The Drama Queen

14th February, 2019. Valentine’s Day. The whole country, along with the world, was celebrating Love... the fuel that is much needed in today’s compassion-deprived era. The social media was flooded with mushy romance. The streets and malls were screaming bargain discounts for couples. The moral police was on a high alert mode. In short, everybody was contributing towards Valentine’s Day. But, for a select few, they had to come and spoil the party. They had to overpower Love with Terror, not just Hatred. They have scarred this otherwise symbolic day of Love, forever.  The 40+ bravehearts, who lost their lives, while in the Line of Duty, have made us rethink about our priorities. We can buy, probably, everything else in the world except for Health and Peace. And these brave Jawaans had to pay a hefty price for this peace. They laid down their lives, so we could celebrate Love and Life. They made the supreme sacrifice, so we could sleep peacefully in the comfort of our homes. The...

SRK made us believe that We Live only once. We Die only once. We Love, also, only once. Well, coming from the King of Romance, most of us fell for the trap... until we got trapped into the realms of life. It is like coming out of a dream with a jerk. There are no guitars playing the music around you, no extra dancers appearing out of nowhere, all doing the same dance steps magically, or no soft breeze caressing your hair while you are shying away from your beloved or no bells ringing from the heavens to misdirect you! Be it the harmless flirting during the high school days or the little serious affairs during college or the more sincere ones after that or a live-in, marriage still remains a gamble. Arranged marriage can be compared to a murder while Love marriage, a suicide mission! Love before marriage vs Love after marriage. Love for our friends after the girlfriend/ boyfriend enters our lives. Love for one’s own parents after the spouse comes into our lives. Love for that ...

Physical fitness and exercise have always been a rage. We generally see a spike in this activity around the New Year time. There is no parking space near the gyms and yoga classes, for the first week at least. The running tracks are crowded like flea markets. People are hustling and bustling like there is no tomorrow. This is all, thanks to the outrageous New Year resolutions made by three quarters of the world population. They hog throughout the year and keep postponing getting back into shape till the next year! To overcome this rush and for the sanctity of the Runners’ Association, some kind people keep organising runs throughout the year. So, any weekend you feel the urge to get going, pull up your socks, tighten your shoe laces and get going, literally. There is no dearth of the number of races that one can sign up for. There are several support groups, to promote this noble cause. Thanks to the social media, it feels like every third person is running. And running and r...

Well, as couples, or parents-to-be or parents, we have always gone through this dilemma.... how many children are ‘good enough’, if at all we are planning to have any. You are always under the pressure of family and extended family and neighbour’s family and family of family for when are you going to have the baby. Sometimes, it is almost to the extent that it is the only purpose of their lives. I am sure we have always seen parents either judging others or have been judged themselves for having the number of children that they have. Having none will get you tagged of not being the maternal types; which is considered to be the sole reason for a woman’s existence by some. One offspring is too less, even though it is helping in the cause of controlling the world population. Two is just right, even though ‘it is not really required’. Anything beyond that would have been welcome in the by-gone era but is totally frowned upon in today’s world. Basically, you will be tagged.... no ma...

Having just come back from the ‘Mother of all Religious Visits’.... a dip in the mighty Ganges... I am feeling all pious and invincible, myself. I was told that all my ‘sins’ have been washed away. My interpretation: I am ready for a new stock in my new pot of sins!  I am totally sentimental when it comes to being religious and all. Religious, yet flexible. The customs whose logic I find irrelevant in today’s world and have the sanity to not pass on to my kids, I try to peacefully and respectfully discard them. At the same time, I am not judging someone who is still blindly following the age-old superstitious traditions. My reasoning says that the other person is yet to be enlightened. I also have the utmost respect for all the religions with ‘Live, and let live.’ being my ultimate mantra for life. I have been to various Churches and Gurudwaras and Dargahs and Jain and Buddhist temples, all in a hope to find calm. It is present everywhere. It is present inside you. We just ...

It had been a year that I had touched my car. I was unable to bring myself to drive it. My children had started relying solely on their dad, over the weekends, to replenish their necessities and stuff. I would take a cab to wherever I wanted to go or hitch a ride with a friend. Hubby was clueless as to why I was acting weird... well, so was I! I just didn’t feel like it. I had ‘imaginary’ thoughts of me dashing into somebody on the road, with my children in the car.  This was the first sign that I ignored.  Next came the loss of sleep. This was rampant whenever hubby would travel; but it became more pronounced as I didn’t feel sleepy during the day, also. The worst part was... it became chronic even when the husband was around. I wouldn’t want to disturb others, while sleeping, so I would just continue to toss and turn in the bed. Dark circles became an integral part of me.  There were days when I just didn’t feel like getting out of the house to join my bel...

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...