10-29T00:04:00.002+05:30

In the age of MNS style politics that wreak fear in the name of language, it is with some unease that one reads about `Convent' school teachers punishing children for speaking in their mother tongue.

We know English language gets us that much needed exposure to the world and its politics.

We know too, that in the recent years, it is unthinkable to let our children stay behind in the rat race without the knowledge of English.

We've heard the IT Czars of Bangalore and knowledge advocates of Delhi stress on the language in curriculum many a time.

But punishing children in the name of language! What's the difference between a violent political party bashing up drivers from a particular state or those who speak a particular language, and teachers who beat up children in the name of language at school?

Those in the know will tell you that it was their native knowledge that took them places - on the global map I mean. Where we as Indians should pride ourselves in our local culture, we love to impose an overly Western system in the name of education, and ask our children to become English speaking machines of the future.

For the moment, the incident has grabbed political mileage for the concerned politicians. What happens to the children who suffered humiliation? With the noise dies down, will they still be able to hold their heads up in their classroom?

Will their confusion about what the right language to speak is, clear too? My hunch is, it definitely will not. God save today's children.

Ambiguity

2009-10-28T22:07:00.003+05:30

Is when you wonder if the destination means bliss, or the journey toward it.
An aim. The longing. Those perils. And finally...

A pagoda across the creek

2009-10-25T20:52:00.001+05:30

Somewhere on an island across Gorai creek, is the Global Pagoda. This imposing spire invites you from miles away. Be disappointed that hardly any real pictures of it exist on the internet. It is `complete' in construction, but has a long way to become the real finished structure. In the years to come it is sure to become a must-stop tourist spot of Mumbai.

Promoters of the Vipassana form of Buddhist meditation have built the structure up. After all, if we have a Lotus temple at Delhi for the Bahai faith, or the Auroville meditation centre, brand names like the Pagoda are so essential! The yet-to-be finished structure is a 20-minute ferry ride away from Marve and Gorai beaches, through the fishing territories on the backwaters of Gorai Creek.

Any Esselworld ferry will take you to the spot. We took the ferry from Marve's coast at Malad. The centre's compound is adjacent to Esselworld entrance. What a contrast - one is about worldly abandon, another about being less worldly. A walk into the inside of the grand pagoda will leave you disappointed if you plan to meditate there, just as its giant dome cools your senses (and your skin) thoroughly after a hot afternoon walk from your ferry alighting point. Your sweat will not go in vain.

Only those who complete the 10-day Vipassana course are eligible to spend time inside the hall.

My gnawing doubt: is any other method of meditation under the giant structure detrimental to its cause? Or is it just a way of promoting their own method of meditation? If so, why call it a global pagoda of world peace? I mean, you need to be more inclusive on that front!

After all, every method to meditation is aimed at a singular purpose - seeking the Supreme.

On a personal front, my friends, hubby and brother accompanied me after me coaxing them into it. I took heart from the lovely ferry views and clean air leading to the giant spire. And of course the berry fruit cart we bought stuff from after the journey.

We had those `will-we make it to the coast?' moments too. On our return trip, the boat was manned by an amateur motorman. Negotiating through those gaps between stationary fishing nets was not easy. And the ferry halted right in the middle.

Instant talk by those in the ferry went back to the recent ferry tragedy at Kerala's Thekkady. My people came on my coaxing them. What if something happened? Its alright if I hit the creek bed, but what about them? God, let me not survive with guilt! Prayer is that ultimate weapon that a human mind resorts to in such no-win-in-sight situations. A prayer went up: save every soul in this ferry, with no damage whatsoever, take us all across safely!

Was I really being unselfish in this situation? I mean, it could have brought out the survivor in me! I marvelled secretly in that brief moment of selflessness. Did a trip to that `monument in the making' do it?

As if by divine design, the motorman's more experienced senior took the steer over after giving him some hard-hitting words I got no clarity of. The ferry moved. And in the direction we had to move in. When we touched shore, it was only natural that sighs of relief went up in our hearts. No wonder that a couple of us dashed for a berry-cart the first thing we saw after getting off, not even bothered about carcasses of fish buried in sand, we may be stamping on our way there.

Of course those berries worked away in our tummies later that day. My friend suffered more. As for me, elation worked its wonders. A trip of this nature could charge one up a great deal, even if the results are not gratifying. On our return home, I had all the energy to make a few cups of green tea nimbu cha for the bunch of us.

That night was about learning from my husband how to make stuffed idlis. Needless to say, our friends enjoyed his idlis!

The next morning, I stared out of my window into the horizon and looked lovingly at the pagoda silhouette on its distant horizon. The first time I noticed it many months back, I thought it was a church.

The kids are watching!

2009-10-22T20:53:00.002+05:30

Colors has managed to bring in those TRPs with the biggest coup in recent months - Big B.

Big Boss 3 has its big share of audience too. For all the two second disclaimer at the start of the programme, Wednesday's episode of Kamal (Kamaal) Khan's bottle-throwing at Rohit Verma was not only ugly. It was sick.

Should such violence be aired in the first place? Trust me I have nothing against people on the show or off it. But why subject our children to such episodes of foul language and nasty behaviour by inmates?

The online newswire is flooded with Kamaal Khan's ouster. Am hoping it is true. For all the parental guidance that the channel speaks of, it would be difficult even for a parent to justify to a child, why the most foul-mouthed guy is still around on the show. If it is voyeuristic aims at TRPs, it needs to be dealt with in a separate post.

Magic of Lights

2009-10-21T20:25:00.004+05:30

Diwali is over. Lights decorating windows are gone too. Cracker noises have thankfully vanished. But something about this Diwali has been so special I could cherish for life.

Tired after a momo dinner, a bunch of us got suddenly energised when the momo expert friend declared at 12 am, half an hour after our sumptuous treat. As if momos were not enough, we had an excuse for a quick pastry voyage. And set out in our suburb. Cafe Coffee Day was closed. And so were the three pastry joints we relied on.

Our friend drove on, past Western Express Highway and into the city. ``Don't worry. He's thought of some place special,'' said S, the friend's wife.

Could it be Marine Drive, or simply some place in Bandra? We went past Mahim Police Chowky when this friend stopped by near a sleeping taxi driver to enquire about Diwali market. Whatever could that be? Cracker shops opened so late?

A kilometer on, the visual treat stunned us. On either sides of road in that near-zero traffic hour were lanterns of all sizes and shapes. They stretched over a mile, lighting up the otherwise throttle-traffic roads with heavenly glow. For a minute or two we gazed in daze at the lovely lights. I must admit those Chinese lanterns were not a welcome sight. The light and colour riot made up for that feeling though.

The market opens only after 9 pm, when the killer traffic eases a little. It's a rare treat to watch families and individual lantern makers quickly work through the glue and kite paper to bend, stick and pattern hanging lanterns. Night is when families venture out to buy lanterns too. A pity we did not carry cash along. We fell for innovative white ball lanterns that could make any room decor dream-like.

We were not so lucky about the birthday cake. But this one beat any imagined slurp of honey dripping from the pastry. It made us want to spend the night on pavements.

Of late, the Diwali fad has travelled across the globe and as far as Obama and Gordon Brown, but no White House party can match such local splendour.

Pic Courtesy: Subhransu Das

Criminal Offence This: Noise Pollution

2009-10-20T13:50:00.003+05:30

After a few minutes of being surrounded by playful children bursting crackers, I ran home. My ears were bursting with pain from that meaningless noise from diwali bombs and rockets. Five more minutes of that noise and my weak ears would have gone deaf.

I am a no-crackers person since teenage. This year, my husband did not buy crackers for his own reasons. My visiting cousin who loves crackers did not insist on buying them too, so we managed a cracker-less Diwali and still enjoyed it. And enjoyed it better too!

But one flight downstairs of our apartment building, and the noise was killing. It is as if there were no norms at all in controlling noise levels. I could hear crackers bursting as late as 12 am.

For the last four days, pigeons on my building and the one across suffered the noise, just as dogs that got confused with the noise on the roads barked away frightened. As for the cats, they were nowhere to be seen around with all the noise.

Parents who may not want to burst crackers too, are indulgent with their children. Children on the other hand love crackers. They feel deprived when their friends get to burst crackers. I remember how colleagues and friends felt generous enough during the festival, and bought crackers for children who could not afford them. Great intention, but a deed that does not benefit either them (except for the temporary pleasure), nor the environment.

The only way one can get them to feel otherwise, is to teach them how their crackers hurt the environment. It's time schools inculcated the no-crackers spirit in them on a massive scale.

The real after effects of this festival I read this morning. A news piece spoke of how birds and animals bore the brunt of human pleasure for noise.

I am still confused as to how human beings can derive pleasure from noise that erupts out of burning some chemicals. Real joy should come through sharing and caring, especially during a festival that means the triumph of good over evil.

Our idea of celebrating the festival lights has gone astray in that respect. Is it not about time that we made noise pollution criminal?

All the noise around global climate change would have no meaning with such blatant violations!

Celebration

2009-10-19T01:17:00.003+05:30

Is when your friends surprise you after a hectic day of festivities, giving you the best moment of the day.

Is when you make that rangoli without any chemical-laden colour. It's your first attempt at the turmeric-kumkum pattern and a neighbour gets tempted to decorate her doorstep too.

Is when a neighbour who never spoke to you offers you some mango leaves for the doorstep decor.

Is when in the middle of boring glitz at your neighbourhood mall, you get floored by Rajasthani folk dancers with their energetic beats. And do not want to leave the mall.

Is when a kid walks into your home with diwali delicacies. Is when your maide attempts at dishes get their share of praise.

Is when after the festival, you can lie down on your bed and close your eyes with a smile...those sweet moments flooding your thoughts!

Real Diwali

2009-10-14T21:23:00.002+05:30

What is real Diwali? In the last few days my head has been racing with the question.

A refreshing story in Times of India today gave me some food for thought.

Read this.

Diwali should be about respect for life...not just human, but animal and bird too.

Signs and Symbols

2009-10-14T14:21:00.000+05:30

Two pots of Tulsi plant. A carelessly drawn rangoli, muggu, or kolam, in rice flour. A flower to adorn the plants. A lamp in waiting for the evening light. Symbols of piety. Nostalgia for me. Signs of tradition. Signs of home. Science Ancient. Medicine most trustworthy. But symbols and signs alone are they.

Pic Courtesy: Radhika M

Who said only celebs are camera savvy?

2009-10-14T11:48:00.005+05:30

Sweating after a two kilometres walk, friend S and I squat on the parapet of a shopping centre fountain in its courtyard, while our husbands go about their errands. Some guys are playing snooker a few feet away. A guy is busy selling soft drinks at his three-by-three feet stall. Feeling that cool from the water in that fountain tank is one thing.

Finding something you fall for instantly in that water is another. I snoop around to look for fish in the water. And find a turtle! We rarely find turtles as pets! My friend is as excited. We watch the little one swim around on the tank floor, settle down in one of the dents for a while, look for food and swim away disinterested. When we tap our fingers to draw its attention, it responds lovingly and swims to the surface.

S decides to click a picture of the turtle and focuses her mobile over the moving pool resident. Guess what? The turtle turns to the camera! He swims to the pool surface and sticks out his head to pose for S. After she finishes clicking the shot, he turns around and swims away. One thought only celebs were shutterbug sunflowers!

Diwali Deco

2009-10-13T23:06:00.006+05:30

Some windows across in the other building are all decked up with lights.

For the last two days, cartloads of garbage is finding its way out from homes, in huge shopping covers. My studio too has gone through its share of Diwali cleaning. Some housewives have bought fancy lamps in advance. Others have rushed to buy some gold for Dhanteras.

The shopping centre at Gokuldham in my suburb is so bedazzled with lights, that you want to grab those lovely LEDs hanging like grapes from shops. Paper lanterns, crackers and sweets have piled up at shops and are getting sold out too. At the Oberoi mall, a giant LED lantern hangs precariously from the ceiling, over the mall's central court.

Every product in town has the Diwali Dhamaka tag to it! Home-maker friends of mine scour the newspapers, not for news, but ads and exchange offers. It is about that long overdue washing machine, or a tea table, or still better, a bedroom set. TV ads, LCD packages. Clothes. Gold...the list goes on endlessly.

With the market promising to pick up and that eager anticipation of future money in the household, families I know are hoping they buy up goods in advance. Of course, their shopping spree includes a little bit of expenditure on worship paraphernalia too. Goddess Lakshmi needs to be kept happy after all, while we humans convince ourselves that she means the home appliance we are buying up, she means the clothes we wear.

As for me, I love watching those umpteen paper lanterns that light up not just shops, but entire streets and shopping arcades before they find way to some apartment window. I must confess the temptation to buy them up is too hard to resist for me too. But that `eco-friendly' bell rings in my head just in time.

Something about these lamps irritated me when on my mini-shopping spree a few hours back. Chinese style lanterns with prints of Goddess Lakshmi. Agreed lanterns and lamps have undergone enormous design changes over the years. But considering China has swept through even the Indian God idols market, why this craze!

Probably had this God invasion and dumping of Chinese products had not happened, I'd have nurtured a different opinion. Does a Chinese citizen out there lap up anything Indian just as eagerly? Thinking aloud. Opting for those Pipli cloth lanterns from Orissa looks anyday a better idea. We're helping those artisans from our own villages and towns.

Wish I could map the route of these lanterns to check where they exactly came from!

My little deco plan is confined to a floral rangoli with earthern lamps. Made in India. Am assured completely. Can we as humans, step aside for once, from this consumerist mindset hanging over our heads? It's a festival to celebrate good over evil. Can we not keep it that way and hit ourselves less hard?

The more we consume plastic and gold in the name of the festival, the harder we're hitting at our resources. Let's shun that evil in us for a few minutes! And save some power and oil too!

Krishna and PM

2009-10-11T18:07:00.006+05:30

Its a relief that the prime minister has done an aerial survey and announced `relief' for the flood-hit in North Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. Thankfully, politicking has not hampered his announcement. It's not the first time Karnataka has been hit by floods. It definitely means there are ways to look at building a flood relief system to minimise damage too. The number 226 for deaths may be a mere statistic. But for families that have lost them, they are people - breadwinners, loved ones, fathers, mothers, children...

Relief announcements in multiples of 10 are a norm too. But is it not about time governments made public flowcharts showing the last paise spent?

This one is a picture of the Krishna river between the Raichur and Krishna stations, clicked in mid-August from my Mumbai-bound train, when monsoon was at prime. For me, Krishna - the name as a station, was a pleasant revelation. It bears the name of my favourite God.

Change in tone on river-linking

For a government that was over-zealous in treating river-linking as panacea to all water woes in the country, Manmohan Singh's mentioning of it being `complex' is a sign of hope too.

It's true floods and drought look beyond human control at face value. It is truer still, that humans messing up with nature and playing God by controlling rivers has a lot to do with floods.

Pic Courtesy: Radhika M

How to get crowds for a book release

2009-10-11T14:47:00.003+05:30

Book releases of English language books in India are usually affairs confined to five star hotels, with the right dose of writers, publishers, and book-lovers.

The trend has switched to upmarket bookstores in the recent years, but the audience has still been a limited number. The book release of Chetan Bhagat's latest 2 States at my suburb threw the niche notion to winds. It took place at Oberoi Mall, Goregaon. To rake in enough crowd, the mall placed a prominent ad in the newspapers, announcing the book release, with the name of an actress.

The actress in question for the best-seller writer's book release - Vidya Balan. Glitter. Din. And a huge crowd. Not so much for the book, but Vidya Balan.

``I have never seen this huge an audience for a book release,'' she remarked to the crowd spread over two floors above the atrium where it happened. The actress added, that she related to the book because of her South-Indian connection. When you have your star quotient and are decked up enough for the shutterbugs, and at a mall on the weekend, what else do you expect?

She made a quick exit after the event. Needless to say, the writer spend the next couple of hours autographing copies of his book that sold like hotcakes. The book, is a love story. Its back cover summary is filmy enough for the sales to come in.

In my recent trips to the mall, I had seen a dip in the numbers. Marketing brains surely work overtime to sell more copies! Am wondering how conventional lovers of literature, and writers, would digest such sweeping changes in writing and marketing books.

`Bill please'

2009-10-11T10:26:00.003+05:30

The doorbell rang. I rushed to open it. Bills for the month were paid. So who could it be? Milk, flowers, maid's salary, electricity, cable TV, internet...what could be left?

It was the newspaper vendor, sheepishly giving me a...bill. Relief. My relief was ironic that moment. For I had not paid up for four months. My non-payment had nothing to do with recession.

For some strange reason, the vendor stopped producing bills. Considering this agent has a monopoly on newspaper supply for residents of my colony of about 170 households, and some neighbourhood buildings, his customer base was good.

It's still a mystery - the sudden vanishing of bills. First they moved from a printed bill to a paper-bit with rubber-stamp. The next time, it was a few figures shabbily jotted down on another bit. I asked them each time they came by to collect money. Why this? No answer. I refused to pay. The boy the vendor sent would wear a perplexed look. But have no choice if I did not budge. Last month, I stood my ground again.

``Ask my boss why he's not giving bill,'' the young lad snapped, irritated. I was sure there were others who refused to pay too.

``Give me his number.''

``I don't have it.''

``No bill and no phone number too! Wonderful. Tell him I'll pay all the money up if he brings the bill.''

He left in a huff. My husband was bemused.

``Why not pay him? It's a newspaper bill after all!''

I was adamant. A faint fear did creep in for sometime. Will those guys land at my doorstep and create a scene?

The sight of that blue bill this time brought a secret smile inside me. I payed up instantly.

``You could have done this before too! Bringing the new bill-book,'' I told the vendor.

He gave a guilty smile. And left.

Patchwork Nostalgia

2009-10-10T10:30:00.006+05:30

What could be special about a ragged old wall-piece of patchwork? This one is a curio from the eighties. That was when netting plastic wire over glasses to make plastic flower vases, and patchwork pieces were a rage among housewives in my neighbourhood.

Over later years, some housewives `graduated' to making bigger Mickey Mouse patchwork designs for homes. This design beat them all. I could not find its replicas anywhere through those changing decor years. My sister and I bid adieu to the piece with a heavy heart, a few weeks back. Not easy to let go of something you've grown up staring at.

Allergic Cold? Rush not to the doc

2009-10-09T14:07:00.006+05:30

Rain. Sun. Rain. Clouds. Tricky weather this.

A trip to Bangalore and back. And it's enough to give you that cold and cough you dread. Unlike at Bangalore where working while cursing the weather and using hankies is a done thing, Mumbai's cold and cough bouts drain me out. Living on a hill with passing rain clouds waiting to pour, worsens it.

Hubby and I head to doctor. General Physician. I narrate my cold symptoms obediently. She knows what antibiotics to prescribe already. I tell her anyways. And add for conversation's sake, that Bangalore tends to cause me some wheezing, but not so now that I live in Mumbai.

What does she do? Goes on writing on that prescription slip, scaring me outright. And adds an asthma inhaler prescription. Why on earth an inhaler when my wheezing is history (it vanished two years back), and for mere allergic cough and cold that only need some intervention?

``You have to take it as a precaution. If you don't use it, I may end up not treating you in OPD (as an outpatient),'' she retorts.

``But...'' I shut up. No use arguing with doctors.

Inhalers for Asthma are Schedule H drugs. Side effects of these could range from some psychiatric troubles to bronchospasm. Read about these side effects.

``Doctors are so prescription-happy!'' I tell myself as hubby and I walk out of the physician's room.

``I am not going to use that inhaler if you buy it,'' I declare.

``I won't let you use it even if you want to. Don't worry,'' says he.

Relief. I dread allopaths. Such prescriptions only enhance that dread.

As for my cold, it got cured. Only for a few days. It returned promptly after the next round of 24/7 rains last weekend. I have not gone back to the doctor. Water boiled with cumin seeds and crushed Tulsi (Basil leaves) is doing the job. And better.

On the brink

2009-10-09T10:19:00.004+05:30

For die-hard Bangaloreans living in Bangalore's once non-descript eastern side know this familar Ulsoor landmark. It is the spot where the road forks on the left before you approach the Ulsoor Police Station. It is a spot remnant of the real Bangalore of yore. It is all but a little temple with flower stalls that mark the place, opposite the Someshwara Temple chariot shelter and flanking the Yellamma temple's backwall (the shops in the backdrop hide the wall). Come festival season, this whole stretch, from the Ulsoor Bus-stand Petrol Bunk would come alive. Garlands, unstrung flowers, Ganesha idols ahead of the Ganesh pooja, puffed rice ahead of Vijayadashami and Ayudha Pooja, coconuts, incense sticks...this stretch was full of them.

For the brand royalty kind, there was Sreedevi Hotel with its good food, the coffee grinding shops and the Ulsoor bazaar street.

That was, until this village Halasuru found itself suddenly bull-dozed with burgeoning two-wheeler and four-wheeler population marauding it to make way to MG Road and other central parts of the city. Metro, has turned the stretch into an open grave.

This little temple bears testimony to the immense ruthlessness of humans in the name of infrastructure building. City Czars rarely bother about destroying the original character of cities. Even if it is about razing down what was once the very popular jhatka stand. Over the years the horse-driven tonga stop became a haven All they are bothered about is, raking in the moolah - cash or credit, hype or hoopla. Places like the South of Mumbai have the luxury of some heritage saver groups hitting out at anything that mars the city's aesthetics.

Bangaloreans, are busy making their IT money and buying apartments on loans. Before they find enough time to fight back, probably eons away, ruthless greed would have turned this place to mud.

Wake Up Sid: real, refreshing, yet repackaged

2009-10-07T15:23:00.009+05:30

Get serious in life! Just how many films have we watched with that overdone theme before! Wake Up Sid does just that.

Sitting there, with husband D and friend S by my side, those visuals took me straight back to Dil Chahta Hai, touted widely way back in 2002 as the coming of age kind. Over the past year, other films in this genre have made their mark too! We've had Luck By Chance, watched Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na and rocked with Rock On. Their stories were not the get-serious message oriented, but their scripts were, and targeted straight at youngsters.

Wake Up Sid more or less fits into the genre. Every scene of the film appeals to you, because you relate to its characters, its dialogues, and its sets. The somewhat closer to life film has its message etched right through, but does not get preachy. It took me straight back to Dil Chahta Hai. Peppy dialogues. Trendy clothes. Real places.

And while one is overloaded with backdrops from different countries for films, this one is refreshing for its closer home feel. Dil Chahta Hai had Goa. Wake Up Sid has Bombay (Mumbai did we hear?). A breathtaking terrace view of the sea and boats, the typical and overdone, yet very likable Marine Drive promenade, those little narrow lanes in the neighbourhood...some outdoors you take home with you.

Renting a studio flat and turning it into a dream nest is something most migrants dream of. When Sid and his friends help Aisha do just that, you wow at it. It could also be something as simple as converting a few slices of bread into a birthday cake, or Sid's mother desperately talking in English with that faint hope that someday she can become his...friend.

That generation gap and familial conflict between parents and youngsters of the current generation is handled by the director with some finesse. Small roles, but notice the pain that comes through when Anupam Kher and Supriya Pathak react to Sid's failing at college.

Or that scene where Sid's pizza bill is paid by someone who hates him at college, only for him to discover how he usurped her merit seat thanks to daddy dear's influence.

Artfully done and crafted with realism, Wake Up Sid is a reflection of today's society, at least part of it if not the whole.

The only issue is that while its plot is predictable, it looks repackaged. It's the script's sensitivity that saves the film. For instance, Sid has to land in a magazine conveniently, just as Aisha has. Branding of products has been done cleverly and taken advantage of. You are not spared those bright colours that make up for a magazine office, despite their giving that real feel to the place.

Wish the complexities and older woman-younger guy came through better. Effort has been made. Many scenes bring through some of them to fore too, primarily through Konkana's brilliance. But what about those self-doubts that plague one's mind during such attraction? And that million dollar question: Will it work?

Nevertheless, its a film worth the money you pay.

Green on my shoe

2009-10-07T13:20:00.003+05:30

Jungle delights: A grasshopper on my shoe! Golden moments that make for a trek!
Picture Courtesy: C Dhinesh Kumar
Location: Naneghat, off Mumbai

My bookshelf dream comes true

2009-10-06T23:23:00.002+05:30

On my recent return from a Bangalore trip, D, my husband closed my eyes and brought me to my home studio.

Surprise. A bookshelf I had been craving for and dreaming of since our wedding. Part closed in glass and rest of it completely shut. Neat. It can hold most of my books now. And some of those truckloads of files in the name of story research too. A good second hand deal, D loves it so much that he would not want to resell it anytime in future...even if we shifted out!

This bookshelf strangely brings me some hope! Things we dream of may come true after all! Am inching closer to remove tackiness from my home office, home studio, home study...whatever you call it.

Weekend whizzed by

2009-10-05T17:53:00.004+05:30

Two cakes. Two candles. A surprise.

A movie. Some pasta. Yummmm...!

Two hours at the parlour.

A friend comes calling. Another, we head off to meet.
Coffee. Banter. Bombay rain.

A bit of nostalgia. Introspection. Hmmm...
My birthday weekend... just flew by.

Bye Allen

2009-10-02T17:07:00.004+05:30

Early July: Times of India Bangalore office internship. Metro Desk, said the Resident Editor. And I walked out scared on those neat white tiles, strutted past corporate cubicles spreading away left and right. I had seen this Metro desk chief before! College Fest. A journalism veteran called him cynical for his blunt views on market vs journalism.

A few days on at this reporters' corner: A better dressed and westernised fellow intern found favour with this man over me - the khadi-clad bore. Am I doomed? I wondered. Playing musical chairs to grab reporters' PCs . Stuck to keying in City Scan and events column. Promoted to typing the City Briefs at times!

Come Sunday: a neglect assignment. Which overstressed journo would want to wake up early on a Sunday, rush to Press Club for an outdoor story plant pick -up? But for me, finally there was a story to do! Not typing in Events!

Vipassana meditation camp. That was the story. Ten days of silence at a outside Bangalore on Kanakapura Road! We were there on the final day for some publicity to that `cause'.

Two days later, chief quick scanned my finished story on the PC, his signature wrist holding face style. Will it get past chief at all! Wondered a battered me.

`Who wrote this?' asked Mr Chief, aloud and rather curiously.

`It was me.' I hid back into the borrowed cubicle.

`It's good dear! Was it really you?'

`Yeah. We wrote it!' Co-Byline justice! He knew this story was mine. Thank God! `So you discovered me!' I muttered to myself.

By now in my head, he came to personify all of Bangalore journalism. Flamboyant. That swagger stood out. He was all over the place, and at all times of the day! As if he lived at the TOI office! And how he wore his heart up his sleeve! Colleagues calming him down when he yelled and shouted expletives or fought his seniors for his team! How he teased that sub-editor with her `flying nest -like' hair so openly she gave him a smirk and escaped into those back desks! Or pushed interns all over the city to write on and do stories without fear!

My `downmarket' dress sense obviously kept this celebrity scribe off! Vipassana meditation story won him over. `It's good!' came singing into my years thrice over the next hour! And it got published the following Sunday. I got a couple of bylines more, but this one gave me that `arrived' feel so much! He sure had that eye for quality!

A bunch of us interns went out for coffee and lunch with him at eateries outside S & B towers. Arguments over issues, his being called names by rivals, those marketing strategies of Times he loyally defended, or his arguing against my joining dream college - Asian College! I differed with him a great deal on women turning glamour dolls to sell newspapers. Or about why he was being so sexist. But I was glad it did not invite vengeance. He seemed to take it all rather playfully. He was not idealist material. A fun-lover who egged you with pep-talk, he was no doubt.

Through years that followed, I've heard many adjectives and anecdotes around this popular boss. From his well-wishers and detractors alike. Flamboyant - the must word. Amusing. `Colour' - a convenient label by a fellow political correspondent. Colour meant he and his stories were colourful!

I was not surprised either, that during his tough times and publication changes later, he did not recognise me when he walked into Express Library on some reference work. Reporters rarely remember interns. Once he remembered, he chatted away. And hinted at how he felt victimised by the paper he lived for.

Am sure he forgot me and my colleague who saw him off from our Reporter's Desk aisle soon after he left. Something in the way he spoke suggested, he wanted peace.

How does one react when those letters RIP stare out against his name on Facebook? It can't be. He is not old! Is it a prank? Googling confirmed it. Senior Journalist Allen Mendonca Dead. Age 49.

Obits have flown back and forth on blogs last four days. Newspapers reluctantly carried quickie obits too. His wife reportedly sounded out to his detractors that they did not break his spirit. He died peacefully, in sleep. How we die often defines how we've lived!

Bye Allen. You may not have known me. I have not subscribed to you or your style always. A picture pinned on your cubicle wall then sums up my best memory of you though. Ale splashing out of a wine glass and you revelling in it. The now defunct fortnightly Bangalore magazine Family had carried those pics. You loved that picture. Me will remember you best from that picture.

Some Ganesha thoughts

2009-08-29T00:02:00.004+05:30

If there are less number of words on this screen, it is because there is more travel on my platter. And hundreds of words too.

Here is some food for thought. Global leaders have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars and other currencies in talking, debating and fighting climate change, ecological disasters and the like. Recession as the buzzword has not begun to cease in public consciousness too. Ditto with the Swine Flu fear.

We humans are strange creatures though. Speaking of the socio-religious and cultural context of Mumbai, when the need of the hour is to ensure minimal damage through our religious festivals, talk of simplicity in celebration and profoundness in thought, why are big newspapers still favouring big Ganesha idols and giving away prizers for the grandest of them all?

Why are they so silent about the damage that painted idols cause to water when you immerse the idols?

SOME RELIEF:

A trip down to Gokuldham the day before Ganesh Chaturthi was a mess. Garlands of Rs 15 near the Gokuldham Temple suddenly costed Rs 70! Getting mango leaves was out of question. And none of the idol stores stocked paint-free Ganeshas.

A colleague from Bangalore sculpted her own Ganesha in clay, minus any paint. A neighbour too did something similar. Her husband picked up some clay from near Powai Lake, and the family took an hour to give the clay its Ganesha. As for me, I decorated the Ganesha idol I always worship at home, and used the traditional turmeric-Ganesha on a beetle leaf for my pooja.

Manjal Puzhaiyar (Tamil), or Pasupu Vighneswarudu is a tiny hill or cone you make with turmeric paste over a beetle leaf and beautify with a kumkum dot. It is a practice followed in most festivals down South, where Ganesha is worshipped before we offer prayers to other Gods.

Picture: Ganesha in rice. Courtesy: www.e-coexist.com

Swayamvar!

2009-07-19T01:44:00.000+05:30

Rakhi's groomhunt is the most watched among TV shows today. Most of us love to loathe the scripted facade. We love to watch it nevertheless.

Loads have been written since it started airing. It lacks the originality of dating shows of US and UK. It gives too much importance to the `goody' bride that Rakhi wants to be. It mocks at relationships in the sense that Rakhi would not think twice about blaming her mother publicly for her break-up with a boyfriend.

Too much colour, hype and pancake make-up.

Come to think of it though, who has the courage that this loud-mouthed item girl displayed by daring to call a Swayamvar? What's the possible difference between her and a first family film couple selling the rights of publishing pictures from their so-called private marriage to a magazine?

In all that she has displayed in her misuse of media, Rakhi is that vulnerable girl screaming from rooftops for love and respect. In her loud voice lies the deep insecurity that she will not speak about. Unfortunately, our judgemental society guided by the male psyche and diktats of chastity would not like it when a girl talks too loud.

My husband hates the show. I have no love for Rakhi either. But I love her courage, and her efforts through the process, irrespective of whether she marries one of those guys or not.

Guess what? I googled Swayamvar, and the only mention of it is from mythology in wikipedia, besides matrimonial websites.

Back in my newspaper daily days, swayamvar meant matrimonial meets that ended up being classist and casteist advertisements more than the girl's choice.

Delights of a short short story

2009-07-18T00:59:00.002+05:30

One of the delights in my just done writing course was a short short story that we students got to read.

It was Hemingway's famous six word story.
For those who never heard of it, here it is:

`For Sale: Baby Shoes, never worn.'

There is so much in these six words! A beginning, a process, an end!
It has philosophy, it has simplicity, and yet is such an intense story! Here is what I jotted down as part of the assignment, though it came from my heart!

` It evokes feelings of sympathy. It triggers thought about the protagonists: the parents who are obviously poor, of a dead baby, of a tragedy and grief that comes with it. It is layered. There are aspects of philosophy being explored too. For instance, if there are three sets of words, For Sale indicates profit, selfishness, business, desperation. Baby shoes, the very thought of these brings to mind, innocence, pure joy, selflessness and beauty. The third set speaks of death, futility of selfishness and the end that is painful.'

This one is what is called Flash fiction these days, although not many have been successful at less-word big stories. Hoping to read more good fiction in the coming days.

Parched in the flood

2009-07-15T15:44:00.002+05:30

The good news. My neighbourhood waterfall that does not exist throughout the year came alive a few days back, and looks lovely now.

The great news. It's raining. It's lashing the city. There's water everywhere. Over the last few weeks, we've seen deluge twice.

The funny, ironical, yet real news: No water at home. Mumbai's keepers have shut one of the four water-supply pipelines that quench the city's thirst. So while it rains in plenty, my taps have run dry since 10 am.

Outside my window, I can still hear the roar of fresh water gushing down from a pipe into the storm-water drain below. Fresh clean water from the monsoon green hills.

The tragedy: This water goes waste. It goes into the drains, probably to join sewage downstream. It is not treated for domestic use. It is not stored for future use. It is looked at like one would look at drain water.

This morning, I was shocked to find my tap going dry an hour in advance. After the clamour to store every drop of water I could manage, I chanced by those headlines that glared about misuse of Mumbai's water by builders. And these builders get away while the municipal corporation says `it is difficult' to rein them in!

Ever since I set foot in Mumbai, I have not once heard the words Rain Water Harvesting. Harvesting water is more a rage in other cities. No one thought yet that Mumbai's mountainous water needs need to be addressed locally too - by the housing societies, by the builders, developers, by the municipal corporation.

I rave and rant. I crib. The water below my apartment window continues to go waste.

Am back for good!

2009-07-14T00:31:00.002+05:30

After six weeks of rigorous work, am back at blogging again. I was away from writing for this blog, but not really away from doing some work on it. In the last few weeks, have looked up hundreds of templates to improvise the design, and settled for the one I have just put up.

Looking for feedback from those of you following it. In the meanwhile, have done a course on writing.

First drops of Monsoon...relief? hope?

2009-05-21T02:45:00.003+05:30

What's the exact feeling you get when you spend the first half of the day dejected, open the window shutter and screens in the evening to find a lovely golden glow outside! Not the gold of your daily sunset, but that which bathes the buildings, roads and trees under a dark and cloudy sky.

Ready for rain! Relief! Something I long for after these months of sweltering heat and sweat. Something that makes me leave the windows open in spite of mosquito fear, and smell the air...rain smells!

It drizzled. Heavily. And then soberly. But it drizzled yes, sweeping the cemented and asphalted earth with its wet warmth.

It's against poetic norms, but the cloudy gloom that set in this evening actually lifted my spirits a bit. For, it brought in life....fresh smells. A fresh season. Those precious new moments when I watch the new mother cuddle up her baby at the window and talk to it!

Never mind those Met warnings that splashed the tabloid front page.

I long for the thunder. Showers...for that drench in unprocessed water straight from heavens, that feels a lot cleaner than chlorinated tap water.

Summer's been hectic. Summer brought in togetherness. It brought in sorrow too. But rains are what nurture the earth. Me the invisible speck included.

Word Block again!

2009-05-21T02:18:00.003+05:30

At times one sits in front of the PC, stares blankly into the blog screen, wondering what to write. And cannot move a word!

Word block at it again! Have tried hard to pen in a few words, pound the keyboard with nonsense at least. And failed at it.

Cannot quite figure out where it began. Was it the hectic summer cleaning before arrival of guests? Was it the belated news of the death of a close friend? Anger that I was not around for him in those final months? Disgusted I could not make it to the funeral too? Or cerebral fatigue?

For those who're following my blog regularly, apologies. Am planning to put in some energy in the blog's design, and working at it. Hopefully something should emerge soon.

Non-plastic Love!

2009-04-29T14:24:00.000+05:30

Yesterday, I just veered off from the PC at about 7 pm...with tired eyes that pained after the day's work...and still two hours of work left, to open the door when the doorbell rang.

My husband had arrived. Unusual for him to come this early! He was carrying a showbox in one hand, and something else in the other hand.

A minute or two after the casual chat, he pulled out and gave me what was in his other hand, tucked away in a packet. My eyes lit up when I saw what he brought, besides the evening snack of dhoklas and vada pav. A little bunch of roses: a mini-bouquet rather!

He does surprise me with roses once in a while, but this one was special! For, the roses were not wrapped in plastic sheets and tied up with another plastic piece called the ribbon, but wrapped lovingly in a large leaf shaped just like a bouquet. And they were tied up with a piece of cotton thread!

So lovely, yet so meaningful! Imagine if a rose seller could be so thoughtful and innovative in selling his in a leaf rather than plastic! Cost effective. Yet expressive!

Sigh!

2009-04-29T09:17:00.004+05:30

When you watch the brilliance of the sky, those lovely orange and pink hues checker out on the canvas, and that fire ball sink down as the clock strikes 18.48 hours...not in the middle of hills, or even a sillouette of trees, but these protruding towers, in the name of housing. It's how sunsets look when I crane my neck out of my window. For Mumbaikars who cannot find their handful of sky when they look up, this is heaven!

Ingenuity

2009-04-27T23:16:00.000+05:30

Is when a 10 year old comes up with a brain wave. Picking up an old edition of Champak, the children's magazine, she comes across this game where a team must rescue passengers from a ship.

Bad luck! We need a set of dice and we do not have any. There is no way one can play the game without it.

The magazine has listed its own innovative way of using its pages blindly. It asked the reader to close her or his eyes and open a page. The page number would be the dice score!

For me, it was rather cumbersome, though I liked the thought behind it. What my niece, the girl in question did, baffled me though.

She coolly picked up a cuboidal eraser that was easy to throw, wrote down numbers on each of its faces and began the game! At times, children show a far better common sense than we adults with our boxed up thinking.

Whack!

2009-04-27T15:45:00.004+05:30

Seen on the pavement of Western Express Highway's Goregaon stretch, and under its Dindoshi flyover: a bunch of cats, each sitting a feet apart and nearly forming an invisible quadrangle, relishing a fish each. A few fish are thrown in the centre.

The spot is hardly a some distance away from where the highway turns into Aarey Road. And this stretch has some anxillary shops supplying shooting material to Film City studios nearby, some of the shelters here are homes too.

All the felines are burly, look fed well and have this `don't mess with me' air about them while licking the fish.

A little dog tries to sneak in for its share, without attacking the cats. And lo! One of those cats actually lifts its leg and hits at the dog thrice. Not wanting to mess up with this bunch further, the mongrel runs away. Maybe flight of fright too!

Reminds you of those videos you watch on Animal Planet , isn't it?

Image politics and the child fleeing Mumbai

2009-04-26T23:44:00.005+05:30

A family I have known through my cousin's wife, is shifting base from Mumbai to Bangalore. At first I thought it was due to professional reasons. The family, wife, husband and their daughter, are well-off at Mumbai and he runs a business with great turnovers.

Considering people love to live in Mumbai if they are the `moneyed' type, I was rather curious thought not entirely surprised. The husband, has his company offices at Mumbai and Bangalore, and shuttles between the two cities rather frequently. He spends half a month in one city and the other half in another city, not to forget the trips to his office in the US of A once a while.

The girl, in her mid-schooling years, is mature for her age and has some achievements to her credit. And the wife, is a happy housewife.

What my cousin's wife just revealed has baffled me. The family is shifting base to Bangalore, solely for the daughter's sake. Culture clash.

For once, not language as a direct tool of oppression and isolation, but inflicting of a different culture and something I feel is racism in its own subtle way.

The child misses her father because of his frequent business trips and longs for his physical presence, in a way, the security he provides. What's hurt her tender mind all the more, is that she has no friends.

Apparently, she told her aunt, that her classmates refuse to be friends with her if she wears a bindi. I have heard about the discrimination based on wearing that red mark on the forehead several times. I have also felt that it is not something that needs to be imposed on children, anyone for that matter. But that we as a society have created a sense of isolation for the little child, on the basis of her traditional values!

She mentioned to her aunt, that her classmates were corrupt, that she hardly has friends because she learns Bharatnatyam, the classical Indian dance form and not the Hindi film numbers that they are taught in their dance classes. With a sufficiently southern upbringing, it is understandable that she was conditioned to learn a classical Indian dance form, and she loves it too.

She performs at various functions, places and even wins accolades for them. Sadly, her neighbourhood, her peers and her school teachers refuse to understand this. Obviously, if they had, they would have taught the children to respect the differences.

The trouble: anything classical is looked down upon in this city, unlike in the South, particularly Chennai, where girls are taught classical art forms with ease.

For these reasons and more, her family too is not ease with Mumbai, despite living in a neighbourhood with many South Indians.

The child's plight reminds me of those little remarks I hear from my neighbours' children, who have become conditioned to believe that a pavadai and blouse are clothes that are blasphemous to their peers, and so, are somehow `bad' to be worn. They would rather wear western clothes that will keep them their friends. They would rather sport gadgets that will make them a favourite among their snobbish lot of friends!

For once, I have had to rethink my own views about tradition. I have always believed tradition should not be inflicted, that conventions should not be imposed. The bindi bit for instance - As a teenager, I had picked up a fight with my friends when they removed the sticker bindi from my forehead once. I thought I had lost something big, for I had to answer my mother for it after college hours. Years later, I began to discard it, in protest, or rather because I hated something of the sort being inflicted on me as a person.

Should I rather go back to wearing it with a vengeance now? Considering there is so much politics of imagery dictating our children's thoughts against tradition?

Today, I find myself at the other end of the argument, where what is perceived as `modern' by the society so influenced by `Bollywoodised' TV shows, inundation of films and an misconstrued influences of the West. Somehow we seem to pick up the wrong lessons from the West.

For, most Western TV shows I watch give me the feeling that family values and traditions are not after all taboo in the West, where homemakers are not exactly looked down upon, and where tradition is still something many people hold on to.

I advocate modernism in thought rather fiercely. But racism in the name of modernism? A strict no. We cannot discriminate someone who hails from a region, practises traditional art forms of that region or thinks differently only because we as a city culture, are obsessed with anything film-based.

What causes such scorn against tradition? Is it just imposition, that my generation went through in its growing up years, or is it the mindless aspirational imagery laid out by our media monopolies in the name of entertainment? When serials are nothing but repackaged film storylines, replete with pancake make-up, younger and sexy looking middle-aged mothers and films cannot be complete without that sculpted-body heroines again oozing oomph, how can one expect children not to be influenced by such imagery? Or get affected by it?

Is splashing a serial with fancy work sarees and a film with item numbers going to help our next generation in any way?

And how can one ignore the fact that if you hail from the South and have learnt values differently, you are still an Indian? The little child's hurt shows me that Indianness is being taught lesser and lesser in our schools, while class based discrimination is ground into children's minds rather effortlessly.

FIR and the rape victim

2009-04-24T15:42:00.004+05:30

A lot is being said and debated about the rape case involving a student of Tata Institute of Social Sciences, who was assaulted by her own peers.

A few things disgust me about the way papers reported the whole episode, and continue to report it.

Firstly, is a newspaper God? If not, why does it play like one? The victim, irrespective of her nationality, gave details of the most horrible thing that could have happened to her, to the police, in due faith. Not just that, she gave the details for the sake of truth, so that she could get justice. For a daily newspaper that found those details sensational, it only proved convenient to publish them - the entire FIR, in graphic detail! It is a First Information Report that is a mandatory document. At the moment, it is a public document on the basis of which crime correspondents write their news reports.

Instead, a newspaper went ahead and published it in its Page Two, with all insensitivity possible.

Has media lost its sensitivity to a rape victim's plight? Why do newspapers have to treat rape victims as sex objects whose story they can repeat and ramble off in graphic detail? So that they can sell a few thousand copies more?

I am sure even right-thinking men did not approve of such mindless display that a newspaper gave the FIR, with not as much as a word of approval from the victim. If the girl's friends turned beasts for a night of their animal fun, the newspaper was no less, in using her suffering for its own pages.

I thought that today's readers, numbed by sensationalism in TV channels and to an extent, papers too, would have been quiet about it. Thank God, for their response. For, the paper, had to publish its stand alongside some letters, the following day. The sad truth is, the paper's three line explanation showed it still feels justified in publishing the report the way it did.

As if to pepper the pscyhological trauma, another paper went ahead and published an anonymous quote from forensic experts, that the victim had consumed drugs on that night. A third newspaper had the audacity to publish a headline where the accused Vinamra Soni asked whe the victim was out with six people that night. And published in graphic detail, the version of the accused in the anticipatory bail application.

So, what was the paper trying to tell me, the reader? That the victim asked for it? That she should not have gone out to that joint or pub with those guys? That she was merely available?
Agreed that the accused should not have been let off hook and that the newspapers published their pictures, but by merely with-holding the victim's name and publishing everything else about her, the media is not doing her a favour.

I will not be surprised, if sometime in future, despite all this hype around the case, the accused get let off the hook. After all, we live in a society where not just aspiring film actresses, but even rape victims, are objects of desire!

Lonely or alone?

2009-04-22T23:50:00.004+05:30

Is when a bird perches itself on top of a tree branch, and searches, and searches...for its ilk. It squeals. It fixes its eyes on the horizon...but no sign of its flock. For a positive thinker, it is just about a living being enjoying its tranquility and some time for ...itself.

Found this bird not far from my home, cannot make out if it is a cuckoo or a crow, but surely, it was desperate for its companions when my family and I found it there!

In the background is the stretch of Aarey Colony near my home, and the clearing exactly behind the dried tree is where sets get made and broken, for serials and films. Not too visible in the picture is the road before the clearing, that leads to Film City Studios. The settlements are where some residents of Aarey Colony live. Some of them farm. Others work at the studios. Still others rear livestock.

Relief

2009-04-21T22:06:00.003+05:30

Is when I hear the tap running after a long dry day! Music to ears.

For the last two weeks, it's been about waiting for that stroke of 6 pm on the clock and keeping the buckets, vessels, just about everything to store that extra drop of water.

All because someone forgot to plug holes in the pipeline that supplies water to these suburbs. Criminal. Wish such crimes went punished severely.

Thankfully, water supply has resumed, if not completely, at least in phases. Am hoping the pipeline actually got repaired.

``This should happen once in a while. We tend to take water for granted otherwise,'' remarked my husband.

My opinion: why should we wait for a scarcity situation to realise that water is precious? Why can the human brain not work a little and think of ways to store it locally...guess these wishes would just go on.

Smiles

2009-04-17T13:05:00.004+05:30

Is when a man in his thirties, wearing shorts, licks an ice-cream while he walks on a quiet road, post dinner. So child-like and full of relish!

Walking behind him is a foot and a half high toddler, hands clutched behind, chest bloated, and nose up in the air. The little one walks with a gait so bossy that it's a treat to watch him, in contrast with his ice-cream lover dad walk a few steps ahead. The son is watchful of the surroundings, almost like he is guarding his dad, while the dad...is not lifting his eyes from the biscuit-cone!

My cousin, hubby and me were amused watching the two at Pimpri-Chinchwad area in Pune.

What can be more shameful?

2009-04-15T15:38:00.003+05:30

We want Olympic Champions, but we will not honour them. We want sportstars, but cannot make our blind eyes wander beyond cricket. We want sportsmen to put in their best in feats, but also want them to bear the humiliation of begging for sponsorship, not just work at that elusive medal.

We've had our Abhinav Bindra and a handful of others who made it despite apathy. Prem Kadam, a Dadar based powerlifter's story is moving. His mother had to sell what women like her would hold on to for dear life - the mangalsutra , so that he could participate in a powerlifting contest. Who is responsible? His peers? The government so busy in elections that it cannot spare a thought for a sports guy? Or us among the masses who can worship cricketers but treat the others among the sports elite like dirt?

Here is the link from Midday

Bizarre

2009-04-15T12:32:00.003+05:30

Is when I walk into the rest room during a movie break at one of the supposedly decent multiplexes, and open the toilet door. Above the flush of the otherwise normal toilet seat is an ad. Yeah! An advertisement. As if it is not enough that you are irked by an ad in the toilet, it says `Zapak.com'...Easy Downloads', with an arrow point downward, at the toilet seat. Can these overzealous ad-makers not spare cinema toilets at least!

Am least interested in browsing that website now. My husband thinks differently. `Creative, innovative...' he rattles on. Sigh!

Dry taps....sigh

2009-04-14T19:16:00.000+05:30

This morning, our home taps went dry. Actually they went dry last night. We managed to store some precious water when they started working again.

The colony I live in, is supposed to be the least problematic in terms of water supply. And lo! It hit us too! But I must say, the writing was always on the wall, only, people out here did not read it enough.

For state board built housing colony, one of the easiest things that could have helped solve water troubles out here was - installing rainwater harvesting system, as also solar heating devices. The housing board, for all you know, would've passed the buck to the housing society that would eventually take charge.

And such things are last on the mindscape of a housing society. Membership money is usually spent on community religious events, prayers and on other amenities like play equipment for children, seating area, etc.

My neighbours tell me that the current scarcity trouble it is because of a pipeline burst. If so, it is criminal damage to not just water and resources, but manpower and money too.

If only rainwater harvesting was as important as the 10th standard certificate!

Sun of Shiva

2009-04-14T17:16:00.004+05:30

Sunsets are always fascinating. If you've managed a shot of this sort from a moving train, sunset can feel divine too. Here is the silhouette of a Lord Shiva idol on the banks of Godavari river, in Rajahmundry, against the lovely backdrop of a setting sun. I like this picture because it happened on a special day - Christmas! Got this picture on the way to Vishakhapatnam...

That holiday feeling...

2009-04-13T14:08:00.003+05:30

It's been a while since I posted. Word block for no major reason. Simply that I sit in front of the PC monitor and go blank! Strange that when I am away, blogging ideas race in my head at the speed of Rajdhani Express.

After those dull and monotonous week-days, the weekend was a refreshing break. Not that I got to take away to a hill station, but a quick trip to the nearest city was a blessing in itself.

Excuse: visiting my cousin at Pune. After a whole evening of what to tuck away, trash away, and take along before our Friday morning trip, I slept exhausted. But did not get prepared yet for what was in store the following morning.

For all the speed with which we cleaned up my place, locked and stashed away necessities, closed the windows tight and shut the doors, we did make it on time to catch our bus. Only, the bus, that should have taken about three hours and a half to reach Pune, took over five hours! Imagine boarding a bus at 9 am, hoping to hit the destination by lunch time, dream of a sumptuous lunch by 1 pm...and sleep off in the bus...only to find that you haven't as much as got out of the city by 11.30 am! We did reach Pune, by 2 pm.

Hunger did not put us off as much as the fact that from the place we alighted, his home was a neat 40 minutes away in the reverse direction. We could not have got off en route and made it there though. Nigdi, where he lives, is about 25 kms from Pune city and much off the Mumbai-Pune Expressway.

We did manage to make something and eat, but fell asleep soon, the heat getting to us. In the evening, we managed a Tamil movie, something my Chennai-bred cousin misses badly in that city. Nigdi, unlike the Pune city, in the Pimpri-Chinchwad area, is such a far cry from the dry polluted air of the plateau city!

Superbly laid wide roads, tree laden avenues, hardly any traffic, patches of green sufficiently interspersing housing colonies, and more importantly, no pollution. For us Mumbaikars used to crowds and crowds everywhere, crowds of people, of buildings, of cars, and noise, this was such a welcome break!

The only put-off was scarce public transport options. Even auto-rickshaws are hard to find, depending on the time of the day.

The result: my cousin's two-wheeler came in handy for three of us, for many trips nearby. The last time I ever remember riding `tribles' on a two-wheeler was many years ago, from my daily newspaper office, to a colleague's wedding venue.

Heat did force my husband, cousin and me to stay indoors most part of the day. But when there's nothing else to do, we humans know how to kill time - by chatting up each other! Cooking, chatting, cooking, cleaning, cooking, travelling...

A water-melon meal session, some new dishes exchanged in the kitchen, relishing acquired culinary skills of my bachelor cousin, figuring out how to cook in utensil recession, how to manage yoghurt in the absence of a fridge, and how to make buttermilk out of it when you've nothing to beat it with...

How about a tasty night meal of the dosa at a Tamil family run eat-out! Not the mutated fast-food variety of masala dosa that the cartman near Goregaon railway station dabs grated beets and carrot into with chutney powder, rolls and cuts into so you could finish it in two minutes with a fork. But that regular dosa spread out like paper on your plate, so golden in colour that it melts in your mouth! And cocunut chutney tastes real! Unlike the stale cups of coconut paste one gets in the name of chutney out here in Mumbai! Probably Mumbai has its hide-outs with relishing South-Indian food too! But this one was yummy!

Parts of Pune reminded me of Bangalore's Malleshwaram, Jayanagar and J P Nagar, while some parts of it were a picture straight out of Chennai's suburbs. At other times, I felt I was at South Delhi...GK! Just as I was going on and on about this, my husband called it full-stop. ``Enjoy the city as it is, not as it reminds you!'' Hmmm! Cannot quite agree. Methinks nostalgia has its own value!

The icing on the cake was a trip to town, to meet a schoolmate I had not met up with after year 92', a neat 17 years! For the last few years, we did exchange mails through the class e-group and networking sites, but to meet up with her was so delightful!

In the little time we had, first at a book store and a short while at a restaurant, we managed to catch up with some old times. Only wish I had made it earlier in the day to the city. Did not quite expect a trip to town to be as long as in Mumbai - one and half hours.

Such delays are times when one wishes for a four wheeler, only to rebut it quickly! After all, a four wheeler for two people makes no sense in these times of global warming!

Soon it was Sunday afternoon. Time to start to Mumbai! Terrible! Again, a two-wheeler riding three full-grown adults along the empty roads, even fields and villages (on the brink of getting urbanised)...to the highway. And the bus ride back home!

At times one wishes holidays never end! That holiday feeling...stick on longer please!

Deja Vu

2009-03-29T23:59:00.001+05:30

Exotic locale? Countryside sea? Nay. It's off the city `local' terminus - Churchgate. Marine Drive. And shot from the balcony of a sea-side flat. Guess the time? Certainly not the afternoon sun. At 6 pm, the sun's still away from sinking into sea. Isn't it as beautiful as sunset?

Lost in the din: A tale of 12 annas

2009-03-29T20:12:00.002+05:30

(not a review)

Barah Aana. 12 annas. Seventy-five paise. That word is so lost in oblivion...gone from public usage! It took a film-maker to revive the words so prevalent just two decades back.

Barah Aana, the movie is a metaphor of those lost words, of lost people whose labour was given its due, of lost ethics too, in a sense.

In the din of the many releases hitting cinemas - Aloo Chaat, Firaaq, Confessions of a Shopaholic, Dhoondte Reh Jaaoge, Gulaal ...an already running Little Zizou, one jostling over the other at the theatres, even pushing others out, this film simply got lost. No surprise that our Sunday morning dash to the multiplex showed us through a hall filled to less than half its seating capacity. After all, how would 12 annas find takers when despite recession, big money is what rules the mass cinema-goer mindscape!

When the intermission lights were switched on, my husband complained, ``Those d... critics. Just because it is a low-budget flick, they give it two stars. All hung up on money...'' There was some truth to what he said. I checked the papers for the reviews too. Poor ratings. But a hunch told me I would not be disappointed. So three of us who made it to the multiplex dunked Aloo Chaat for this one.

It was touted a comedy, while it is not. It does have humour. It lacked cameo-studded aura of Luck By Chance. But it does to death those million global yells that our film-makers cannot entertain using some realism. A tight narrative. Amazing detail. A simple story. And that understated humour that hits you hard. And makes you gulp you have been guilty of insulting those below you in status or class.

Anger and revolt, vulnerability to crime, an urgency to grab it and make it big - they wait to explode someday among the humiliated masses. Barah Aana is an indication of just that.

The film is worth watching, for the sheer acting brilliance in acting, by not just Naseeruddin Shah, but Vijay Raaz, Arjun Mathur, and every other member of the ensemble cast.

Matching Naseeruddin Shah is no easy a task. But in some scenes, you gape as Vijay Raaz in suffering watchman role moves you with ease.

The film deals with that sense of humiliation and injustice eating away those at the receiving end of the money game - those living in slums, those managing to sleep in dimly lit cement boxes in the name of rooms. On the other hand, is the all pervasive corruption aided by the well-to-do, which can produce the strangest of paradoxes.

Barah Aana's focus is on three characters - a watchman, a chaffeur, and a cafe waiter, all wrestling the humiliation of class troubles. Ever watched a watchman caught in the ego-tussle and double-games of members in a housing society? Swallow a lump in your throat for that all-familiar scene, that ends up subtly victimising the securityman who should be an ideal spectator.

An ambitious waiter who desperately to woo a foreigner girl, but cannot speak English. Sit easy on the multiplex cushion till the waiter complains to his driver friend, that multiplexes charge 10 times more for basic food. Or watch that expression change when a boisterous memsaab stabs her chaffeur with her razor sharp insults. The will-never-speak driver who speaks volumes with his silence and expressions. Naseeruddin Shah can take over an entire scene with his mere expressions. By the time he actually speaks in this movie, you've given up on him only to sit up when he does.

A thin line is what keeps the lower middle-classes and the poor from revolting. From committing crimes against their oppressors. From hitting out at their own employers. What happens when one of them crosses that line, quite by chance at that? No cinematic underworld shoot-outs, but mere `affordable' extortion.

What happens when for all his honesty and perseverance, a watchman is denied money that he needs to send for his ailing child's treatment? Watch him knock at the doors of every home in his housing society, and get the usual excuses - lame and lacking creativity. And when he gets money for an unintended kidnap, the dramatic shift in his gait. After all, even an accidental abduction can fetch you money that you can send home to your wife in the village!

If it does take care of your needs for a while. So be it. The film ends with neither the watchman who entices winning the game, nor the lovelorn waiter. The driver wins it, despite being caught in the act - of claiming ransom for abducting his employer's foul-mouthed wife. Why? Because the man is `dead' as per government records. If a death certificate can ruin a living citizen's life, it can help him too!

So you can laugh it aloud when in the last scene, Vijay Raaz in all awe, asks his driver friend how much he can buy a death certificate for. His own death certificate that is.

Among the ironies

2009-03-24T19:03:00.004+05:30

Googling about Shirdi's inter-faith bit made me chance upon the following piece from a 2006 blog. A pity I did not read it before I made the Shirdi trip. It does reflect what made me uncomfortable about the increasing Hindu dominance of the shrine meant for inter-faith worship.

Here goes the piece from Sulekha blogs, by Journoshiv:

A stone’s throw from the bustling shrine of Sai Baba in Shirdi, 200 km from Mumbai, priceless chronicles detailing the life and sayings of the Sufi saint are crumbling to bits.

More than 200 pages of hand-written manuscripts written by Haji Abdul Baba between 1895 and 1918 -- the year Sai Baba passed away -- are lying at his former cottage which has been turned into a shrine by his descendants.

“Abdul Baba used to write down the utterances of Sai Baba that dealt with the unity of the Hindu and Muslim faiths,” says his grandson Hameed who manages the shrine. The text of Abdul Baba’s manuscripts draws parallels between the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad and the Hindu legends associated with Vishnu, Shiva and Brahma.

Sai Baba’s discourses, as chronicled by Abdul Baba, also dealt with the prevalent Sufi traditions of the time, in parts of Deccan Maharashtra and northern India. According to Hameed, his ancestor’s notes are a blend of Deccani Urdu and the now-extinct Modi script that was widely used in Maharashtra until the mid-1950s.

With little assistance from the Shirdi Sansthan, Maharashtra’s richest shrine, which has annual revenues touching Rs 100 crore, Hameed has been forced to dump the precious notes into a cupboard along with the tattered effects of Abdul Baba. “It would help if the authorities helped preserve these documents,” he says, showing the papers encased in ordinary polythene bags.

Only a small fraction of Sai Baba’s devotees who throng the magnificent shrine next door make their way to the still-humble cottage of Abdul Baba. But Hameed dutifully allows everyone to handle the parchment and other effects of his ancestor, regardless of the resulting wear-and-tear.

The managers of the Shirdi Sansthan are disinterested in Sai Baba’s chronicles. “It is the private property of his descendants,” says Bhausaheb Watchure, government-appointed administrator of the shrine. His tone betrays his embarassment at being reminded of Baba's Muslim origins.

Hameed himself is reluctant to hand over the manuscripts to the trust, saying he is worried about their safety. “It would help if private bodies came forward to preserve these papers,” he says.

Delhi-based researcher Yoginder Sikand, who has studied the evolving worship of Sai Baba, warns that Maharashtra’s politicians who control the shrine are uncomfortable with the saint’s Muslim origins, as depicted in the chronicles. “The Sai Baba shrine is completely Brahminised and all traces of Islam are being erased from here,” Sikand says.

For instance, says Sikand, the trust has abandoned the practice, started by Sai Baba, of celebrating Moharrum along with Ram Navami. Now only Ram Navami is celebrated in Shirdi though the trust’s museum clearly documents the two festivals being celebrated together here.

As he emerges from the little mosque, 85-year-old Ghulam Habib Abdul Rehman Pathan seems an unlikely candidate to sing paeans to Bollywood. A devout Muslim sporting a luxurious beard, Pathan remembers a time when Sai Baba’s shrine at Shirdi was humbler and devotees came in tongas and bullock carts to pray.

“After Manoj Kumar made his movie on Sai Baba, life changed entirely here,” says Pathan. The cult film of the 1970s has paid rich dividends to Shirdi’s residents. With pilgrims flocking from across the country, the simple mud huts of Sai Baba’s early devotees have transformed into brick-and-mortar structures housing small businesses.

Even the dilapidated mosque that Sai Baba made his home has given way to an elaborately carved stone structure. “The mosque gradually crumbled and the place got several facelifts in subsequent decades,” recollects the wizened Pathan who, as a boy, earned Rs 1.50 a month as a watchman.

Working on a project for the National Foundation for India, I am eager to find traces of the legendary amity that saw groups of Hindus and Muslims worshipping side-by-side here. Instead, I find middle-class India swaying to tunes from tinsel town. “You will identify the Muslims in the queue as they usually donate a chador at the mazaar,” says Razzaq Shaikh, a local leader.

On the face of it there is little discernible difference between the worshippers clad uniformly in western-style shirts and trousers for the men, and churidars for the women.

Locals say, the number of Muslims showing up at Sai Baba's shrine is declining anyway. Alongside the Hinduisation of the Sai Baba cult is the growth of Islamic fundamentalism. Influenced by the Wahabbis of Saudi Arabia, the fundamentalists ridicule Muslims who follow the Sufi tradition as grave worshippers. With large-scale inflow of funds from the Middle East, backward caste Muslims too are finding regular mosques to go to instead of finding solace at the mazaars of pirs unlike in the old days.

One cannot but help notice the influence of Bollywood here as well. Images of Sai Baba touched up with Eastman Colour sell the most at wayside stalls. “Few people buy photographs of the real Sai Baba clad in tattered robes leaning against the walls of his mud hut,” admits the owner of a local photo studio. “People have forgotten that Sai Baba lived a simple life,” says Shivaji Bhaskarrao Shinde, an employee of the Shirdi Trust. His family heirlooms include coins, notes and photographs of his great grandmother Laxmibai with the Sufi saint.

Old-timers say Sai Baba used to hold langars, or community kitchens, where Hindus and Muslims were served food out of the same pot. “Baba himself used to serve non-vegetarian food to his devotees,” says Shinde. Now, the Maharashtra government has banned the sale of meat near the shrine, to the consternation of local Muslims and dalits. Even the Moharrum procession at Shirdi has been abandoned, in sharp contrast to the opulent Ram Navami celebrations, even though Sai Baba himself insisted on observing the rituals of both communities.

The Maharashtra government’s move to placate the rich mercantile Hindu castes has paid off, with the Shirdi Trust earning Rs 90 crore last year.

With money flowing in the politicians who control the Shirdi shrine come up with more grandiose ideas by the day. A proposal to replace the giant silver idol of Baba with a 250 kg gold murthi had to be shelved at the last minute because of an uproar by Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray. The trust proposed to meet the bill of Rs 20 crores from its own coffers.

As murmurs of discontent grow in Shirdi, the trust has come up with a brainwave. “We have enough land in this town to recreate a model of old Shirdi to educate and entertain pilgrims,” says Bhausaheb Watchure, the bureaucrat who manages the Shirdi Trust.

Ironies of a fakir's home: Soul Search continues

2009-03-20T14:58:00.007+05:30

It's been about a week since that whirlwind visit to Shirdi, and I cannot help but to continue wondering about those ironies thrown at my face there.

For a start, in his lifetime, Sai Baba of Shirdi would have used a countable number of clothes. He lived the life of a fakir, frugal, spiritual, and preached love.

His marble statue in the temple (originally meant to be a Krishna temple) and his grave, or samadhi sport colourful, expensive shawls and sometimes even designer cloth, that are changed a few times a day, rather, every few hours. So many, that they are sold away at a special prasad counter inside the temple.

Baba, the saint, taught that God is Supreme. That God is one. Today, he is relegated to another one of the many Gods among Hindus. His path of life was more Sufi, rooted in simplicity. The Baba image merchandising in and around the temple, and elsewhere, running into hundreds of crores defies what he stood for.

The shrine at Shirdi would, under normal circumstances, be considered a dargah. Part of worship of Baba's samadhi (tomb) is such too -- flowers sold outside the temple are mostly a bunch of roses touched up with some jasmine. Enthusing public, those in its managing trust, and others, have for most part, made worship very Hindu.

Am glad though, that the tombs of his peers, those at his service and friends, have been allowed to retain their original character.

Baba's simple living in a mosque on the throes of crumbling was meant to be an open space for all - it is popularly known today, as Dwarakamai. My parents, during our first visit to Shirdi, even spent a night there as they believed that sleeping overnight at the mosque would mean good health and bring blessings. The story dates back to a leper believed to have been cured at the place.

Today, the mosque, attached to the temple is barricaded strongly. You are allowed to meditate for a few minutes, only to be promptly chased out by the tensed ushers.

The 20th century saint spoke about universal love in his own unique sort of way. Shirdi, as a village, continued to be a hospitable one for several decades after his demise. Today, the hired security guards at the shrine are anything but polite.

It's popularly believed that a large chunk of the pilgrim crowd at Shirdi is from Andhra Pradesh. You find the Telugu speaking lot everywhere. When it came to performing Satyanarayan Vrat, that is managed by the temple, the concerned priest rattled out his instructions in chaste Hindi. The audience, was largely Telugu speaking.

When some of them requested him to repeat in another language (ideally Telugu) or go slow in instructing, he just shrugged and said `I don't know Telugu. If you cannot follow my instructions, just fold your hands (namaskar)'. Outside the temple though, you have Andhra restaurants and hotels advertised all over the place, sometimes even boards written in Telugu.

As a shared faith place thronged by Hindus and Muslims, the shrine is a target of hate. By terrorists. When those managing it in some form or the other, be it the ushers, the security men at its gates, or even employees at ticket counters act like they are the bosses at the temple, you have reason to think that the hate agenda is actually working.

My parents and I had to hitch an auto-rickshaw ride for a walking distance from a restaurant near the temple to our hotel on another street, as we were without footwear on roads that nearly burned our feet. Such a ride in Mumbai would cost us Rs 9. The guy charged us Rs 20. When I asked him why people were indulging in such day light looting, he brazenly said, ``Shirdi is all about `lootmaar'. Everyone out here loots.'' He said this, with a voice so unabashed that I was too shocked to react.

So much for the place of a saint who preached selflessness! I cannot fathom how worse it could get over my future visits to the place.

Strange are the ways of humans - examples of insolence. They can convert faith into a billion dollar industry. The mere smell of devotion gets their brains overworking with ideas to cash in on it.

Soul-searching in Sai Land

2009-03-19T17:01:00.005+05:30

Trips to Shirdi, home to the tomb of the 20th century saint Sai Baba, are always full of revelations. A quick trip with my parents and sister this week was no different.

Ironies up close and personal. Peoples and their faiths. Devotion. Life. Survival. A single trip can flash you photographic soul-search experiences in no time.

Over the next few posts, will pen in a few of these flashes in an attempt to understand their profundity.

Here is one for a start:

`Four of us heads in the aimless crowd of souls in a hurry to finish darshan, are clinging on the the steel barricade towards our right in the main hall of the shrine that houses the picture-perfect statute of Shirdi Sai Baba and his samadhi. We are careful to stick to the barricade as it is one of the queues that takes you close to the samadhi (I prefer to call it a grave, a tomb).

A little kid from somewhere behind is busy yelling out slogans - Sai Baba ki....while the crowd responds `Jai' with great enthusiasm. About 20 people in the same crowd are busy singing Sai songs. The crowd is less pushy than on the previous day. A relief.

Ahead of the barricade separating us, is the space where some of those from the darshan queue are allowed to sit for a minute. And is also the bay where the handicapped, geriatrics and their guardians are allowed entry.

An old man, with not so neat clothes is not willing to leave the area. When the security guards shove him, he flashes a piece quarter the size of a full-scape paper and shows it in the direction of Baba's samadhi. Is he demented? The thought comes naturally not just to me but other people around too. I ignore him. Only for a minute.

He picked up that paper, and with his thumb nail, began etching little curves on to the paper while holding it with his left hand. In about three minutes, he was done with making a lovely nail impression picture of Baba. Although not a perfect replica of the statue across the hall, this was worth a watch.

Facing us and the people around us, he held out the picture said, `Do you want it?' My sister held her hand out. `Take it', he said, as he gave the picture to her. `Is it nice?' he asked with a twinkle in his eye. ``It's very good,'' I said, and my family joined, gleaming. `You say it is good. At the village they kick me and throw me out for this...!'' sighed the man. He was so happy he took out another piece of paper from his pocket, and began another nail impression of Baba. This time, the paper was smaller.

My father, was only too happy to show the picture and its artist to people around. Watching him, another elderly gentleman near us was so impressed that he picked the second picture. And a few seconds later, held out a Rs 10 note to the old man. The old man was amused....`Me? I am just....I am just.....'' His gestures showed he was in no need of the money though. Some were shock amused. How can one treat him like a beggar? He was not doing it for money!

My father tried to diffuse any issue by asking the old man, to accept the money as blessings of Baba. He did, much to the consternation of my mother who said loudly, `How can he pay him? How can he fix a price for devotion?'

Some more praises followed. The old man got on to his next piece of paper. By now, another young girl `reserved' her picture.

A minute later, the queue moved. And we moved ahead.

By the time we returned to the spot on our way out, he was gone. Obviously the security guards who had let him stay for a while, decided to send him out.

Devotion. Myriad are the ways of its expression. Sometimes in the disconnected slogan yelling of a child who is doing it just for fun...sometimes at the tip of the nail of a villager's nimble hands. A villager who took the trouble of travelling all the way to the shrine, faced his own difficulties and yet, brought out his own little curios with devotion.

We did not ask the artist his name. His piece of art is a gift of God for my family now. Somewhere in their hearts, my folks think he was another manifestation of the marble saint seated across the hall.

Whatever happened to eco-friendly colours?

2009-03-12T15:28:00.002+05:30

Unlike the Ganesha festival, newspapers do not devote the space needed or the energy needed to propagate using eco-friendly colours for Holi.
It was not until the evening of Holi that I discovered the use of Tesu flowers, shown by a news channel. Here is the link from Clean India, Times of India and Hindu.About.com
Tesu flowers are said to have been used by Lord Krishna, but shop-keepers sellings it dried complained that the demand for these flowers had come down.
Ironic. Because the demand should have actually gone up.

Holi, the leveller

2009-03-12T12:36:00.003+05:30

Pristine off-white salwar kameez with a zari border that reminds one of Kerala's traditional sarees. Past its usable stage, but alright for homewear. Somehow I wanted to make it a souvenir of the day. After all, I was to play Holi after 17 whole years! And did not want to miss it where it is played the most.

My husband and I made it just in time to the Holi party in our colony quadrangle, when I was given a cold welcome -- yeah cold. The coloured water someone poured over me was really cold. Through the next couple of hours, I got drenched in two more buckets. And lots of pitchkari and water packet attacks.

Most of the people there were neighbours. Many who I did not recognise, a chunk who I did not know beyond their familiar faces. But the colour flow on each others' cheeks, hair, and dresses, was generous. Copper Sulphate blue, Green, Yellow, Red, Magenta, Purple, some colours with fragrance. And so was the dancing under make-shift showers drenching people. Upbeat Holi songs made even women hiding themselves away in their homes on other days, break into impromptu dances. For once, it did not matter which region of the country you came from, or if you even understood those Marathi song lyrics. The beats and the lilting music mattered.

My husband, who was reluctant to play Holi last year, made it a point to enjoy himself thoroughly this year. And so did neighbours, some who would never have played with colours all their lives.

If one did not know a neighbour, it wad time for introduction. If it was someone you had a fight with, it was time to forget and forgive. What makes one greet a complete stranger and even hug them during a festival like this? Is it merely the need to feel a sense of community? Or shedding of that bloated ego?

Shedding inhibitions does not come easy in these times of thirst for hate. Nor should one rely on religion to bring about that feeling of oneness. But Thank God for festivals such as this, when even religion takes a backseat in revelry.

During my college days, fellow students from the Christian Seminary Dharmaram run by Keralite priests was a favourite haunt during Onam. Why? Because the seminarians - brothers as we addressed our classmates studying for priesthood, would exhibit amazing flower rangolis during the three day gala. I have seen some of the best ever patterns made by these men in their religious service. In reality, Onam is a very Hindu festival with a legend rooted in Vishnu's dashavatara. But if adopted, it can enrich one's culture so beautifully!

I found such a fervour in Holi on Wednesday. By late evening, when my husband and I went back to the colour-floored quadrangle full of plastic litter, there were more faces we could smile at. Faces we knew no names of. Faces that smiled at us, without hesitation.
Thank God for Holi! Thank God, for those two ours of happiness. My stained salwar kameez bears testimony to it, and will, for years to come.

What does Women's day mean to me?

2009-03-08T23:32:00.004+05:30

I had quite forgotten it was Women's day today, until I checked the newspapers. And yeah, felt good to get an sms wishing me a `smiling Women's day' too.

Much as I would love to bask in the oh-so-generous 24-hour attention set aside especially for the womankind of humankind, I do not think women need the pittance of such hype surrounding a day.

Starting morning, it's been a pleasant surprise that the channels are abuzz with movies connected to women. Erin Brockovich, that I do not tire or watching, Dor, a story I love, The Nanny Diaries, Mona Lisa Smile and even The Princess' Diaries. A Perfect Sunday. A pleasant surprise too, that my husband who otherwise switches to AXN, sports, Discovery, or any channel playing action movies, was very interested in watching these movies.

The sad truth, is that I would prefer movies made from a woman's point of view, generally. Women protagonists. Women leaders who actually have a say in their own political sphere, women in the lead.

And I do not need to feel apologetic about it. In a few weeks from now, we vote our Parliament to power again. A Parliament full of people's representatives, whose men are so scared of a Women's Reservation Bill (asking for just 33.3 per cent reservation), they create a ruckus every time it comes up for discussion.

I write this even as the Filmfare show gets telecast on TV. Our women actors have a shelf life of say a few years, while Chiranjeevi, Rajanikant, Shah Rukh, Salman, Aamir and even Akshay, have been around for two decades now. Why? Because the male chauvinist mindset ruling the film industry thinks a woman is not so worth it post marriage.

True Aishwarya Rai has managed to survive beyond her marriage, but it is still to early to judge.

A quick look at the sitcom soap industry shows that even our post-Ekta Kapoor serials wreak regression in the garb of focus on women. It's a relief we at least have serials that now talk of the problems of a working woman and do not project her a vamp. Or for that matter, the promo of a new serial at least shows an expectant father celebrating his baby girl's birth. It is quite a journey from years ago, Kyunki..'s makers openly violated the PNDT Act by showing their characters opting for pre-natal sex-selection.

Ask me if the spurt of the more realistic women's soaps make me happy, and I would say no. We do not celebrate womanhood, nor do we teach our men to do it. And as long as that does not happen, a woman is always an object.

Back in my own life, I cringe when I recall those judgements made about my work, based on my plain-Jane dress sense. I feel sick when my neighbours project me as the one who `controls' her husband, simply because he cares for me when I am sick, he cooks and cleans when I am down and out, and we share a lot of household chores, mainly the kitchen.

They forget that when I am screaming and yelping in pain, I am doing it alone, in the confines of my home. No neighbours would want to spend those extra hours sitting by me, for they are busy cleaning and cooking to please their husbands who would return home at night. Probably envy too, for they've been forced into matrimony even before they finished studies. And their husbands control their lives now. My heart goes out to them.

I pushed my marriage for many many years. And got emotionally abused for it, indirectly, directly, by family, by extended family (mainly elders). Relatives who spoke to me on the phone sometimes had the audacity to tell me I was a disobedient girl who did not care for the welfare of her parents, simply because I was deciding my life.

For the last many months, my health has been such a roller-coaster ride that I have had the reason to hate the insensitivity of the medical system - where an internal sonography can be a nightmare, and yet you cannot complain. Because after all, `it is for your benefit'. Women's health is a complicated issue, but I think there is a billion-dollar sanitary napkins industry riding high on it. I have always wondered and still wonder - why are sanitary pads, that are so integral to a woman's health, month after month and consumed in millions, taxed in the first place? They are products that are necessities, yet the miserly attitude when it comes to lower pricing.

Should governments that go bonkers over condom distribution and HIV/AIDS campaign not have a heart for those millions of women who cannot afford them, and provide them with these vital needs too?

And have we not come far ahead of those days when one could not as much as talk about those `days of the month'? Yet, sanitary pads are too taboo to be `discussed'.

Our programmed thinking that often unconsciously and blindly follows the male whim and diktat, makes sure that we ignore not just issues such as these, but we do not as much as celebrate our women standing up for their own rights, or for others.

On Saturday, Mar 7, I got news that Irom Sharmila, who was on a fast to protest army atrocities in Manipur for several years, was released. It should have ideally made for a scroll on NDTV, or at least a news item on some channel. Not one of the news channels I watched carried the story. I was thrilled to hear about her release, and wondered why it happened just before the General Elections too. In volatile North-east, there is every possibility of her re-arrest. But who would want the frail woman with an iron grit to suffer being force-fed under arrest? And that too, someone doing it out of a sense of immense duty? Her's is a Satyagraha that the country chooses to ignore, time and again. Yet, it is people like her we must be celebrating.

Also openly wondering why Sourabhee, the Agartala girl who won the Indian Idol, was not celebrated as grandly as last year's winner, or for that matter as much as Abhijeet Sawant.

Now does that not provide some Woman's Day food for thought?

Cleaning is theraupetic

2009-03-05T15:47:00.002+05:30

I must admit I do not enjoy cleaning household. Not as much as I enjoy pounding the keyboard and delving into the world of words. The only reason I have just set out to do some `spring cleaning' as some would love to call it, is that my parents and sister will arrive for a break soon.

Plus, I am fitter than two weeks back, able to do household chores, and even play badminton. Throwing away those old bills, memos, rotting veggies in the fridge, even some spices past their expiry date....they're all proving theraupetic. Guess I will indulge more in it for a while. For as long as I am fit!

The more I clean, the more there is to clean. Am reminded of my mentor's words: the more you write, the more there is to write.