The Drama Queen

Doesn’t this word bring out our inner child, the dreamy eyes and that smile on our faces?! The steal. The victory. The accomplishment. The treasure that we don’t need at a price we can’t resist! You getting the drift, eh? Well, shopping bargains have been overdone. I was recently a witness to another kind of bargain. The bargain between the unsuspecting tourists and the know-it-all tourist guides. The bargain of life and death. The bargain of travelling all the way to ‘the Heaven on Earth’ and the desire to see all its unique offerings. The sly tourists who first avoid the guides and claim that they don’t want to see the ‘famous points’ with the aim of getting the top bargains vs the regulars-to-this-behaviour guides with their gang of wing men.... I wonder who actually wins it! This week, I had the wonderful opportunity of visiting Kashmir with my family. Wonderful because I got to take a break from playing Mom. Nope... make that merely a change of location. Opportunity beca...

This is definitely more important than ‘Made In India’. At the onset, excuse me for the M-word. To be honest, may be ‘Lifeline’ would be a more appropriate title for them. I would rather call them Domestic Help (DH, for future reference). And you bet, it is the DH that we are all eternally grateful for. So what do we look for, in an ideal DH? Well, the demands have certainly gone up. Earlier it used to be less pay, less holidays and coming on time, more or less. But with the spending power of a working couple growing left, right and centre, their demands have also gone up exponentially, as well. To begin with, the DH should be hygienic and presentable. The first bell of the day and a shabby, doing-a-favour-on-you look vs a smart and eager person, keen-on-helping-you with your misery of dirty dishes and messy floors, dressed in a crisp attire... no prizes for guessing whom we all would prefer. The almost immediate pre-requisite would be to know the local language while...

The Mystery of the Missing Diamonds “Yippee!” shouted Amar. “This is awesome!” exclaimed Arjun. Amar and his younger brother, Arjun, were at their uncle’s luxurious five-star resort during their summer vacations. They were skiing in the fake snow room. “Amar! Arjun!” Their uncle was calling them for lunch. “Lunch time! Finally! I am famished!” Arjun exclaimed. The two brothers raced to the magnificent dining hall. One look at their dining table made their mouths water. Inviting mounds of mashed potatoes, roast chicken, colourful gravies, an upside down pineapple cake, salads topped with delicious dressing, a huge platter of assorted cheese and exotic fruits and slabs of chocolate ice-cream… they were spellbound.   As the two brothers were stuffing their mouths, a wealthy-looking man entered the room and started screaming hysterically, “MY SOCKS! MY SOCKS ARE MISSING!” The absurdity of this statement made the two brothers laugh. The man glared at them and started complai...

We all have been guilty of giving some form of threat to our children, or the other. They vary from parent to parent. Also, from child to child. As they overuse in parenting that no two fingers are alike, how can you expect the children to be alike. Hell what, even siblings are so different from each other. The same way, no single threat can be applied to two different children. The way I ‘handle’ my older one is so different from how I ‘tackle’ my younger one. The older one needs a logical explanation for everything around her. So, to tell her why we shouldn’t put our hand out of a moving vehicle, I had to use Physics, Biology and the Social Sciences. My younger one is a stickler for rules and regulations. All I had to tell him was that it is a rule to not take your hand out of a moving vehicle, and we were sorted. Life is not all hunky dory, though. Every now and then, comes the time to get creative. Or be ready to lose the battle against the cute little monsters. It will be a ...

Nirbhaya...... Asifa Bus....... Temple Jeans....... Burkha The problem lies not in the religion one is following. Or in the clothes one is choosing to wear. Or the age-group one belongs to. Or the time and place one is picking to go. The problem lies in the mentality. The problem lies in the attitude that infants and girls and women are mere objects. The problem lies in the upbringing where we let the young adults believe that it is OK to treat the women folk like dirt. They see this happening in their own houses while growing up. The mother is abused by the father and she goes about ‘allowing it’. The brother is given more preference over the sister and she keeps ‘tolerating it’. The son is given more importance than the daughter and she keeps ‘accepting her fate’. That is where the seeds are sown. When we subconsciously tell the ‘men’ that it is OK. It is OK to feel superior to your female sibling. It is OK to suppress your wife. It is OK to tell your daughter to ‘be ...

  Vacation plans are on hold. New movies are on hold. Eating out is on hold. Cold treats are on hold. Breathing is on hold. Life is on hold. You got it right.... exams have taken over the lives of the thousands of unsuspecting mothers all over the country. Board Exams or IIT Entrances or Masters or Middle School or Kindergarten.... you do not mess with the sanctity of the situation. Neatly made study time tables are being made and remade. The fridge door space is converted into a holy shrine with these scribbles. Weeks have been reduced to days. It will move on to number of hours left, when exams arrive. The house is sprinkled with books of all shapes and sizes. Study notes are flying around. Mums are trying their best not to lose their patience picking up after the children. The occasional stepping on the stationery is the last straw, generally! ‘Why don’t they study in their own rooms’ should be the new ‘Nation wants to know...’ agenda. They have to sit in the living ro...

At the outset, I do not have ANY political lineage or interests or aspirations. I am neither pro nor anti Saffronite. I have no Hands in any cookie jar, either. Just trying to use my common sense here.... Do we really need elections at the Centre next year? It took Congress 10 short years to bring down our country to its lowest ever level. I guess, we need to be fair enough to the one crusader to turn it all around. While we pass jokes and memes on Whatsapp and Facebook and Twitter on his tagline, ‘Achche Din’.... nobody complained when we were being showed the most ‘Bure Din’??? We were content with sub-standard governance under the previous Government. And when someone is genuinely showing us a ray of hope, we are getting blinded by our over-the-top expectations. ‘Sone Ki Chidiya’ is definitely a thing of the past now. First, we blamed the British. They left us alone, long back, people. It has been our choices, and our choices alone, that has brought us to where we are toda...