A Picture is Worth a Thousand Likes

Most women are more sensitive about their looks than their feelings. Criticize how she looks and you risk hurting her and hurtling yourself out like yesterday’s chapatis. And how do you gauge her sensitivity? It’s simple, just try clicking her pic. Slowly take out your camera, aim and wait for the miraculous transformation. Watch her eyes turn into limpid pools of kindness, prepare to get blinded by her dazzling smile. But not before she flips her hair, turns her face 45 degrees north (her best angle), pinches her cheeks and smiles her mysterious smile. The one that makes her look like Monalisa minus the mumps.

Monalisa minus the mumps

You see, she wants the world to see what she sees in the mirror.

Candid clicks are a big no and you can’t get away with just one shot. You are expected to click her again and again from different angles. It’s not because she doesn’t trust you. Experience and many ugly mugshots have taught her that you and your camera take time to warm up to her loveliness. So, she is willing to say cheese 17 times, just for the sake of a priceless capture. The one she can proudly show to her grandkids, when she gets old and wrinkled. Then she will grandly inspect all the shots you took and make you promise to delete the unflattering ones. If you don’t, you risk her wrath. If you upload it on Facebook, you risk getting killed. 

My Guest Post for BlogwatiG

Courtesy - Google Images

We met exactly a year back. She had just ventured into the world of blogging and I was celebrating my blog's second anniversary. It was love at first sight for us. I fell in love with her writing and spread the word around and she has never let me forget that. She calls me her lucky charm, I call her the tigress. She roars, prowls confidently and pounces on what she perceives as unjust. She makes plagiarizers pee in their pants, has little patience for hypocrisy and is never afraid of raising her voice against wrongdoers.

It's requires a lot of will power not to fall in love with Blogwati G.

On the occasion of our blog anniversary (yes, A-Musing turned 3 yesterday) I ponder upon my relationship with him, in God and I.
 
Before the age of special effects, before innocence was dead, during my frilly frock days – God was my superhero. I believed it was He who could set things right that I had messed up so badly. He was my confidante, my sounding board, the one who listened to my whys and why nots patiently. He was my first strong and silent one before I graduated to Mills and Boons.

Now before you turn around and ask me, why He, why not a She – I’d like to admit that it was because I knew no better. He was meant to protect, while She was meant to nurture and I had accepted this logic without a murmur of protest.


If this has piqued your interest, click here to read more

When We Were Your Age

Image courtesy - Stock Vector

During my growing up years, festivals and birthdays were great occasions of joy for me. That time of the year when delicious aromas would waft out of the kitchen and I would be hovering around expecting my Mom to invent a miracle that would change the world forever, quite like Marie Curie. For me a hot, syrupy, melt in mouth malpua was a miracle that could cure the world of all its ills.

Ma would pretend not to notice the tiny little hands trying to paw a mishtee or two. Nothing tastes better than a “stolen” cham-cham, its sticky juice running down your arms in rivulets.

Festivals (Durga Pujo for Bengalis) and birthdays also meant brand new clothes. Pujo shopping would start months in advance. Baba would come home early and we’d all drive down to Karol Bagh. Ma would spend hours trying to drive the sari salesman insane with her “aur dikhao” demands, while we would slurp noisily from out bottles of lime and lemoni Limca.

It didn’t matter who we were shopping for. All that mattered was we were together having a good time.

Birthdays meant two brand new dresses and Ma taking the day off for me. Pujo meant animated discussions with friends, all of us trying to impress each other with our windfall of 3 skirts, two frocks and the fancy sandals from Metro shoes.

I didn’t care that none of them had labels, that my coveted croc tees were actually fakes, that the cake was pineapple every year and that I mostly got colour pencils as gifts!

A Lost Concept?

Her gentle demeanor belies her razor sharp wit. Alka Gurha of Freebird fame, not only happens to be one of my favourite bloggers but also my favourite blogger friend. Painfully shy, yet so warm, you can't help but fall in love with her. As a writer, she's well-informed, her language impeccable and her wit is like a cherry on the icing.

In this post, Alka reflects on the dying concept of Role Models.

Read on....

‘Who is your role model and why?’ used to be a common essay topic while I was in school.  There were options – Mother Teresa, Mahatma Gandhi, Sardar Patel, parents, grandparents. 

Two decades later, when my son was in school the topic morphed to, ‘Do we need role models and why?’ 

Today the concept of role models has lost relevance. We want to chart our own paths, role models be damned. 

For one, there is a serious dearth of role models. And since definitions of morality are in a state of flux, black and white have merged together to give us more acceptable shades of grey. What was wrong a decade ago does not evoke the same outrage today. 

Income tax raids ruined reputations. You could be a party president today.

A corrupt cop in a Bollywood movie was a baddie. Today he is the mainstream hero who mints millions.

Women drinking in pubs were unacceptable. It is a sign of liberation today.

The real story behind the Taj

Courtesy - jokesPrank.com

Yo Yo Shah Jahan, lay in his chambers, trying to catch grapes with his mouth, thrown by his favourite slave Gulabo. Ever since he had lost 12 of his teeth last month, he had been advised a diet of kakoris and fruits.

So far he had managed to catch 6 with his gums, while the rest lay splattered on his beard. As he sat admiring his reflection in one of the 56 mirrors adorning the walls, he couldn’t help but notice the purple stains on his pristine white beard. They were going so perfectly with his brand new silken pajamas in pomegranate pink. SJ made a mental note to ask his favourite personal hajaam, Habib to create a purple dye exclusively for him. He possibly couldn’t have every Salim, Haleem and Asif sporting the same coloured beard!

He would have to keep it a secret from Mummy-Taz. The last thing he wanted to hear was that harridan rant about his midlife crisis. This is what happens when you have been married for over two decades!

Agreed, he was sick and tired of his job as CEO of Mughal & Co. And who wouldn’t? Imagine having to sit on a jewel studded throne all day, listening to a bunch of losers having no interest in art and music, complain about no rains, no grains and hunger! He’d had enough of being treated as the universal Aunty Agony.

These people just love wallowing in their pool of misery!

Hornsutra - My Guest Post for Subho's Jejune's Diet

Indian traffic, like our society, is structured on a strict caste system. The bigger you are, the more adventurous you can get. A speeding truck just by the virtue of its size and jalopiness can magically make all traffic scuttle away in fear.  If a car has a blinking lal batti, it has the right to abuse you and any rules that come it way. SUVs with Haryana registration number with drivers in Ray Bans enjoy special reverence. Handcarts, bicycles dogs and pedestrians are treated like women are in India. If they get hit or die, they were asking for it.

If this has piqued your interest, I suggest you click here to find out what I'm blabbering about....

Psst...don't miss Subhorup's wickedly green introduction. He blames it all on a cheescake he had one evening.