Friday, October 2, 2009

"Women's lib" from down under

What do you associate with the term " Women's Lib"?

If I were to go ahead and list some on your behalf, I'm guessing the list will include equal pay, the glass ceiling, sexual harrasment, and reproductive rights, perhaps?  I may have wikied that up; incase you were wondering.
Although what I'm about to discuss may seem far more frivolous than the issues listed above, I do believe it symbolizes the accepetance, or non acceptance rather, of us women for the package we are. Incase you haven't already guessed, I'm about to discuss "Grooming - down under".
Seriously, don't you think every woman out there that is in a relationship, detests having to get a bikini wax every single time she decides to get it on? Of course she does! Its just that she chooses to represent it with other seemingly more important issues of gender inequality, that's all.

I was going through a copy of the Femina ( fiiiiiine! guilty!!) once, and was surprised to find an excerpt from the Kamasutra that spoke about how women back in the day, when the book was written I'm assuming, did'nt have to "groom" themselves in order to, er.. attract the opposite sex, shall we say? Yup! They had the luxury of presenting themselves just the way the were - hair n all. On the contrary it was the men that had to do their nails, their hair .... the works, in order to entice their women!
Yup! lucky dames those (sigh)!! Imagine not have to sit through painful hair removal (waxing, plucking, tweezing, painfully yanking off from the root) sessions... Ha! So much for learning from history.
I wonder what kicked off the reversal of the order of things? Like, was it this dame who decided she was totally jobless and said " now that I'm done braiding my serpentine "head"hair, how about finding more hair to groom? " I mean, seriously, ... what was it?
And for those out there that have been contemplating grooming your thingies for a while now, it is infact puzzling, don't you think? It requires a whole lot of an effort to begin with, and even if you do decide to take the plunge, there are just so many options. Do you take it all off , or keep parts of it on and trim it, shape it like a heart may be, or color it (remember that sex n the city episode where in Samantha colors her's red?), or worse still -straighten it!
I remember the time when curls were in (and I am refering to head hair here by the way). Every girl out there wanted locks... and curls...or a perm. For a while now, it has been the "straight" season, well atleast w.r.t. hair it has!! Every girl I know owns a straightening iron, and a ceramic one at that. So what makes you think that this hot dame, having painstakingly straightened her (head) hair out, all ready for the kill, would let her " downward"curls give her away? Hell no! Which in all likelihood implies that ceramic irons from now, are going to have to configure themselves into a whole new contraption! Sorry to gross you out. I am kinda grossed out, myself.
Considering that metrosexual's the word being bandied around offlate , I might be unfair in saying that this still is just the plight of us women in today's world. But where I come from, (a reasonable amount of ) chest hair is still a symbol of masculinity and most men out there still flaunt it. As a matter of fact, I find appropriatly thick chest hair kinda sexy too, and I can't stand men with shaped eye-brows..... Ewww!
Either ways, the point I'm trying to make here is - all you guys out there, don't have to go through all the torture we've been through for, let's see, centuries? now? We being the forgiving kind, are willing to overlook your extreme insensitivity toward us and are willing to spare you the brunt of your actions; provided, you to return the favor!!

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

The word is "Blogging"

Yaaaaaay!........ My blog has a follower! na na na na na........
Actually it's a good old childhood friend of mine......who happened to find me through my blog!......\Who better than a true friend to save my poor ol' "fit to be doomed without a single follower" blog right! so I thot.... what better occassion for a post :)? .....and decided to do the honours.......

Well...Yeah ! what ever! I still remember how it all started......
I was going thro' this "all I've done in life is reproduce - oh what a loser I am" phase ....... inspite of the fact that, in my mind I had a life plan all in place.... I would now go to school to do what most responsible adults did- an MBA.........abandoning all silly dreams of becoming a great architect (which i'm not sure i had, in the first place)!!
Anyways... the point being I really felt all wasted ....and then I chanced upon this blog....... which was pretty mediocre, for lack of a better word.... (and you thot I was bad!). And that's when the whole thing hit me....
Blogging means, not having to be grammatically perfect ....or using "author....ish" words like 'serendipity' and 'doldrums'all the time......It means being able to use a series of dots on end every time I get uncertain about how a sentence ended........ It means having a "blogger's liscence" I'd like to call it, that lets you write about anything under the sun till one fine day someone decides to get all saddistic and flag you!....omg!! did I just say write? no......that's the big no- no word here....... the word is - "BLOG"..... you blog- if you wanna make sure your bases are covered.......
And so, i blogged, for the first time...... it felt liberating and all .... and allowed me the pleasure of a casual brag about my blog in the midst of a conversation with friends ..... ok may be not all that casual ....I'm kinda known for my lack of tact.....
But all I secretly wished for in the mean time was just one comment.....or even worse .... for the number of views to go up by two instead of one every time I read my own blog. For three whole days I read , re read and edited it, taking off an extra comma here and adding an exclamation mark there..... just incase a someone I know should chance upon the blog........So much for all that talk about bloggers' liscence!!

At the end of three days, I resign to the good old way and decide to follow another blog in order to get people to follow mine......... and in the process, I find some that I could'nt care less about and then some that were really quite good....but so darn good that I was'nt sure I wanted them to read my blog !
....... and so I decide to keep looking, ..... till I chance up on my cousin's blog to realize the kid had talent,I mean , really ......and so I zero in on her's, reasoning out, that since she's related to me n all, she'd be forced to cut me some slack if at all she ended up reading mine!.......so, I go ahead and comment on one of her best posts.......only, I could'nt figure out how to do it using my blogger id!....Bummer!!....I know, u're probably thinking I am a complete idiot..... well lets just say I'm not all that tech savy......
And to reinstate the fact, the other day I stumbled upon this blog I totally loved, and decided to follow it, only to realize i could'nt figure out how to!... OK! that didn't exactly come as a complete surprise now, did it?.
Look, here's the thing ok, my blog has a "Follow me" tab in bold on the top right corner......I could'nt be more blunt about it I know ....but atleast it serves the purpose..... especially for dummies like me, right? I wonder why people have a problem keeping it plain and simple? Anyways,....at the end of it all, the fact still remains that I still have'nt figured how to follow that blog........ Is there such a thing as blogging for dummies?? I should probably try googling it sometime...... See?.... I can google!.....I'm not so bad after all !!
Ok now I've been thinking of different ways to conclude this post.....u know, something fun.... and snazzy....but couldn't come up with anything for the time being ....,so chao for now
Awright!



Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Stickers, Sweethearts and Stilettos

Sharing memories from childhood is something that puts both my husband and me into our respective elements. Even if that means, listening to the same story for the hundredth time, those dreamy eyes and an almost involuntary smile on the narrator's face, does help the listener keep the "yeah, yeah, i know!" attitude at bay, at least for a while. On one such nostalgic evening, out of the blue, my husband asked me if I remembered " those fudgy stickers that we used to get back then"...... and once again my eyes got all dreamy and that involuntary smile spread right across my face......

Chocolates to us as children essentially meant Cadbury's dairy milk and Five Star for the most part, interspersed with the occasional supply of "foreign chocolates" like Toblerone. "Fudgy" was a new entrant into the market at the time...... with an obviously successful and shorlived marketing strategy , of giving away stickers with every bar purchased. Stickers of the most famous children's hero of the 80's, if you will- "He Man " and all his friends and foes. I don't quite remember how the chocolate tasted, well I 'm guessing it must've tasted, like its name suggests, fudge ..y........ however, that didn't quite matter to me......the stickers were all I cared about..... specifically those of He-man and his girl, Teela. But as one might guess, the odds of running into a he-man sticker were miniscule,.... just to make sure that children continued to try their luck by buying more.......

The He-man show was what made our sundays the way they were....... I remember waiting for a whole week to see the super hero pull out his magic sword and say something like.... "by the power of the Grey Skull"........and outsmart the evil Skeletor and his gang week after week.
This was something the whole entire class was hooked onto ......We would religiously watch every episode and go play HE-Man at school....... well our own version of it, ofcourse.

Another reason for my added interest in the show was this guy....... ok now its not what you're thinking.....I was in preparatory for Christ's sake....... lets just say, I was really quite fond of him. Now , this guy that I liked.... always,......and let me repeat .... always.... played He-Man. He was a natural charmer and obviously the one who got to designate the other lesser beings with their roles. I think it would be safe to assume that he was also kinda fond of me cuz I got to play teela......always......ok, almost always.... well, except for a couple of rare instances when the silly girl gang managed to come up with games that interested me........

So here he was .....with his wooden ruler tucked in behind his shirt..... which he yanked out from time to time as he-man's all powerful sword while running around, chasing his enemies ....... and since teela, got to run around with a sword too, my wooden ruler, all of a sudden became the most important piece of stationary in my school bag! ..... His best friend, who was not quite what one might call heavily- set, got to play He-man's faithful lion - Cringer......which meant, the poor fella had to get down on all fours and bear "he-man's" weight for the most part !!....
There were other characters in the show too, which were played by other boys that did'nt have a problem letting my He-man take all the lime light........ like this little ghost that floated around without legs and wore a red pointed hat........ Orko.... and the evil Skeletor which was always played by the naughtiest, most evil kid around!....... my mom's absolute favourite from class, cuz he managed to make her otherwise superlatively naughty daughter seem docile!

So now, having successfully established the importance of those fudgy stickers in my life, at the time, the question arises as to what I did with them..... Did I like most collectors hold on to them without ever peeling the guard off and letting it go to waste? Not quite the case..... I did have something else in mind for them actually.......


I used to live in the same town as my grand parents at the time. There was this cabinet in my grand dad's bar that I was completely fascinated by. It was your typical 70's, art deco' piece of furniture, with glass sliding shutters, a wooden body with a slight taper towards the top that was covered in formica, slender truncated cones for legs which reminded me back then, of stilettos or "high heals" as we used to call them (my fascination with stilettos goes a long way..... they were used as a bribe, to make me top my class!!), and most importantly, this was the only piece of furniture around that I could reach .......
My favourite pass time was to stare at, and occasionally take out, all the different glasses the cabinet held.......glasses of all shapes and sizes, the short and stocky cut glasses for scotch, the tall slender stemmed ones for champagne, the fat stemmed ones for wine, the huge mugs with handles for beer and so on....... and not to forget my absolute favourites ..........the shot glasses :) ...... they were shaped like miniature beer mugs with propotionate handles ....and for a long time, made me think that they were infact beer mugs for us miniature adults at home ..... So when I did start collecting my stickers after all, it was almost instinctual that I use them to adorn my favourite cabinet ..... and so I did ...... and the best part of it all was that, my grand dad didn't really mind :) ............

What happened to my little "puppy love" story, you might ask.... well, we were quite sweet together actually ..... we dressed similarly to our class christmas party (which was a coincidence btw.) ...and I even fell in love with this kennel he had at home, for his golden retreiver.......it looked like a miniature house, oh i meant the kennel..... T'was all so perfect....... when, just like in the movies, this evil seductress walks in and tries to take my he-man away! ..... well....there was this new girl in class, with lovely long locks ....... and then, one fine morning, my he-man comes over and asks me if this new girl could be his teela "just this one time" Hmmmm, MEN! ........ and the rest is history........ the brave teela fought for her he-man and managed to win him back too ...... only to realise the subsequent week that........... she, with her family, had to move out of town...... for good! ....I know .....that was a bit of a bummer, frankly ! ....
And as far as the cabinet goes..... it still does exist ....... having been ripped off of all its past glory,
is now being used to store all sorts of "have to keep, though seldom used" things....... thanks to all the built-in woodwork with glass panels and fancy focus lights!

Saturday, May 2, 2009

How Bizarre is Bizarre?

It is kinda funny, how almost everytime I'm not blogging, I am bursting with a zillion things in my mind to write about , and the moment I seat myself in front of the monitor, I am almost at a loss of thoughts ....if there is such an expression at all, in the first place....

Hmmmm.... let's see...... I think I am going to discuss the show "Bizarre Foods" this time.... Oh! and the host Andrew Zimmer........
The only thing I ask, every single time, I see him up there chowing down on goat scrotum or fish eyes ..... even worse fish face (with its mouth wide open), is, ....... "What in the world is he thinking!"
The show, being called what it is, it shouldn't come as a complete surprise that there be a reasonable amount of "gross" ness associated with it, but owing to the fact that it does occupy a prime slot, lasts a whole hour and gets retelecast almost every time the channel runs out of fresh ideas, one expects to see something a little more pleasant from time to time, ....don't you think?

I remeber seeing this one episode, where in, he tries out this fruit called "Durian" some where, in the Philippines, i think...
And for people who don't know.... durian is like the jack fruit, only much worse (btw, that's an understatement) in taste, texture and smell .......
I remember the king of bizarre eats not being able to get it down his throat! ......
Ok, I give it to him..... the Durian supposedly is one of the most obnoxious fruits ever...... even natives sometimes have a split take on this one..... but dude ....how bad can it get ?.....it is after all, only a fruit!!.....

Well at least it has'nt been cut off of a live, anesthetised cow in front of your eyes, like the ------- you ate last week !.... ok sorry people, didn't mean to get all graphic on you, but now you know, how much worse it would've been seeing this thing on television ........ oh and over dinner!

Hey, don't get me wrong, I have absolutely nothing personal against the guy, really...... on the contrary i find him quite pleasant for a man with such "not so pleasant" tastes! .......
Seriously fella! .....you do not have to go around chomping on every organism, dissected, with all its parts marked out in order to make this thing interesting ........ really....... get a hold o'er yourself!

It wouldn't be fair on my part not to mention the bright side to this whole thing though ...... Before seeing that "anesthetized cow" episode I mentioned earlier, I was blissfully unaware of people with such tastes ...... well atleast , now i know.....
But, is that really such a good thing?





Sunday, April 12, 2009

The Constant Witness

A typical scene from my days as an architecture student comprised of a comfortably messy room, with me perched on the bed, in front of my drafting table ,mostly at midnight.....going over a taped sheet of paper, in an essentially linear motion..... quite certain in my mind, of the impending doom the subsequent morning during design review (a regular feature in most archi-students' lives).

Apart from the occasional chirping of the cricket, the sounds that filled my otherwise eerily silent nights were, either the voices of enthusiased reporters, with the same news, probably being telecast for the nth time on NDTV ...... or the familiar voices from bollywood, through a movie, also probably being showcased from the (n+1)th time on Set Max.... Yes, the constant witness to those "nights outs" , those aimless channel surfing sessions, those mood swings...... my television.

The voices I mentioned above were the ones that did'nt really seek any attention, since I already knew the content....they just kept me company.... And then there were the ones that transported me to Greece one night, France the next and made me want to travel like never before ....and the ones that made me an ardent fan of the art of film making..... the ones that made me walk up to the mirror and repeat a line from a film that had touched me....
the ones that taught me that the American Chopper was a kind of bike people rode, and not exactly the war helicopter of sorts I thought it to be!....

Its funny, something that was intended to be an inconspicuous buzz on the background during those never ending "night-outs", actually made me discover so much of the world, and myself .....just sitting on that bed.