Ne'hallmark'

In the past few days there has been a lot of bashing and dissection of the Vogue Deepika video. For or against the arguments were thought provoking. The concept ‘My Choice’ got me thinking…and many of us thinking. It encouraged many of us to talk about gender equality, have debates and discussions on women empowerment and that is where the video did a great job. Now I want to talk about a related topic and not the video. I want to talk about how society judges the same choices made by a woman versus a man. Momentarily let us forget what is right and wrong but I feel that the society willingly condones a particular choice made by a man and criticizes the same the choice made by a woman. There are a few exceptions for this but then there are exceptions for everything. Let us look at some of these examples.. 1)       A woman comes home late from work. She lies on the couch watching TV. She does not cook or clean the house. She asks her maid to look after h...

I recently started working again after a looong break of 1 year. Yes the extended maternity break. No it was not easy at all. There was this guilt of leaving my baby in the daycare for 7-8 hours with strangers. My son did not make it easy either. He used to cry a lot and give me this innocent anxious look with tears in his eyes with unsaid words ‘ where are you going mommy …don’t leave me here'. I used to feel sad, guilty and uneasy sending my son to the daycare. Although some part of this was true, I later realized that my son was a big ‘drama queen’. His teacher told me that the moment I was out of his sight he used to instantly stop crying and start playing with the other kids, toys. He really enjoys the daycare now. There are lots of new toys and he is also making new friends there. I have also adjusted to my new work routine. Every day I pick him up at around 4pm and after that we spend around 4 hrs together: playing ball, singing songs, dancing on nursery rhymes, eat...

 I strongly believe in outsourcing. If a task can be done effectively by someone else at a reasonable price then I am up for it. So when I was in Pune , the cooking job was outsourced to Geeta bai my maid. When I was back from work all the food used to be laid out on the table. This does not mean I did not know how to cook. I am glad I was not amongst those girls who learn cooking only after marriage. I always knew cooking right from when I was a teen but you see I don’t use my skill set unless it is really required! This is a quality which most of the lazy people possess. And it was really required when we moved to US. I was pregnant at that time, was not working and had lots of free time. I also had strong food cravings. Every night after I closed my eyes in bed all the food items like pav bhaji, dosa, sizzler, noodles used to dance in front of my eyes. This gave me that extra encouragement to cook. As I mentioned earlier I used to cook since I was a teen. It was not a very...

It is said that driving a car is very easy in the US. May be it is, but for someone like me who has spend almost 10-12 years driving in India , no let me correct driving in Pune it is a Herculean task . I was never a great driver in Pune either but I followed all the rules. Don’t be surprised there are some unwritten rules in Pune which everyone has to follow. For eg : At an intersection, a car can come from any direction so you have to be vigilant     People, especially those huge trucks will change lanes without an indicator so you need to have a sixth sense , understand the psychology of the driver and then drive accordingly.    Even on a 10 ft road people will drive Innovas or Scorpios with no space left for other cars. It is your skill to pass through that narrow lane without scratching the big vehicle.   At a red signal , people may or may not stop depending on the urgency with which they have to reach somewhere, so if you are standing at a r...

It was a Sunday afternoon and I was sitting in front of the idiot box surfing channels. All channels were flooded with reality shows. Even the news channels were showing recaps and highlights of all the reality shows. What news are they anyway going to air 24x7? Reality shows have gained increasing and enormous popularity in India. TRP ke liye kuch bhi karega has become the new mantra of all the TV channels…yes all. The latest trend in reality TV is that the shows are based on international formats .Big Boss ‘inspired’ from Big Brother, Kaun Banega Crorepati from Who Wants To Be Millionaire, Sach Ka Saamna from Moment Of Truth, and Indian Idol from American Idol are some of them. The key to success is ‘the more provocative the better’ .Use of abusive language, violence, sexuality is very common. Some of the other reality shows are MTV’s ‘Roadies’, Splitsvilla’, ‘Rakhi Ka Swayamvar’ on NDTV Imagine and Sony TV’s ‘Iss Jungle Se Mujhe Bachao’ .   True that people were tired ...

I somehow managed to squeeze myself and get inside. It was 6.30 pm and the the bus was crowded. It was a long day for me and I was returning from college i.e. from Loni (a place 25 mins ahead of Hadapsar).It usually takes me 1 hr 15 mins to reach home but that day I was travelling in the evening, it was pouring outside and the traffic was insane.   Being a Puneite I have hardly, almost never travelled by a bus before. To get a pack of biscuits from the nearby kirana store I used to go on a scooty. Everyone has their own vehicles and people prefer using it. Pune has seen a mammoth rise in the number of private vehicles, specially 2 wheelers and 4 wheelers in the past few years.The distances are also not very far. But things are changing.... With the city getting crowded, many Institutes, corporate offices and even residential complexes have moved to the outskirts of Pune. And how do you go there everyday? .Either you stay nearby or then go by a car. Travelling by a ...

Trying to figure out different ways to kill my time at the SFO airport, I went to a bookstore and was browsing through the books. I went to the ‘Management’ section where I could see all the familiar and typical business books. I was about to move on to another section when I saw this bright orange colour book - A whole new mind. The lines ‘why Right brainers will rule the future’ fascinated me and I immediately picked up the book. I must say that this book was definitely interesting. Right from the beginning all of us have undoubtedly accepted left brains in the king’s position at least as far as career options are concerned. A lot of importance was or is still given to left brain thinking ie analytical, logical and sequential which makes a good Engineer, C.A, Doctor or a Lawyer. Even most of the schools encourage left brain thinking and students are graded on that, because these are the professions that get paid well. Our definition of ‘intelligence’ is still limited t...