What The Fog!

Just when the Great Wall of Fog descended on Delhi, making entire buildings disappear along with flights schedules, Cacofonix makes an appearance on A-Musing after 2 years of hibernation. It seems the fog has finally cleared up his mind.
 

Image courtesy - IBNlive.com

“Oh, the fog was so heavy I couldn’t see my own ______ “. Words that could fill in the blank are toes, nose and other protruding body parts in between. Thus will the true Delhi-ite go about describing the weather event that descends on the city every year, usually the very morning he or she has a flight to catch. You can’t see anything, driving is dangerous, it’s bloody cold, there’s no sun and all the vitamin D that your pigments were going to synthesize has gone for a toss. You are late to work, your child is late to school, your dad is late to get up and take the dog out, your dog is late to get up and wake up your dad.

I mean, come on, let’s not crib endlessly about something that’s actually a good thing. The fog can be invoked to explain coming late to work, never mind the night before was spent partying hard and gulping down liquids of various hues and ethanol levels leading to a hangover of epic proportions. The fog is also your friend to let your dad know that the massive gash on the side of the car is all its doing. While, in fact, you got it when you couldn’t take your eyes off the PYT swishing by as you were reversing into a slot next to the trash truck.

In fact, if you could carry some fog with you, life could be so easy. Caco’s fog, ordered online, is just the thing for you.

You are interviewing for a job. You have this nervous twitch in your eyes that bugs you. It’s a dead give-away when you try to pull a fast one like, “yeah, Suhel Seth knows me”. Not that such a reference helps, but there is a lilt to his name that is fetching. So, what do you do? Just have a little fog sprayed from your used bottle of L-Áir du Temps, and lo, the twitch is safe behind a curtain of translucence.

Eclairs Diaries

Once upon a time when I had no fear of calories and embraced them with open arms, Eclairs used to be one of my favourites. Not the hard to crack version by Cadbury but the elegant French dessert. This oblong pastry with a coating of chocolate looks pretty innocent till you bite into it and your mouth is filled with sweetened thick cream...orgasmic!

When I got the invite to attend a special event that would explore new perspectives on éclairs with celebrated pastry chef Johnny Iuzzini at Le Meridien, I decided to let my taste buds do the thinking.

As part of the hotel's culinary program, Eclairs Diaries, Chef Iuzinni has been creating eclairs inspired by locations all around the world. From the maple and bacon to Texan honey pecan to the Dulce de leche eclair,Iuzinni fuses local flavours into his unique creations.



It's not everyday you have a good looking, tattooed, motorcycle-riding chef give you a masterclass on how to create the perfect Eclair with blueberry compote and thickened honey cream that filled the pastry shell from end to end. We also got to sample Chef Iuzinni's Indian inspired creations created in partnership with Le Meridien. I especially loved the Ginger Jaggery version - the sharpness of the ginger beautifully complimenting the sweet earthiness of jaggery. Another favourite of mine was the Hazelnut Tamarind Eclair, even though I couldn't taste the tartness of the tamarind, I loved its smooth chocolatey taste infused with the smokiness of hazelnut.


Le Meridien Delhi will now feature Clotted Cream Kalakand, Coconut Jaggery Cardamom and Rose Cardamom to unlock the flavours of Delhi and Kochi respectively.

If this has gotten your tastebuds tickling, you know where to head!

Nightie too naughty, you must be kidding!

This post was also published on Huffington Post India 

Source - Google Images

In what is seen as yet another blow to women’s liberation movement in India, residents of Gothivili of Navi Mumbai imposed a Rs 500 fine on women wandering around in nighties. It’s better to be born a cow in India that can move around in the nude without a care in the world and yet get so much respect that even their shit is considered holy.

Only those who have experienced the untethered pleasure of wearing a nightie on a hot summery day can understand why it’s the preferred garment of so many women who don’t give a damn about what others think of their sartorial choices. Essentially a sack with armholes, it’s the female counterpart of the lungi that’s also a sack but is wrapped around the waist to let the climate in. The lungi does a splendid job of keeping men in heat cool as a cucumber. They say the secret of Gandhi’s Ahimsa movement lay in his dhoti. It’s another matter that the same dhoti turns Khaap taus into imbeciles who never tire of issuing diktats against crafty women for instigating gullible men to rape them.

The nightie as the name suggests was originally meant to be worn at night. But such are its magical abilities to rejuvenate the body after a hectic day - multitasking as the family’s alarm clock, motivational speech giver, conscience keeper and the database of her man’s past mistakes -that women refuse to get out of it. All it requires is a couple of washes to turn as soft and absorbent as a well-used dusting cloth. It’s a forgiving garment that doesn’t hold you back but let’s you spill out in all your paunchy glory.

It’s the closest a Sanskari woman can get to a dress. Since buying a nightie is a usually a choice between “grandma don’t give a shit” and “the porn star (available in blood orange, traffic light yellow and all shades of “ewww”)”, most women end up choosing the former so as to not offend others with the suggestion of a body underneath the garment. It is a known fact that men get agitated at the mere hint of boobs and butt and the grandma nightie does a perfect cover job of it. Coupled with a dupatta or a towel slung over the shoulders, nobody can even make out that you’re a woman.

Women in public spaces, Uber unsafe

This post was also published on Huffington Post India 

There’s something about Delhi December that brings out the beast in certain men. Especially at nightfall, when the air becomes chilly, the roads desolate, the city gets enveloped in fog, giving men with criminal intent a cloak of invisibility. In a country where everybody’s business is everybody else’s business, for some strange reason, when we see a fellow citizen in distress, we drive a little faster, look the other way with a ‘tennu-kee-mennu-kee’ nonchalance.

The Uber Cab incident was yet another glaring example of how unsafe our women are. Only this time the city happened to be Delhi. Too bad that a few chose to take ‘what else can you expect from the rape capital of India’ stance. The thing is, cities do not rape, people do. Not all men, but certain rotten specimens who use their out of control libido to teach women a lesson! Too bad that all Indian men, including the ones who go out of their way to make us feel safe and cherished get tarnished in the process.

We may go hoarse shouting from rooftops that modern women are independent beings who don’t need men to look out for them but the fact remains that a woman on her own is easy target unless she’s walking around with a Kalashnikov is her hand.

But does it mean we ask our girls to pursue their dreams from home because they might be sexually exploited at their workplaces? Do we stop sending our children to school out of fear of assault by sexual predators? Do we adopt a Khap like attitude and insist they be married off early to keep them safe? Of course, we don’t, yet all of us inadvertently end up telling our girls to stay within their limits. Despite telling our girls to conquer the world without fear stalking their minds, we refuse to leave them alone with manservants, male relatives, warn them against staying out late and if they do, make sure they have someone to chaperone them home. We teach our girls to live in fear or put up with consequences.

With a police to people ratio: 3 cops for every VIP but just 1 for 761 commoners, we have no option but to rely on God and our good fortune to be safe.

Gurgaon On Foot? Broom Through It!

This article was first published in Gurgaon Times dated 30 November, 2014

In Gurgaon, if you'd rather walk short distances than drive, people assume that you're either poor or mad. After all, the millennium city is India’s very own America where the majority prefers taking out their car, even if it’s a five minute walk to drop their child at the school bus stop. Little wonder the city’s roads during weekdays with bumper to bumper traffic resembles a very long parking lot where motorists honk and swear at each other for entertainment.

Sadly, the number of parking spots in Gurgaon has not kept pace with the number of vehicles that has been growing in leaps and bounds unlike our country’s GDP. Getting a decent space to park during rush hour is like winning a lottery. One vacant spot and at least 5 cars rush towards it gladiator style, unmindful of basic courtesy or consideration for the unfortunate soul who was the first to sight the bounty. If you’re not aggressive, chances are you’ll keep circling like a planet in its orbit.

It doesn’t help that the city’s transport system is a wonderful opportunity to get groped and to exchange sweat and BO with random strangers. The autowallahs think you’re Ambani’s twice removed cousin and quote such exorbitant rates that you’re forced to stage a walkout, much like our revered Rajya Sabha MPs.

So, when you move to a neighbourhood with wide, tree-lined avenues, with markets within walking distance, the air just the right kind of nippy, you give yourself a congratulatory pat on the back, bid adieu to parking woes and take out your walking shoes.

History repeats itself when you’re not paying attention the first time. Your memory loss aided by the few years you’ve lived in a quiet city in Australia with shaded walkways, where pedestrians enjoy the right of the way and cars don’t try to knock them over for daring to cross the road. When you move back home, you’re optimistic that the good times will last, unlike Kingfisher. You’ve conveniently erased from your memory the times you’d decided to embark on a Padyatra to your local market and got cat-called by idle Romeos, knocked over by playful piglets and feral canines, hopped, skipped and jumped over potholes filled with foul water and narrowly missed getting run over by vehicles that mistook your locality’s alleyways for the Buddh Circuit.

It’s your Birthday, make it 75 feet large

A cake so ugly that you can have your cake and eat it too

It was a celebration that the Kingdom of UP Yours will remember for the rest of their wretched lives. After all it was not their money that was used to fund the grandiose birthday celebrations of their Mulayam King, the one who refuses to retire. Reports that the horse driven Victorian style buggy used by the king and his merry men to ride to the venue of the celebrations has been imported from London, is nothing but bullshit being churned out by the good-for-nothing-press besotted with Emperor Modi. If unreliable sources are to be believed, Fairy Godmother Azam Khan had turned the pumpkins leftover from Halloween celebrations into Mulayam’s sparkly carriage. The horses were Fairy Azam’s lost and found Jersey buffaloes in makeup.

The procession was a sight to behold as it passed like wind through 200 welcome gates, especially erected with flowers. Bunches of red and white balloons were strung on spruced up roads, while the surroundings glittered with electric lights. King Mulayam looked luminescent in his pristine white dhoti and kurta specially designed for the occasion. The subjects, who only read about development in full page newspaper ads but have yet to see any, were seen applauding wildly, their chests swelled up with pride.

So what if the land of UP Yours is steeped in poverty, at least their rulers are rolling in riches. Also, this was the first time they had seen so many electric bulbs burning for so long without any power cut.

Nobles, serfs and rascals of the Yadav clan had all assembled to be part of the cake cutting ceremony. Since size is all that matters to men, unlike women who are content with 3.5 inches as long as it looks like a credit card, the cake was as big as the King’s ego. King Mulayam had to swing from a rope from the ceiling to cut the 75 feet cake.

OMG, Look at that L-Ass

Women have come a long way from the days when the sight of a waddling posterior brought out the sniggers and a secret prayer to Goddess to never be that ass. If Nicki Minaj is to be believed, 'his Anaconda don’t want none unless you got buns hun’.

This comes as a big ray of hope for women who spent a sizeable chunk of their life surreptitiously looking behind their back, wondering if their buns were becoming too ripe for comfort. It is a known fact that a woman can’t pass by a glass window or any shining exterior and not turn it into a rear-view mirror. And why not? It’s the only way that the annoying thing that follows us everywhere we go, but visible to the rest of the world, shows its cheeky side to us!

Now that it’s official, having disproportionate assets is the new booty – oversized, fleshy buns instead of drooping with low self-esteem – and they are perking up, cocking a snook at conventions. But here lies the catch. Not every woman with a humongous butt has a great future behind her unless it’s perched behind an already successful diva who loves flashing her twins for the frenzied cameras. A booty that she has nurtured to perfection, pushing it beyond its boundaries and raising it to greater heights. Once she’s raised her butt like her own babies, lavishing it with care and attention, like any doting parent on Facebook, she becomes her twins’ number one fan and expects the rest of the world to fall for their charms.

Just like Kim Kardashian, famous for earning her millions doing nothing. 

A Fishy Affair

Like most Indian kids, I was brought up in a family that constantly ‘encouraged’ me to study harder and do well enough to make our relatives jealous. Marriage, love, boyfriends were taboo subjects, so much so that I was convinced that my parents had no intention of getting me married and would make me study for the rest of my wretched life. The only time my Mom did mention marriage was when I refused to eat fish. She’d bemoan my un-Bengali like habits and prophesy that I’d get married to a rice and fish loving typical Bengali boy.   


I did get hitched to a guy who loves his fish as much as he loves me. Since marriage is all about trying to change each other for the ‘better’, I have now evolved into a fish loving person and he has his baigan ka bharta without a murmur of protest.

Over two years of having the freshest seafood of all sizes and shapes from the seas of Australia, so under-spiced that you can taste the salt water that your dish ingested, I consider myself a sort of connoisseur. In fact, the last time when the husband kept the Salmon almost raw, because it was so fresh, I forked it into my mouth without going blue in the face.

Whole Red Snapper

Last week, when Sangeeta Khanna, a friend I admire and whose food blog is the holy grail of healthy eating asked me to join her for a fish degustation lunch hosted by Le Meredien, New Delhi, I promptly accepted her gracious offer.

We were a cosy group of six including Anasuya Basu, Le Meredien’s Director of Marketing Communications, high on shared camaraderie and a belly full of expectations, once we had gone through the menu for our luncheon. The restaurant, Le Belvedere, on the 20th floor of the hotel, gives a panoramic view of Lutyen’s Delhi. Despite the smog, we couldn’t help but admire the view. 

Black Is The New White

Everyone has heard about her, engaged in salacious gossip about her existence but has yet to sight her. She’s like the mythical G-Spot that scores of men have fantasized and written about and have even embarked on expeditions to unearth, but have met with as much success as Christopher Columbus had with discovering India.

In fact, she’s is India’s B-spot.

It is rumoured that Bee vacations in exotic foreign lands like Mauritius, the Cayman Islands and Switzerland; her trips sponsored by her rich benefactors. When she exits the country, she leaves with a blackened reputation and spends months, sometimes years in dark dank chambers to get rid of her ugly tan. According to unnamed sources, B-Spot prefers flying Hawala Airlines.

Now that Indians are finally getting ready for achhe din, they are impatient to relieve Bee of her Non Resident status and want her to come back to her roots. After all she’s India’s wayward Diva whose return will be the much needed Viagra for our limp economy.

As she continues to slither away from the long hands of law, the common man does what he does best – express impotent rage. Surprisingly, she finds firm support from legal experts and leaders who in the recent past had much fun, mocking the previous government for allegedly shielding B-spot and her benefactors. Now that they have been elected, they are singing the same tune as the ones they mocked. With new found power they have transformed into the chivalrous who are now ensuring that Bee gets the Fair and Lovely treatment as they go around town claiming being black is not a criminal offence, holding the protective umbrella to shield her from prying eyes and further tanning.

It’s a not so well-known fact that the elusive B-spot’s desi counterpart Big B is the real McCoy who funds India’s great democracy, where all Political parties rely on her largesse to fund their mammoth rallies, publicity campaigns and chartered flights. If our Politicians expose them, they will end up exposing their doublespeak. After all, laws and taxes are only meant for fools and meant to be flouted by those who create them.

The Homecoming

We were a bunch of school girls fresh off the hook from the tyranny of XIIth board exams, when we first sighted him at a music camp at Nainital. It was hard not to giggle at the antics of this fresh off the plane NRI, trying to live up to the Utopia that nostalgia creates. When we went for treks and long walks, this strange creature would sniff appreciatively every time he spotted a clump of bovine waste he’d look heavenwards and exclaim in his most melodramatic voice – this, my friends is the aroma of Indiaaah! Had it been the age of mobiles, I’m sure he would have taken a selfie with it. Anything and everything; a humble plate of jalebi, the sight of a dilapidated rickshaw would send him into paroxysms.

I guess, he couldn’t contain the excitement of coming back as a tourist to a country he had been in such a hurry to leave. We found him plain annoying. He was the perfect example of what we didn’t want to become.

It’s been three weeks since I came back from Brisbane, a city that was my home away from home for over two years. It was not easy for a hyper Delhiite like me to fall for its quiet charms. A city so laidback that the driver of the city bus will happily stop to give directions to a lost tourist; the customer care executive will engage in a long leisurely chat with a guy looking for a good mobile deal while you look impatiently at the clock. Horror of horrors, no one honks, the raised middle finger is the height of indecency and the most action you’ll get is the sight of drunk kids puking.

I was horrified to be in a city whose markets pull their shutters down by six in the evening. Weekends were worse. You are thrown out of the mall by the time the clock chimes 4 and Sunday evening looks as if everyone is in deep mourning. The food was bland, the meats almost undercooked and my Indian palette was screaming for spices. And I’m not even going to talk about the shock of shelling out over a hundred dollars for a perfectly mediocre meal.

The news channels that covered forest fires, local accidents and inebriated men ramming their cars into private properties made no sense. Things became so bad that I even started missing Arnab’s histrionics! I knew I had to make friends, so I dragged myself to meet-ups and socials and mastered the art of small talk. I even tried mixing up with an expat group that preferred calling itself the network for American women, appalled that Australia is blissfully unaware of the existence of Philly Cheese Steaks.

Fifty Shades of Dust

graphicriver.net

Each house is as cluttered, colourful, messy, freakishly organised as its inhabitants. More often than not, since it’s the female species that takes a psychotic interest in the colour management of the cushions with the carpets, expresses displeasure at the highest decibel level when she discovers a well hydrated toilet seat cover and is far from appreciative of various articles of clothing strewn around the house – let’s conclude for the time being that a home is more an extension of a woman’s personality than a man’s.

Men are a highly evolved species and they know exactly what they want. Unlike a woman, he has accepted that a clean house is a state of mind - all you have to do is close your eyes. He doesn’t break into tears when the maid doesn’t turn up for three days in a row and is perfectly at peace with the unwashed pile of pots and pans and grime stains on the kitchen slab.

It didn’t take him long to realize that the key to happiness is selective blindness.

Unfortunately for the woman, God didn’t just give her eyes but an X-ray vision that can spot dust under the table-lamp just as she’s about to sleep, under piles of books when she’s about to cuddle up with a book, on the blades of the fan facing the ceiling when she’s searching for the meaning of life. The sight of unwashed utensils gives her the sinking feeling. It's as if those smelly pans are not in the sink but on her chest, making it difficult for her to breathe.Try throwing crumpled wrappers and papers on her floors and she'll come charging at you like a bull.


She may be dog-tired, ready to drop off dead, but she’ll ask for a 30-minute grace so she can tidy up the house before she can die. It’s a curse she has to live with. If she’s about to leave for a vacation, she makes sure she leaves behind an immaculately clean house, in case robbers decide to drop in. 


She knows everything we see will turn to dust and has quietly accepted that everything she sees will have dust.

Shut Her Up Before She Starts Getting Ideas

Everyone loves a strong independent woman as long as she doesn’t mind following the rules laid out for her good conduct. It’s like the matrimonial ad, where the handsome, fair, MBA seeks a convent educated, working but homely wife. A smart, attractive working woman earning a handsome salary but seeks permission from her family before she goes and shops for a handbag.

That’s what good upbringing is all about – to listen, obey, and accept whatever comes her way without a whimper of protest. So, when the fresh from college intern joins office, it’s a given that she’ll quietly accept the extra attention her boss lavishes on her. Since she has been made to believe that she’s responsible for everyone’s happiness, she should melt with gratitude when Gupta Uncle’s son stalks her.

She’s sweet, lovely and beautiful as long as she doesn’t turn a man down. All hell breaks loose if she suddenly develops a mind of her own and puts her foot down on her boss’s when his wandering hands land on her lap. He’s shocked that the chit of a girl had the audacity to turn down his affections and makes sure that the ungrateful girl is suitably punished. Look what happens to women who file a sexual harassment case. Her character and her past are dissected and her intentions painted as suspect. After all, no girl from a respectable family will raise a stink until she has ulterior motives. Women from good families do not get raped and if they do, they certainly don’t go to a police station to file an FIR. Instead they swallow the humiliation, trauma and anger to protect their family’s honour.

Why just blame the boss? What about the woman who finds out her husband has been having an affair! In many cases, her first reaction is to blame the other woman for ensnaring a happily married man with her manufactured charms. Badly brought up children, an unkempt house, an unhappy husband are all a woman’s fault.

OMG, It's Cleavage Mahabharata

https://www.indiblogger.in/indipost.php?post=395263

All hell broke loose when Kaurava Times of India (KATTI), Bharat’s most defiled Daily decided to do a cheer-haran of Draupadi Padukone’s cleavage. Given she’s in the entertainment business that requires an actress to reveal her proportionate assets and acting skills with equal zeal, it’s a given that her assets are public property, meant to be leered at by all. Men and women have equal rights to gaze at them including KATTI that has the right to flaunt it on her behalf.

Just like the guy in the Metro who thinks it is his birth right to take candid shots of that girl’s cleavage that pops out when she bends down to pick up her book. In fact, every woman who flaunts her curves in a fitted dress and dares to reveal her legs is giving an open invite to men to come and pay their respects. Walk around town in an attire that displays even a hint of your cleavage and you’ll have a dozen pair of eyes boring through your dress, willing it to fall apart.

Didn’t our history of repeat offences teach you that anything’s that’s not covered invites appreciation of the lowest kind? 

So, when Draupadi wears an outfit that reveals more than just her face, she should expect KATTI to run an OMG slideshow of her cleavage. And if she objects to it, it’s obviously well-timed to garner more publicity for her Fanny.

The Mad Hatters Party

Miss Tee had a life altering experience when she attended her cousin's birthday party.

Disclaimer: The following is based on a true story, though the author may have been liberal in her use of the poetic license.

One of the many revelations that accompany adulthood is a growing appreciation of your parents. It is when you live on your own that you realize that clothes don’t pick themselves off the floor, that bills don’t pay themselves. Our parents have seen some serious shit, literally as well as figuratively.

Let’s give some context: the setting is a pretty little café near North Campus. Paper lanterns and arty mosaics adorn the walls. In the midst of this semi-bourgeois environment, clustered in a corner, a microcosm. It is a birthday party for a newly-minted 5 year-old. The table is encircled with mothers and their volley of children, and in the corner is little ol’ me, my possessions held close to my chest. Even as laughter erupts from the other end, the drooling demon baby seated on the table sends my phone flying from my hands and onto the floor, where it falls with a sickening crunch. There is one behind me, climbing my chair and one across me, chocolate smearing its face like war paint. The scene is strangely reminiscent of a horror film, gurgling laughter and satanic screams, emitted at a volume and pitch that seems disproportionate to the tiny body that is the source. The banshee-child’s friend suddenly starts a hip-hop routine on the floor, at which point its mother runs in, shouting apologies and dragging it off.

The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party is a cakewalk (though why anyone would walk on a cake is beyond me) in comparison. I feel as though all of those women are a little mad, their tired eyes screaming for help, switching between cursorily scolding their children and laughing raucously at one of those Whatsapp jokes.

“But I don’t want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
"Oh, you can’t help that," said the Cat: "we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad."
"How do you know I’m mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn’t have come here.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

Why Nice Guys Come Last

The end of innocence is when you realize that your knight in shining armour was more fiction than reality. Where friendzoned is a stigma worse than a woman running after you with a Rakhi. Where men make you feel guilty for not falling in love with them.

Miss Tee talks about heartbreak and douchebags.

www.troll.me   Image courtesy

Disclaimer: This is not a generalization, but rather an observation borne of some years of life experience, a few of which were spent in the dating circuit.

If I lost a brain cell for every time I’ve heard “nice guys always come last”, I’d be Rahul Gandhi. From whiny posts about the Friendzone to vitriolic rage in the YouTube comments section, females of the human species are frequently made to feel guilty for all the nice guys they reject in favour of apparent douchebags.

Let me clear up something before I’m accused of being a feminazi, or worse, an empowered woman who doesn’t need the validation of a man to live: douche-y people can come from all backgrounds, ethnicities, cultures and yes, genders. There may actually be guys out there who are genuinely nice, and got dumped for someone they perceived as undeserving. However, from overwhelming evidence based on personal experience, I have found the Nice Guy Hypothesis to be faulty. You may think you know a story, but you only know how it ends. So let me start at the beginning.

I grew up, like many girls, on a steady diet of fairy tales and in my naiveté, I “dated” my first boyfriend when I was in middle school. He was the archetypal “nice guy”. Expressive, attentive, given to great displays of generosity. He called every night and even got me flowers on Valentine’s Day. It ended with quite a bang, with yours-truly being declared a “slut” for breaking up with a guy who used guilt as a relationship tactic. I was shamed; a “bitch” that did not deserve him. I felt something was warped in this whole incident, but it took years of perspective to truly understand my first mistake.

Law A: Nice guys, under close observation, are not as nice as they think

Sure, he drove you home, he talked to you till the sun came up, he bought you a promise ring. But how “nice” is he if he threatens to kill you for daring to break up with him? And that’s the problem, right there. The most terrible people raise the most hue and cry when they think they are wronged.

Al-Qaeda poised to launch itself as KFC of Terror Outfits

Courtesy - Google Images

Fugitive Al-Qaeda commander Ayman al-Zawahari announced the formation of a new wing of the feared terrorist group dedicated to waging jihad in the Indian subcontinent. This announcement comes close at the heels of Love-Jehad, a conspiracy waged by Muslim men faking love to get Hindu women to convert to their religion. Dismissing allegations that Muslim men are capable of love, Zawahari said “I call upon all unemployed Muslim men in India to join hands with us and spread hate”. “After all, this is our area of specialization”.

Al-Qaeda that has locations in Kabul, Jalalabad and Kandahar is on an expansion spree and has promised to open its branches in Burma, Kashmir, Bangladesh. Their new branches will offer special privileges like intensive training in duck and hide, hide bomb in garbage cans, how to survive in caves on a rat diet for its members. Their employee of the month will get an all-expense paid trip to Jannat and a night out with 72 virgins. Enquiries regarding the sex of the virgins were met with stoic silence.

Prospective employees have been requested to send their resumes attached to a hand grenade to HR manager Al-Gebra and email their latest unshaven mugshot to publicity and image manager, Al-Bum. Selected candidates will be made to clear stage two of the screening process – spot the drone. Only those who survive will be invited to join this prestigious organisation. Perks include undercover travel to foreign locations.

After losing their Lady Gaga status to ISIS, the organization that specializes in beheading innocent journalists and hiring terrorists with British accents, Al-Qaeda with its many wings hopes to become the KFC of terror outfits. As such only bucket cases enrol to be part of their esteemed organisation.

Al-Coholic, Al-Qaeda’s Spiritual Manager, announced plans to come out with a new fashion line featuring Beloved Leader Osama Laden’s favourite long sleeved, one piece dress that will be available in two colours - dirty and yellowed black. This garment is specially designed to keep Jehadis cool and collected. Anyone who buys more than a dozen Thowbs will be given beloved leader’s porn collection for free.

Janaani, the story of a fearless cop.

This is a story about Shivaji Roye, a fearless cop with a fear of cockroaches, who works for Haryana’s Crime Branch and drinks a lot of adrak chai but without sugar because it’s bad for his figure. Shivaji or Shhh as his wife of 3.8 years often calls him when he talks too much and bitches about his colleagues, is no ordinary cop. He’s sensitive, loves watching romantic movies on TV, hates cricket , loves buying shoes with heels and never refuses to file an FIR. A passionate cook, he often gives his wife, his junior, loads of work so that he can get home first and cook piping hot dinner for her. A few weeks back when he went for a vacation to Mussourie with his wife and his loving mother-in-law, he would wake up every morning in tears. How could he not! The sight of the sun popping out like a glistening egg yolk from behind the mountains was sooo beautiful!

Shivaji had become a cop to make his parents happy. But, instead of blaming them for ruining his life, he dedicated his career in ruining the lives of misogynists that blame women for all offences meted on them and sympathize with the hormonally imbalanced culprits – in other words, the geriatric Khaps. Every week he would go to villages force-feeding chowmein to the custodians of women’s morality. Anyone who dared refuse him was subjected to a heeling experience by Shivaji’s six inch stilettoes and made to read Arundhati Roy’s 69 page essay ‘Algebra of Infinite Injustice’ translated in Hindi.

Other than gastroenteritis, no one had any other complaints. The hormone levels remained the same but the Khaps were now grudgingly accepting that men could be responsible for rapes. Women were still getting killed for honour and lust but they could now die in peace without having to put up with the ignominy of being held responsible for their own deaths. Shivaji was now planning to urge all the Khaps to ditch their pagdis and dhotis for Jeans. He felt, with the right part of the body getting aired, he could usher in winds of change and put an end to love within your Gotra or else die mindsets.

Life was rambling along peacefully like a tractor on mustard fields till one not so fine morning it was toppled over with the news of Munni’s disappearance. Munni, a young spunky girl from Jharsa, had won Shivaji’s heart by tying a Rakhi. She was the sister he never had. Both would often go shopping together followed by golgappas and lots of selfies.

Shivaji was now a man on a mission possible, ruthlessly interrogating Munni’s friends and Facebook friends till he stumbled upon a lead that takes him to the many lanes and bye-lanes of Chandni Chowk and a quick tasty stop at Paranthe wali gali. Just as he was preparing to click photos of the yummy thali with its assortment of chutneys and sabzis, he caught a glimpse of a pair of embroidered jeans that it could only be Munni’s, hanging from the telephone wires overhead. In retrospect, Shivaji thinks that it was part of God’a plan to make his stomach grumble just as he was passing Paranthe wali gali. Had he not made that fateful stop there, he would never had caught Bangaali, the dreaded bride trafficker, who exported Haryanvi brides, a novelty for ineligible bachelors in Best Bengal.

Bharat ek Shauch, No More.

https://www.indiblogger.in/indipost.php?post=385414

 When Shakespeare said ‘all the world’s a stage’, he’d obviously not visited India where the world’s an open air urinal. Strangely, for a country that’s a great believer of covering up its women and misdeeds with a shroud of righteousness, and frowns upon open display of love especially when it’s not approved by parents, we don’t even lift an eyebrow at the sight of bare bottoms along railway tracks. Every open-field, barren stretch, dimly lit by-lane and brick on the wall is opportunity knocking against bursting bladders and aching stomachs, beckoning them to to come and relieve themselves of all their tensions. This special indignity is reserved for our poor who are only treated as humans when elections are round the corner.

It helps that we have more temples than toilets and the few public toilets that we do have are a playground for germs and diseases. Only someone with a death wish will dare use it.

At a time when India was smoothly transitioning from Bharat ek Soch to Bharat ek Shouch, our newly elected PM, Narendra Modi decided to play the party pooper with his clarion call for separate toilets for boys and girls in schools across the country. Now, these are not private schools that urban folks send their children to but the ones where kids die after having mid-day meals. But, if they are lucky to end up with just loose motions, Modi jee will make sure, they’ll not have to run out their Math class and out of their school in search of the nearest field to relieve themselves of their agony.

Mr Modi’s belief that his dream of ‘Swachh Bharat’ will help girls participate in education for a longer period of time and play a larger economic role has been strongly condemned by Khaps who make no distinction between women and buffaloes. Rahul Gandhi, the greatest champion of women’s empowerment has yet to come to terms that his signature theme is being taken away from right under his nose.

True to our Indian ethos that comes up with 10 different different problems for every solution, a tussle has erupted between the Drinking Water & Sanitation Ministry and the Human Resource Development Ministry over who will fund the construction in state-run schools. The government doesn’t have a Corporate Social Irresponsibility fund to draw on. They may approach the Finance Ministry to introduce a cess for tax payers. The DW&S Ministry has humbly approached Ajit Peewar, Maharashtra’s State deputy chief minister, to fill water tanks and not dams with his honourable urine.

Social Media Etiquettes for Dummies

  Image courtesy - http://socialmediasydney.net.au/twitter-trolls-what-is-appropriate-social-media-etiquette/

We are living in an age when we lead dual lives – on and off the Internet, where our carefully projected online presence is way wittier, prettier, happier and has hundreds of good friends we’d rather not meet. It’s hardly surprising considering our single-minded devotion to social media which lets us Photoshop our lives to picture perfection. We’d rather spend hours scrolling up and down assimilating information that we never need, than look up the ceiling and count the cobwebs or get up from the chair to investigate where that burning smell is coming from. And why not! As opposed to our dull and dreary lives, inhabitants of Instagram and Facebook lead a Utopian existence where everyone is always either partying, vacationing, having exotic meals or sitting around tables laden with food and drinks while smiling charmingly at the camera. On the other hand, Twitter is a land of the idealist where everyone has a perfectly clear idea about how governments should be run, policies should be made and how others should lead their lives.

And now that your Mom and her Grandma are flocking to Facebook, sharing vacation pics and calling each other sweetie, it does make sense that we come up with a list of do’s and don’ts on how to conduct yourself on Social Media.

The first cardinal rule that every social media enthusiast must abide by is the belief that you and only you are the centre of the universe. The sole purpose of your friends and followers existence is to be aware of every minute detail of your life and applaud you and your achievements at every given opportunity. If you love me, you have to love my dog, baby, poetry and motivational quotes. Use every given opportunity to flaunt your Googled knowledge, workout regime and don’t forget to post photographs of you reading a book, cycling, trekking and gently wiping the sweat off your face and wait for the avalanche of compliments. If some of your friends and relatives are too busy to take note of your busy life, make sure you tag them. Only a moron has better things to do with his life than take note of your latest achievements!

The more you praise and click like, the more you’ll be praised and liked in return. Also, only those who call you beautiful and gorgeous deserve your admiration in return.

Remember, your life’s aim is to make others envious of your happiness and successes. And if you don’t have much to brag about, fabricate it, for God’s sake!

Don’t be afraid to show your emotional side to the online world and make sure you add as many emoticons and !!!!!! to your ‘feeling angry, hurt and sad :-(’ status updates. Don’t bother with details and deny your friends the opportunity of asking – what happened, kya hua, you okay????? Wait for at least ten minutes and let them stew in their concern before saying ‘nothing’ and keep the mystery intact. Keep conducting these experiments to find out how many are gullible enough to fall for your theatrics.

Why Is The Fair Sex So Unfair?

Courtesy - Google images

 

Ever since man stood straight and ventured out of his cave, he has accused the fairer sex of being unfair. He claims she’s unfair by insisting on being so complicated. He wonders, if she has so many buttons he can push that make her fly off the handle or make her blush and mumble inanities, where the fuck is the instruction manual? He claims he became bald pulling his hair in frustration, wondering why her eyes became moist on their most romantic night and why she laughed so hard when he dropped the gravy all over the couch that she loves adorning with silly cushions and rugs. He was going to join in her laughter but stopped when he saw the maniacal glint in her eyes.

He thinks he’s manly, while she accuses him of behaving like a baby in constant need of her care. But that doesn’t stop her from mothering and fussing over his ‘bad habits’. What she thinks is mothering, he sees it as smothering. What he sees as protective, she sees as suffocating.

She never tires of complaining of his bad memory. But pray, why should he bother remembering when she has maintained a database of all his so called misdeeds. A database with unlimited storage that has no delete button but has an instant recall feature, which incidentally is very handy to leave him speechless in the midst of a heated argument! Just as he’s settling on the couch with Dorritos and beer to watch the most awaited match of the year, she chooses to recall in that annoying quivering voice of hers that fateful day, 17 August 2001, when he was glued to the TV while she was coughing away to glory. She has the memory of an elephant but when he tells her she’s looking like one in that new dress of hers, she springs upon him like a panther.

It’s as if they were born to disagree.

It wasn’t always like this. Once upon a time she was coy and had that ‘you-are-my-hero’ look in her eyes. She didn’t care that the toilet seat was wet, the drain clogged with his hair and the toothpaste cap was always missing. She used to call him the best husband in the world till she started comparing notes with her friends. Damn it, is it my fault that Latika’s husband insists on making the morning tea and gets flowers for her every Thursday? You can’t stop cursing Amish who serenades his girlfriend with poetry! But when you decide to turn the tables on her and gush about Smita’s gorgeous mane and Amisha’s sumptuous Mutton pasanda, she gives you the injured look that gives you no choice but to apologise profusely for your insensitivity.

It takes you some time to discover that while she never says no to your helpful advice and suggestions, she still goes ahead and does it her way. But if you decide to go against her wishes, she’ll sulk and make you feel guilty.

Management Consulting Gets a Makeover

This review by Trisha Ray was commissioned by Sameer Kamat who was kind enough to wait for months and game enough to allow this scathing review to be published.


In a list of things that you would feasibly call ‘wild’, management consulting would rank pretty low, possible after pottery classes. With this prejudice in mind, I was a bit skeptical as I dove into Sameer Kamat’s thriller, Business Doctors: Management Consulting Gone Wild. The premise was intriguing enough. Woody’s Family Business is down in the docks, bleeding money and set to collapse in on itself, when the boss’s wife, Angie suggests an unusual remedy. Enter Michael Schneider, blue-eyed, Armani-clad, cool-headed management consulting wiz. The twist of course is that WFB is a mafia ring- with their fingers in a variety of pies ranging from pornography, to gambling, to marijuana. Schneider faces the unusual challenge of explaining to hard-headed gangsters how to run their business, while trying his best to dodge the mafia boss’ wife’s advances. WFB is something of an institution in the underworld, and even as they crumble, they send shivers down the competition’s spine. The best example of their ruthlessness would be the fact that their initiation ceremony includes a fight till death (or near death), which Schneider suddenly finds himself bang in the middle of. Reluctant at first, he discovers his flair for hatching nefarious schemes- including a series of outrageous jailbreaks, and a mafia boot camp
 
So far so good, but I missed out a key plot point here. The mafia boss’ name is Stephen Woody aka Woody aka Let’s Bring On the Penis Jokes. So many penis jokes, the most churlish of which is the name of the WFB casino…wait for it…Woody’s Pecker *cue adolescent giggles*. All this is at odds with the menacing figure that Woody is supposed to be- a rough, gruff ball of violence packed in a well-tailored suit. Humor is clearly not a strong point, most of which falls into a category I can only describe as dad jokes. The gangsters sometimes came across as Hindi movie clichés.

Where Small Homes Have Large Hearts

 

Google images

They say distance gives you perspective. It’s only when you move away from your parents, do you really start appreciating them. You discover your Mom’s quirks, your Dad’s annoying habits and start looking at everything you took for granted through a different pair of eyes – that of an outsider. Likewise, it was when I spent a summer in the serene suburbs of Chicago, that I realised how chaotic and crazy my life was back in India. Sounds of hawkers selling their wares, kids playing noisily in the neighbourhood, cars honking, ladies gossiping, and Mathur Aunty trying to buy veggies from the 3rd floor of her kothi. These were de rigueur till I encountered the silence of the suburbs. It took me some time to recalibrate myself when I came back to Delhi.

I lived in Delhi almost all my life, discovering the city through its many neighbourhoods we lived in. Each had its distinct charm, confused architecture, a Shambhu bhaiya (the much in demand MTLNL linesman) and a dusty kirana store – the favourite haunt of local kids for lozenges, nimbu soda and potato crisps.

In Delhi, you can calculate the middle class factor of each locality simply by observing its residents. The posher the locality, the rarer the sighting of their inhabitants who are either too busy or bored to be seen outside mixing with the hoi polloi. Hoi polloi are usually the ayahs huddled together at parks while the kids in their care scream like banshees. On their way back they will stop at Super Max grocers to pick up Quinoa for memsahib who’s always on a diet, unlike her middle class counterpart, a queer combination of fed-up and well-fed.

The avenues are wide yet empty. Each house grand and impeccably decorated and maintained by the many servants. Yet its occupants preferring to spend time outside its comforts either earning money or spending it.

The cattle class of Delhi doesn’t let its cramped accommodation deter it from enjoying life to the fullest and loves spreading itself out in the lanes and by-lanes outside their houses. It’s here you get to witness the true spirit of Delhi in its thriving gali culture. As you meander through narrow passages, hopping adroitly over puddles of water and narrowly missing stepping on dog poop, you see elderly ladies sunning themselves on charpais, gossiping while shelling peas with practised ease. Their daughters-in-law keeping the house spic and span by emptying all the rubbish outside. One look at the balcony and the rows of drying clothes vying for space with huge vats of pickles and you know the colours Sharma jee prefers for his undies.

Every hour of the day has its novelty. The loud clanging of the spatula on the iron griddle announces the arrival of the chhole bhature wala. The sing-song tune of Ramu sabziwala is the cue for the ladies to come rushing out in their nightie chunnies and start haggling aggressively. Come evening and it’s time for chaat. The men stare enviously at the gol-gappe wala surrounded by a bevy of women of all shapes and sizes screaming, bhaiya, aur aur aur!

The air outside is a heady mix of whistling pressure cookers, blaring televisions and impatient hormones exchanging furtive glances as they pace up and down their verandas clutching on to their textbook for safety from Mom’s inquisitiveness.

Even though the labyrinth of lanes and by lanes have no names, you can always trust your local taxi to find its way. Why bother naming roads when they can take on the personality of their quirky residents and acquire weird titles. All you need to say is Gol Aunty wali gali (the lady famous for her weight and her fetish for cleaning her courtyard with a hosepipe twice a day) and the driver will be there honking right outside your door.

When Beauty Comes At A Price.

Courtesy - Google images

Back in India, a visit to the salon meant being plied with concern for my thinning hair, calloused feet or my unwhitened skin. I’d go into a daze as the ‘beauty expert’ would wax eloquent about the benefits of Morocco returned sea-kelp that would have my pores break into an aria or the ultra-luxe herbal holistic pedicure that would make my feet soft as a baby’s bum.

I get it. It’s your job to make me feel ugly and it’s my job to dig deep into my pocket to have you beautify me. After all discontent is the mother of all enterprise. Imagine, if women one day suddenly decide to be content with their body size, skin tone, wrinkles, greying hair, and the size and shape of their nose and breasts, entire industries would collapse!

Fortunately for the beauty industry, most of us are rarely happy with what we have. We are all waiting to be lighter, thinner, softer, shinier, clearer, spotless versions of ourselves. It helps that we are constantly bombarded with images of women Photoshopped to perfection.

We can thank our lucky stars that we live in a world where there’s a fairy godmother waiting to wave her magic wand for every Cinderella distress. In fact, she’s so earnest that even if we’re perfectly happy with our reflection in the mirror, she will take out her magnifying glass to make us feel terrible about our sun-spots, dark-underarms, not so taut skin and hair that doesn’t glow like a 40W bulb. She comes with an array of sparkly bottles and jars that promise us a happily ever after with skin pumped with vitamins and minerals whose names we can’t pronounce. All we need is a dollop of that “Sea of Spa Black mud shampoo Enriched with Obliphica Oil” to transform our shamefully dry hair to salon perfect bouncy tresses. What’s more, with our underarms smelling like roses and skin fairer than your judgement, we also get to land the choicest of jobs and men.

Who doesn’t want happiness that can be bought over the counter, that our mundane jobs, demanding family and an exhausting schedule seldom provide!

But trust these doomsayers to deny us our little joys. As if knowing that millions of monkeys were stuffed with lipsticks before they were declared safe for womankind’s lips was not enough, we have to put up with annoying findings that rubbish the tall claims these potted miracles make. It’s distressing to know that it’s our shampoo that’s causing our hair to fall and hair dyes are carcinogenic. The toner that claims to deep cleanse is in reality making our pores look like moon’s craters. The box of cornflakes that promised us Lara Dutta’s waist was simply bluffing its way to the cash registers. Why, just the other day I broke down into tears when I read that the expensive creams I had been using to look like the 20-year old promoting it was in reality as ordinary as the modestly priced over-the-counter moisturize!

Another study suggests the habitual use of facial moisturizing creams and lotions is not only unnecessary, they could be doing skin more harm than good. Most creams simply sit on the surface of our face, encasing it in a layer of cream that gradually blocks pores and glands, and prevents them from functioning efficiently. In fact, we are better off simply increasing our water intake.

We are filled with disgust when we discover that our tube of exfoliant that promised us dewy fresh skin in reality contains plastic beads which in turn is contaminating our water bodies. It makes us wonder what stops manufacturers from using natural ingredients like apricot kernels like they used to!

Adam and Eve: The True Story

He is Doctoratlarge,Twitter's most controversial tweleb. Feminist hating, boobs loving, yet utterly sensitive - he's bitter, he's sweet and scathingly honest. He may have his fair share of worshipers and haters but everyone will agree that there's no one like him. A practicing Doctor, he sketches, philosophizes and waxes eloquent on his blog Bittersweet Pills. 

He unleashes his wicked sense of humour in this retelling of world's oldest story - Adam and Eve.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Year: 50,000 BC. Setting: Eden, the garden of Paradise. And Eve is sitting beside a lovely deep blue lake with deep blue mountains silhouetted by the rising sun in the distance. A mild, salubrious breeze is blowing, bringing the sweet mixed scent of a million different perpetually blooming flowers to her nostrils. The grass is as green as envy, and as soft as the air. In fact, everything, including Eve herself, is very beautiful – more beautiful than everything else in the Universe. And yet, Eve is not happy. In fact, she is downright sad.

The less charitable among the readers will immediately say that that’s typically like a woman – to be unhappy, even when everything around her is perfect. But don’t be so hasty, gentle reader, to condemn her. She has every reason to be unhappy. And the reason for her unhappiness was the one person in the world who meant everything to her – Adam. And he meant everything to her, because he was the only man in the whole wide world.

Eve wanted to be with Adam always. She wanted to walk besides him, stealing ardent glances upon his rugged, handsome face. She wanted to hear him speak lyrically about the unspeakable beauty of Paradise in his deep, mellifluous voice. She wanted to comb his thick unruly hair with her dainty fingers, to see him childishly exult in his victory as he outraced her swimming in the deep lake. She wanted him to leap up in the air to pluck out the sweetest fruits off the trees, which were always to be found on the highest branches.

But to do all these things, Adam had to be around her. And that is why beautiful Eve was sad. Because Adam showed absolutely no interest in doing all these things with her. In fact, he behaved as if her very presence in the Paradise was an inexplicable piece of mild nuisance, which he had to just shrug and put up with.

He was much happier spending his time with the dumb brutes of paradise – cuddling the wolf puppies, tousling the majestic mane of the lion, racing with the swift stallions on the wide grassy meadows. But most of all, he liked to run around with the apes. Disgusting creatures these apes were! Always running mischievously around, jumping from tree to tree, often startling her with their sudden leaps close to her, and sometimes even daring to pull her lovely flowing tresses.

Adam and the apes played several games together, the whole day long. But their favorite game was with that something which was shaped like a moon. Adam had fashioned the thing using some thick leaves and tying it all together with some thick supple roots. The apes had helped him to erect a pair of poles on each end of a fairly large grassy field. The apes then divided themselves into two groups and each group tried to kick the ball in between the poles at their opponents’ end of the field. The team lead by Adam they called Man United, and the other group of apes was called Ape United. They kept at this game for hours, kicking the ball and each other, pushing, shoving, snarling and growling – and all the while thoroughly enjoying themselves. Eve found all this completely silly of course, but when she expressed her thoughts to Adam, he just said that it was a man thing which she won’t understand. He also tried to explain something which he called the “Offside rule” to her, and became surprisingly irritated when she failed to grasp it.

Eve would’ve been desperately lonely and bored, were it not for dear Serpent. Serpent was a rather thin and ugly looking fellow, who waddled rather than walked on a crooked pair of legs. But he had some agreeable qualities, chief of which was that he could sit with Eve for hours, listening to her complaining about how little attention Adam paid her. He also climbed the trees and brought her the highest, sweetest fruits to eat. In fact, she found him to be a really nice guy.

“Oh, thanks for the rose Serpent. It’s so lovely!” She’d say in her sweet voice. “Would you mind sticking it into my hair? Thank you. You’re such a sweet fellow. You care for me so much. I wish, Adam cared even half as much as you care for me. In fact, he doesn’t even take care of himself. His hair is always an untangled mess. And he just about puts on any leaf he can lay his hand on, not caring whether it suits him or not.”

While Eve thus presumed that Serpent was content to be friendzoned by her, Serpent of course had a completely different view of the matter. He was completely in love with Eve, and nurtured a secret desire to replace Adam in her affections. He thought that by paying attention to her and taking care of all her little needs and fancies, he would finally be able to impress upon her that he was a much better choice than thoughtless, careless, stupid Adam. He harboured such hopes for many, many months, until one day, Lucifer the devil, cleared his mind of such silly misconceptions. Lucifer was the bad guy of the Universe, of course – but like all bad guys, he had a soft corner for a nice guy who was obviously going to be heartbroken over a girl who was way above his league. So one day he took Serpent aside and after a long heart to heart talk over a bottle of wine (an intoxicating liquid invented by Lucifer himself), he was able to convince Serpent that his present course of action was as likely to win Eve for him as the Sun was likely to come up in the night. Serpent of course, burst into tears, like any nice guy does on having his heart broken.

“There, there, my friend,” Lucifer soothed him. “Don’t worry. I’m your friend. I’ll help you get Eve. But you’ve got to do just what I say. Do you know about the forbidden tree?”

“Yes. All creatures are forbidden to eat its fruit”

“Exactly. Now I want you to convince Eve to eat the forbidden fruit. Tell her that it will make her skin glow even more and make her look even more beautiful.”

“But what will that achieve?”

Stop trying to educate Sex!

Image courtesy -iTricks.com

Our esteemed Health Minister, Dr Harsh Vardhan is of the opinion that sex education needs to be banned in schools. It may be his personal belief but I publicly agree with him.

Not even in his wildest dreams had Dr Vardhan imagined that someone would actually want to read his clean musings on dirty sex on his personal website. But that’s what people do when you are in the limelight. They start digging out old dirt in search of juicy nuggets from the past. And now his closed mind is out in the open.

As an adarsh nari who fakes headaches because she thinks sex is so chhee chhee, I completely get our newly appointed Health Minister’s sentiments. Sex has no business getting educated. It’s best left as it is – in the dark, behind closed doors, misunderstood, misused and manipulated for personal gains. In fact, sex should be treated the way women should have been in the first place – kept in the dark, and preferably in bondage. Look what education turned them into – out of control banshees, refusing to be oppressed and demanding respect - in other words, a feminist! Tell me, do we need another Frankenstein of our own making rearing its educated head?

Same goes for our children. It is unacceptable that they be burdened with knowledge that doesn’t help them pursue their parents’ dream of becoming a Nobel Laureate. It’s better for their well-being that they continue to believe that their parents had nothing to do with their conception and they were born through cross-pollination.

If our young are being troubled by hormones that make them get unholy feelings and do hanky-panky with the opposite sex, they should simply lie on their back and point their toes towards the ceiling.

That’s why one can’t help but admire the genius of Dr Harsh Vardhan for recommending that Yoga be made compulsory in schools. Look how well it has worked for Baba Ramdev! All he had to do was sit still and twitch his stomach muscles violently to repel Rakhi Sawant’s amorous designs on him.

Since Dr Vardhan’s new found modern views are meant only for public consumption to give their wagging tongues a rest, he has clarified that sex can be educated but not with crudity and graphic representation of culturally objectionable symbols . It goes against the very ethos of Indian culture that believes in keeping mum about sex because we are all so busy doing it. How else can you explain our population that continues to grow by leaps and bounds every day!

The case of the missing Humshakals

This is a case that has robbed Delhi Police of its sleep. It all started with a phone call from Rajya Sabha MP Mahendra Prasad’s Number 4, Tughlaq Road bungalow to report the missing twins. They had been last spotted in his garden, nestled comfortably next to each other. But the next morning they were nowhere to be seen. It was as if they had disappeared into thin air.
 
They were a family of nine and now there were seven. Their happiness now in past tense. “It now raises serious questions about the security of the remaining seven,” said one of the officers on duty. “But we are Delhi Police, we will always be with you, for you, after our tea break.”

The Police has deployed its sharpest investigators to scour the crime scene. Fingerprints were lifted from the garden and the backyard to establish the path that kidnappers might have taken. The footprints, leading up the scene of crime were approximately six inches and seem to be of a person with childlike feet.

The fingerprints and footprints that were lifted from the spot have been sent to the forensics department for examination. CCTV footage from outside the MP’s bungalow and his backyard will also be examined, police said.

The investigating officers have been asked to be on their toes till the forensic report comes out. They have approached Baba Ramdev to achieve this ‘impossible feet’. An officer on condition of anonymity has confessed that they have reached a dead-end since the remaining family members who also happen to be eyewitnesses to the crime are refusing to talk with the investigating team. We now have reasons to suspect their involvement and might subject them to a polygraph test.

It has been learnt from credible sources that the Police conducted a midnight raid in the nearby sabzi mandi based on an anonymous tip-off only to return empty handed. MP Mahendra Prasad is in mourning and was last seen resting under the tree, wiping his tears.

Is it time to RIP blogs?

I’m what they call a veteran blogger. It’s a kinder term for Aunty. I was sacrificed at the altar of Auntydom barely a few months after I’d swirled my toes before jumping headlong into the pool called blogosphere. Four years into blogging and I now realize why the sobriquet of a veteran was thrust on me. Most blogs do not survive beyond a year or two. They flap around, create a lot of splash before they sink to the bottom with exhaustion.

It’s not easy to maintain a blog. Besides having the ability to articulate your thoughts with tolerable vocabulary combined with net savviness, you have to be your own editor, PR and publicity manager. You cannot sit on your high throne and expect readers to land at your doorstep, drawn to your “brilliance”. You have to venture out and seduce them and continue to tantalize them with quality stuff to make sure they do not leave in search for meaner and greener pastures. It’s not like a marriage where once you’ve said I do, you live happily ever after with your can of beer, iPhone and cricket. You have to constantly work out those grey cells, continue reinventing yourself, occasionally shock and challenge the living daylights out of your readers with your unorthodox views and lull them into believing you’re the best thing that ever happened to them.

To cut it short, blogging is a lot of hard work. Add to that the allure of sexy young nymphets like Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Pinterest, Tumblr and their sundry cousins that promise you instant orgasmic fame without demanding too much of your time, commitment and grammar, it gets even tougher to stay faithful to Srimati Blogeshwari. Little wonder the restless and the impatient are happy to file for divorce, preferring the comfort of friends with benefits.

Like any other medium, blogosphere’s natural selection ensures that only the fittest survive. Like any other relationship, your blog demands your attention and love. You either chicken out or give it your all. It takes a talented, motivated individual to maintain a successful blog.

For most of us, blogging is not just our personal space where we share our thoughts with like-minded people, rant about issues that bother us, or make others laugh with anecdotes from our life. It’s our passion, something that gives meaning to our lives and makes us believe that, in some insignificant way, we are making a difference is someone else’s life. You start from scratch, with no ‘useful’ contacts, relying solely on your talent and dedication, reach out to thousands and hope what you have to say resonates for a while.

Roaring Tiger, Crouching wife.

Love not only comes with terms and conditions, it also has this annoying habit of subjecting us to surprise tests from time to time to check the sincerity of our emotions. Like the time when your man gets to see you the morning after a night of revelry and doesn't flinch when he discovers the woman of his dreams looking like a nightmare and demanding coffee hoarsely for her splitting headache. He convinces himself beauty is skin-deep as she bloats, shrinks, bloats again and creates a stink when she can't fit in her old pair of jeans anymore. On the contrary, to give her company, he sportingly grows a beer belly and insists on wearing his pants low and his belt lower.

Time is a revelation and so is she. Her mood swings make him quake with terror, decoding her brooding silences becomes his life’s biggest challenge. As they unravel each other layer by layer, they experience a myriad of emotions. She remembers everything that he prefers to forget. What's important to him is unimportant to her. Together they learn words like adjustment, compromise and giving each other space.

But that’s what love is all about, isn’t it? Embracing each other’s best and tolerating the rest!

She nags because his tomorrow never comes. Like the time he'd promised to fix the airy gaps in the bathroom windows and took six months to get into a mood that felt right. Her right mood is always complaining of a headache and he complains that everything but him is her priority.

Little wonder, marriage is not meant for the faint-hearted.

It starts off as a gentle purr and before she can adjust the volume levels, he begins to roar. It takes her by surprise. As she tosses on the bed, she tries to decode its hidden subtexts. Is it me or is it him? At first, she tries to dismiss it as a phase that too shall pass. It does but comes back louder and so strong that she crouches in a corner with her pillow for comfort.

Oh my god, my husband is a tiger in bed!

The Vigil- Stories of love, prejudice, greed and life

This review by Trisha Ray is a part of Readers Cosmos Book Review Programme. You can follow them on Twitter for interesting book updates and free books.

A book of short stories is often a difficult feat to pull off. The reader usually comes away with lasting impressions (if any) of only a few of the numerous tales in a compilation. However, Gita V Reddy has written some really brilliant and memorable stories. We get glimpses into the lives of vibrant, fleshed-out characters, animated by desires and motives that we all can understand.

The author explores the many facets of life- choices and consequences, heartbreak, longing, chaos, doubt, friendships and family. Some stories will leave you smiling; others may even elicit an “Amen”.

Many of her stories have a strong feminist theme, but for the most part each one is distinct.

Four friends from Art school - Amit, Smriti, Yashwant and Shree, having achieved varying levels of success, meet one weekend to determine whose skill is the most “superior”. They all come away from the experience, irreversibly changed. The story unexpectedly turns into a philosophical musing on the purpose of life and what drives creative endeavours. The premise is brilliant, but fails to leave a lasting impression, being limited by the format of a short story.

The wife of a famous actor finds herself in a precarious position as she struggles with her husband’s deteriorating mental state. Devika dives into an intricate game of chess with her husband, as she tries desperately to keep his sanity intact. The twist ending is a slightly clichéd but still heart-warming testament to selfless love.

Sita calls out desperately to her mother, as she loses her children to the man she had once loved. We get a new perspective on the epic Ramayana, detailing the series of events that took place after the triumphant return from Lanka that culminated in Sita’s death. Sita bemoans the loss of her Ram, a man capable of great love and generosity to Rama Chandra, the dutiful king, who prioritises his subjects over all else. She finds that nothing can ever be the same as it was in the happy early days of the exile. This theme is without doubt very fashionable now, but discussions of strong female characters destroyed by “honour” and bigotry are needed in modern discourse.