Have We Let Our Children Down?

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You don't realise how deeply you are capable of loving till you have your own child. As an adult who’s seen the world that can be kind and cruel, soft and harsh, cheerful and sinister, you want to shelter them from the worst and experience the best humanity has to offer. You want their childhood to be a cherished memory and not a nightmare.

So, when you read about a boy, all of 7, killed brutally for resisting sexual advances of a crazed man inside the safe confines of his school, your heart bleeds. You are filled with rage at the school for taking safety of your most precious so casually. You grieve for the parents who will be left with a gaping hole in their heart for the rest of their lives.

But the first thought that engulfs any parent is – what if it were my own child! I was living in Brisbane, and my daughter in Delhi when the Nirbhaya incident sent chills down our spine. It also brought out my worst fears. As much as I hated myself for doing it, I would ask her to be home by evening, carry a Swiss Knife with her at all times and my insides would turn into a gnawing jelly of anxiety, every time she wouldn’t pick up the phone.

Every time a child gets sexually assaulted or worse killed, we are overcome with helpless rage. It was appalling to find out that Ryan International has toilet facilities shared by students and the non-teaching staff including drivers and conductors. Children are easy targets for deviants. Also it's a known fact that paedophiles seek employment/engagement in organisations where they are in close proximity with children. It’s baffling that the school didn’t bother with background checks before hiring the non-teaching staff.

It is a colossal tragedy of our times that sexual abuse of children is not given the importance it deserves. It is either shrouded in complicit silence or the perpetrator is let off with a reprimand. The bus conductor who murdered Pradyuman allegedly had a history of sexual misdemeanours. Yet the school that dismissed him just a few months back didn’t think it was important to file a police complaint.

As a nation whose track record of safety for its citizens is far from exemplary, we still do not have a national database of sexual offenders. It’s not as if demands for one have not been raised before but our outrage that follows reports of sexual abuse in schools has the attention span of an amoeba.

The Delhi Police has chalked out a plan of action to look into the issue of security of children in schools following the Ryan incident. I am sure the Haryana government will also come up with their own list of rules and regulations for schools to follow. But simply drafting hurriedly made rules for children’s safety is not enough. If new laws and rules could keep us safe, no woman would be afraid to step out in the dark, no man would think twice before stopping to a take a bleeding accident victim to the hospital, no rapist will have the audacity to rape again and again.

Police background checks become just a useless piece paper when you know that the police chowki will simply sign the form without any physical verification for a mere 500 Rs. Regulations are of no use if the school lacks the sincerity to implement them.

One single lapse is all a predator needs to slip through the safety net.

So how do we keep our children safe?

No One Knows Us Better Than Our Bed

A Bed Is Not Just a Bed, Its Much More

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When I was growing up, the bed in our house was not just a place where we retired to at the end of a long day. It was something that became what you wanted it to be – an easy chair, a couch, a coffee table, a study table or an oasis you needed to revive your soul. It hosts all the stages of the theatre of your life – as a baby in your mother’s lap, as a child seeking refuge from reality, as a lover discovering intimacy, as a couple going through the highs and lows together, as a person well-lived on his last journey.

During my growing up years, it would turn into a bat cave on hot summery afternoons. All I had to do was crawl under it and into my world of make-believe. Behind the spider-web curtain was my kingdom that no one could invade. When I would get bored of conjuring up my own fantasies, I would turn into a dead log on the bed. The book in my hand would transport me to a world where a kind old man helped kids in trouble, but not before he served them lemonade and cakes.

When my cousins would visit us during the summer break, it would turn into our adda corner. All of us stuck to each other like glue, talking about god-knows-what till our Moms’ voices calling out for us would break our non-stop chatter. It was where I spent hours coochie-cooing to my crush as he gazed at me dumb-struck by my beauty ; the tall dark handsome hero who smiled once every fortnight gave me asthmatic attacks as he swooped me into his arms. Sadly I’d have to shoo him away when my Mom caught my glazed eyes and silly grin look.

Clutching my cramped with anxiety stomach just the day before the exam, the heart sinking deeper because my syllabus was far from finished. Hugging the pillow as I listened to numbers requested by lovelorn boys for their crush on the radio and hoping someday someone would also dedicate a song to me. Sleepless nights, silent cries, dreamy sighs – my bed had seen it all. For me it was a place where I found and lost myself again and again.

I found out much later in life that it was not just me with an umbilical connection to my bed. Rather, laying on bed at awkward angles with legs propped up on the wall while philosophising about the purpose of your life is a national passion. RayMan’s favourite anecdote from his hostel days is when one of the parents came looking for their son and found instead a heap of skinny boys in their bare necessities (or not) stacked on each other.

Finding Me in Us

We have both found the ‘I’ in us and are not letting go of it. 

Every couple has their favourite chapter of their life they love regaling their friends with. Over the years their story-telling skills reach legendary proportions. They constantly scold each other for having missed the punchlines, laugh the loudest at their own jokes and pat themselves on their backs for having mesmerised their guests with their scintillating stories unmindful of their glazed eyes and loud yawns.

When they run out of friends, they wait for their kids to get married. Ask any daughter-in-law and she’ll agree, when-we-were-young-and-fabulous stories repeat themselves more often than history.

We have ours too and our favourite one goes back to our just married days. At that time we were two individuals with likes and dislikes as mismatched as Pahlaj Nihlani and rest of India’s views on censorship. The tea fanatic in him was appalled that his brand new mate for life couldn’t stand the sight of tea and preferred a glass of milk instead. The poor guy had envisioned both of us sipping tea and exchanging life’s philosophies with the setting sun. I was the Rajmah, bharta girl and he was the potoler-dalna, machher jhol guy.

Since we were in no mood to push our tastebuds out of their comfort zones, we’d cook our own meals. It didn’t help that we fell in love with each at different points of time. I mean when you are in love, don’t you partly surrender your ego and partly embrace his while he tch thchs at your temper tantrums?

He the rice eater would fix a 3 course meal in our dingy kitchen of our barsati half-submerged in his sweat-pool. Me, the roti girl would wonder if married life was about rolling amoeba shaped chappatis after a long day at work.

I think it was me who caved in first because I still remember how long and loud my Maa laughed when I told her I’d just had roti with aloo-posto. [To the uninformed, this is close to sacrilege]

As time progressed, our love matured from the tumultuous river gushing down the hills to its serene and deep version meandering through the plains. We embraced each other’s passions and peeves (most of them) while discovering new ones together. While we still stuck to our rice and roti ways, he learnt to appreciate chanaa masala with a hint of tanginess and I started cooking machh, chochoris and sukto during the weekend that we both ate with relish.

We’d cherish our us-time even if it meant watching a Hindi movie with me he didn’t quite fancy.

Not anymore.

For someone whose life revolved around her family and work suddenly decided she was missing the woman shorn of the roles of a mother, wife, daughter and sister. So I started thinking of things that made just me happy. It helped that I had just left my job with a fair bit of coercion from RayMan. With leisure time on hand I was now actively pursuing interests that I never had the time for.

'Tis The Age Of Designer Baby Names

Nobody names their kid Neha anymore. Yet, if I were to stand at the Rajiv Metro Chowk station and scream Nehaaaaaaaa, at least 67 women of all shapes and sizes will turn around and come running towards me. Add Mamta, Sanjay, Vineet, Preeti to that list. They are all part of a generation whose parents didn’t break into a sweat while naming their offspring. The ones that fancied themselves as ‘modern’, preferred Silky, Tina, Sunny, Honey, Bunny. The sanskari ones left the onus on the grandparents, who in turn would consult their family pandit, astrological charts and name the unsuspecting baby after their favourite God. So, if you had a Janardana, Bhavamochani, Dayanidhi in your class, you knew who to blame for their lifelong misery.

New age parents are different. Not only do they start reading up books on all the possible diseases their yet to be born baby can get, the mother prefers going on a gluten free, seed only diet to birth a conscientious future citizen of the world. Wiser from their own experience of being part of a flock, the Sameers, Sonias and Vineetas flick through pages and pages of ‘Unusual baby names’. Because their worldview transcends cultural and geographical barriers, Zeus it is for their baby who’s meant to rule the world. Once Zeus Chopra waddles to playschool, he meets Awesome Khare who loves peeing in his pants, much to the chagrin of the school ayah, Baby. Then there is Key-nah, who he is petrified of. The last time he tried to sneak a biscuit from her tiffin box, she knocked two of his milk teeth off. Muffin Malhotra has a constantly running nose that he loves wiping on an unsuspecting shoulder.

Interestingly, this penchant for giving their babies WTF names was once limited to snooty, good for nothing Bengalis. So, it’s not unusual run into a Canopy Chowdhury or Renaissance Roy at the local Durga Pujo and a Missile Dutta who you played ludo with when you were all of 10. Their pet names are even worse. The kind you can blackmail them with to extract state secrets and nuclear codes. So, if a Bongshell in a moment of tenderness confides in you that her parents call her Punchkee, it’s time for you to start looking for a ring.

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.

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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.

Why Is The Fair Sex So Unfair?

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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.

Where Small Homes Have Large Hearts

 

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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.

Stop trying to educate Sex!

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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!

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!

Please, don’t be nice, be yourself

I feel uncomfortable when someone calls me nice. It’s not as if I have something against being likeable. It’s just that the connotations associated with this tag have altered drastically over the last few years. This sobriquet is mostly reserved for someone who agrees with our perception we have of our own fabulousness. So, someone who rarely disagrees with us and has only good things to say is considered nice.

Truth be told, niceness these days has rarely anything to do with the individual and his/her character or the lack of it. It has more to do with how he/she makes us feel about ourselves.

The same holds true for us. In our desire to be liked, we often refrain from saying what we feel. So, when a friend shares her latest literary masterpiece that reads more like the scribbling of a six year old, or invites us to her brand new home that’s decorated like the house of horrors, we’d rather gush politely than blurt out that we’ve yet to see anything worse. Of course not. That’s harsh and we don’t want to come across as judgmental, do we?

I understand that the idea is to not hurt someone else's feelings even if we didn't agree with them. So we’ll continue praising Sneha Aunt’s snazzy new hairdo even if it makes her look like Paresh Rawal and insist that our tone-deaf cousin sings just like Lata Mangeshkar.

We want to be nice so that others are nice to us in return.

Where’s my Mills and Boon Hero?

Courtesy - Guardian.com

Mills and Boons made an appearance in my life around the same time my parents discovered their daughter’s rebellious streak. It started with saying no to pig-tails, frilly-frocks and the hair oil my Mom lovingly plastered my hair with and progressed to a war of egos. It was a phase of life that also came with the realisation that boys were not that disgusting and annoying and could make me blush with their strange glances. I was afflicted with an awareness that made me check myself in the mirror again and again, hoping that the gawky girl staring back at me would transform into a comely maiden capable of making men collapse with ecstasy with just a flick of her hair.

For me, it was a natural progression from Nancy Drew and Agatha Christie. Mills and Boons was the holy grail of romance that teleported me to the world of Virginia as she sat beside Damien Savage, his chiselled, tanned features expressionless, his deep-blue eyes hidden behind Versace sunglasses. Still shocked at the intensity of her physical reaction to him, Virginia longed to be undressed by him; to feel his skin against hers … As she moved her body closer, her leg brushing his muscular thigh, she felt his heat.

Many tiny explosions of pain later, where Virginia gets kissed, mauled and manages to see all the stars and constellations, Damien the brute, who treats her like his sex slave admits that he’d been in love with her from Page 5 but took 300 pages to confess so that the author could pay for her vacation in the Bahamas.

I was hopelessly lost in the world of the lean and hard muscled hero, who was tough, brooding, single and insanely wealthy. His bed would unvaryingly have black satin sheets, which the object of his lust would discover on page 65. But underneath that scowling, tough as a coconut shell demeanour lay a softie, tortured by a secret past, waiting to be reformed by the slavish love of a virginal damsel with long legs and cascading blond hair.

Didn’t we all wait breathlessly for the dashing Damien Savage with a taut torso and tanned arms to sweep us off our feet, wilfully ignoring the awkward advances of smelly Shomit and buck-teethed Manish! How could we, they were nowhere near the fantasy we’d fallen in love with! Instead we chose to have a boulder sized crush on the unattainable school hottie, who couldn’t be bothered by our presence. We loved wallowing in misery because that’s what Virginia would have done!

Arranged by parents, loved by choice

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When women meet for the first time, they immediately get down to the business of knowing each other intimately by asking uncomfortable questions. Give us ten minutes and we’re ready to file vital information about the square feet area of your apartment, your dog’s dietary preferences, your child’s academic records of the past 10 years and the name of the nurse who pacified your Mom while she was trying to pop you out. Men on the other hand can be friends for months and still be content with knowing just each other’s first names. They don’t need to know a person’s background to decide whether they will like or ignore them.

If you are married, you can bet your ass that by the time you’ve sipped your tea and are about to reach out for the Britannia Bourbon, the conversation will typically veer towards your marriage and whether it was love or arranged. This question is usually popped after it has been ascertained by clever means how much older or younger you are than what their mental math suggested.

In India, we are used to our parents make most decisions on our behalf, thanks to their inherent faith in our capability to do nothing right. So, we find it perfectly normal when they line up a list of eligible life-mates for us, factoring in position of the planets at the time of his birth, his braggability factor, bank balance and not just his qualifications and social standing but also that of his parents and their ancestors. If you are a girl, it’s understood that if you’re not fair, beautiful, convent educated, working but homely, you have no business getting hitched.

With such a stringent screening process, how can we expect anything but a prized catch to land in our laps! And who has the time to look for a guy to fall in love with when we’re too busy either disappointing our parents or making them proud.

Don’t we all want a spouse who fulfils our family’s and their Pandit jee’s expectations!

Granted that in a love match you get to tie the knot with your own boyfriend but in an arranged match you get to marry someone else’s. The only difference between a love and an arranged match is Cupid’s timing – he either strikes you before or after you marry. But we all get the same time, that is the rest of our lives to fall out of love and discover, everything you found endearing about your spouse was merely a hallucination.

The not so Immaculate Conception

It’s how we define good news defines the various stages of our life. We all start as our parent’s good news and continue being the harbinger of good news in their life. After all, this is the sole purpose of our lives, to be our neighbour’s envy and parent’s pride! It’s what good news is all about, to induce various shades of envy in people who mean little or nothing to us.

As a trying-to-be-funny-blogger once said – one wo/man’s good news is another wo/man’s cause for acidity.

There comes a stage in our life when we fall in love and get married (not necessarily in that order). In India, once you’re married, your sex-life becomes a matter of public discussion. Whether it’s your colleagues commenting on the dark circles under your eyes, or the snide comments the hickey on your neck invites or the knowing look in your friend’s eyes as she surveys your expanding décolletage – your bedroom antics become the source of entertainment for one and all. As the months turn into years, your love turns into a responsibility to keep the family lineage alive. If you dare ignore it, everyone you know and might not know takes it upon themselves to constantly remind you of your failure to contribute to the world’s exploding population. And then one fine day you’re so fed up that you walk up to your husband and say – Darling, let’s do it, I’m ovulating.

So, when you are finally ready to make the announcement, it’s news so good that it doesn’t give acidity to others but you – an acidity that doesn’t last a couple of hours but nine whole months!

When I first held the lab test report confirming my pregnancy, my hands were trembling with joy. Yay! We were finally going to have our own baby, who will be only too glad to take on the responsibility of becoming the caretaker of our joy. Phew! What a relief.

I celebrated it with a neat little puke in the corner.

It’s Love, Stupid!

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There’s an imbecile in all of us, dying to come out at the first hint of love. My first brush with the incredible stupidity much in love couples display was as a 10 year old on a summer trip to Mount Abu. It was one not so fine morning, when we stepped into the sightseeing bus crammed with eager tourists armed with cameras and Uncle Chips, that I first encountered this strange species - a motley group of honeymooning couples coochie–cooing like crows in heat. One of them must have spotted the terror in my eyes. Before I could scream Mummy, save me, I was perched firmly on their laps. The next few hours I was privy to the most inane conversations ever heard and embarrassing public displays of affection. Every time the bus halted they would scurry off to the nearest cliff and pose Khajuraho style with me as the hapless spectator. Needless to say I was traumatized.

Love spares no one and I knew I was infected when Nadeem Shravan and Altaf Raja songs started making sense. I discovered the true meaning of insomnia in “Mujhe neend na aaye, mujhe chain na aaye”. With a stupid smile plastered on my face, I would walk around aimlessly, often banging into pillars. A firm believer of keeping my options multiple, I would be in love with at least 4 guys at a time. A lost- puppy look on my face and a playlist of the cheesiest romantic songs constantly playing in my head, I was dying to feel like a heroine in a Mills and Boons novel, touched for the very first time.

I was in search of my tall, dark, obscenely rich and brooding, silent and tortured hero! When I did find a guy with looks to kill, he’d open his mouth and spoil it all. The silent brooding one was dull and the rich one was yet to be born! But that did not deter me from crushing over guys I had no intention of confessing my love to.

Finally I did find love and with it the imbecile in me. Every time the phone rang, I would run towards it like PT Usha on steroids, sink into deep depression if he didn’t call me every two hours. I would look for pathetic excuses to call him again and again. Mind you, these were the pre-mobile days, so I had no way of driving him up the wall with “do you miss/love/care for me?” texts! I found everything about him incredibly endearing including his body odour and would feel hurt if a friend passed a snide remark on his cute flappy ears. Silly girl, she’s just jealous!

Yes, Body Image Comes From Parents!

How does one introduce someone who's already so popular! I'll still give it a try for the sake of the selected few who have yet to read Rachna Says. If you like reading incisive commentary on social issues and are looking for parenting advice, I suggest you read Rachna Srivastava Parmar. A spirited woman with strong opinions and stronger principles, a young mother of two, she's also a professional content writer and a fantastic cook.  The last bit was specifically added to wrangle a dinner invite from her.

In this post, Rachna raises pertinent concerns about this generation's unhealthy obsession with physical beauty and letting it mess with their self-esteem.....

Little girls even before their teenage years are dieting these days. Ask any adolescent and chances are that she is unhappy with the way she looks. Food is a cuss word for her. It makes her fat! Fat is ugly; it is undesirable! She wants to look hot and hip just like those models that prance around on TV, adorn the cover of magazines, are arm candies of all the hot guys she loves and play out larger-than-life roles in her mind’s eyes. Young ladies are depressed, deflated fighting this battle to look a little more thin and a little more fair. The marketers whose sales are on the rise are laughing their way to banks. And no, they are not the only ones to blame. Yes, they promote an aspirational standard of beauty in society to peddle their wares – read beauty products, fairness creams, health foods etc. But, you my dear sweetie, yes YOU the parent are equally responsible. What you look at me incredulously? What did you do?

For starters, children derive their comfort, their self-esteem from their parents first and later from the society. And as a recently shared advertisement openly pointed out, children mirror their parents’ behavior as well as thinking and aspirations. In their formative years, you are the one they turn to when they are teased. You are the one they look to for affirmation for their own self-worth. And what do they get? Do they find a parent who actually teaches them to love their incredible bodies and self? Does the parent convey to them that they are accepted and loved just the way they are? Does the parent love her own self is a question worthy of asking?

Yes, we have moms who are obsessed with losing weight. They have deadlines --5 kgs. in one month for a wedding they have to attend. They are so unhappy that they are unable to appreciate the perfectly good looking bodies that they have. I have seen so many gorgeous women stressing out over that extra inch or couple of kilos that they still (imagine to) have extra. They don’t eat right, are obsessed with weight gain and get even more depressed when they don’t achieve their crazy targets. Binges and more guilt follows. All the while, your child is absorbing that only a particular size of body is good and desirable. That fat is bad, and thin is good – at any cost!

Just like my Mom

 

Courtesy -iStockphoto

When I was your age, phones were clunky, televisions bulky and computers hulky. Yet they occupied very little space in our heads. Our house was cluttered with knick-knacks and memories. Appliances were uncomplicated, so were our lives. Sleep was not a challenge but something we enjoyed. Happiness was free and did not come with “terms-and-conditions apply”.

News was in no hurry to break and would patiently wait until next morning. Tele soaps were meant to be watched by the entire family. When we talked, we looked into each other’s eyes rather than look up occasionally from our mobiles. Words had yet to shed their vowels and their warmth. Sentences were not hurried missives. We talked because we needed to and not because we wanted another toy.

Time was elastic not brittle. Despite entertainment that was clumsy and prehistoric, I-am-so-bored had yet to make an appearance in our lexicon. Relatives had yet to be anointed with the annoying tag, family weddings were not meant to be endured but enjoyed. Private space was not guarded like a bastion and certainly not shared with online strangers.

Gay meant happy. Hit and run was still a game we played and enjoyed. We imbued our idols with a halo and did not put them under a microscope to analyse and jeer at their flaws. Scepticism was a prerogative of the old and the wrinkled. Youth had ideals. Lampooning our leaders was the sole preserve of the likes of RK Laxman, rather than a national sport. We used to race against the wind not time. We felt free not constricted and were content with our routine-ridden existence.

We couldn’t wait to grow up and become our Mom and Dad. We were impatient to take charge of our lives.

We did. Or so we thought.

Opposites oppose or do they?

Google image

In school, the shy, tongue tied nerd was invariably attracted to the girl with the deafening laugh. All the good looking girls were in love with the football star with a permanent sweaty patch on his back. I was in love with the dreamy guy who strummed the guitar. And one fine day he opened his mouth and spoiled it all.

They say when God takes time off from playing Kingmaker and pushing us in freezing cold water just as we were getting too warm for comfort; he plays the matchmaker. In fact, Rab loves making our jodis because this is his idea of playing a practical joke on us. The Almighty will make the cricket obsessed, beer guzzling, back-slapping, always joking guy, fall madly in love with the solitude loving, cricket hating and wine sipping girl whose smile is capable of lighting up an entire neighbourhood. His restless soul finds solace in her eyes that speak volumes without speaking a word. He woos her ardently with words he doesn’t have. She finds it endearing. They fall in love and marry.

It’s as if we are destined to follow a pattern. The child who refuses to grow up will always end up with a mother figure. The girl who’s never short of words and opinions will surrender herself to him who always listens with a smile playing on his lips. The dreamy, muddle-head will be drawn towards the woman on wheels, the homebody to the adventurous spirit, the spice girl to the medium rare, the cleanliness freak will fall head over heels with the Lord of mess.….

Do we seek opposites as a challenge? A man so breathtakingly different, that the fair maiden had no option but fall hopelessly for him. It can happen before marriage or after marriage. The love, I mean. When fate arranges your match, you love him before you marry him. When your parents decide your fate, you hope to fall in love after you marry him.

But it’s only after you start living together, you discover how startlingly different you are. I sometimes wonder if we mould ourselves and fine-tune our senses to strike a harmonious note. Is it that the child in him brings out the mother in us? Did the husband become subdued because his talkative wife never gave him the chance to talk? Did he become the backbone because hers was missing! Did she become the mature one because he refused to grow up, all for the sake of love?

How about leaving better children for this planet?

Dear Cheeky ke Mom and Daddy,

Let me start by congratulating you for creating a miracle – your baby. Even though I don’t see your child with the same pair of rose-tinted eyes, I can assure you s/he is almost as adorable as you think. Her smile can turn the articulate to gibberish. Her beautiful eyes can light up even the darkest heart. She is cute as a button, till she opens her mouth to express her displeasure.

She wanted boo boo and you couldn’t get it for her. So, she’s doing what she does best. Scream. And why not - your Princess is not used to being disobeyed!

Courtesy - Google images

Her high pitched scream makes your hear palpitate with terror. You are even willing to swing upside down to stop that horrible noise. So, you do what you do best, fetch boo boo for her to make her shut up.

God forbid, if you are in a mood to be brave and decide to ignore, she will promptly raise her decibel levels and give you a migraine attack. Suddenly you start feeling the heat of at least a dozen pair of eyes boring into your back and accusing you silently for having created this monster.

If looks could kill, you would have died a thousand deaths.

Sorry, it’s all your fault. In your earnestness to be a good parent, you turned yourself into her personal genie. You wanted to be her superhero, moved mountains, jumped ditches and danced like a clown to fulfil her demands. And now she has you wrapped around her little finger. She knows the power she has over you and uses it to her fullest.

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!

The Curse of the First Born

Rachna Says, a blog with a phenomenal following, is an eclectic mix of parental advice, personal musings and concerns voiced on social ills that plague us. The woman behind the blog, Rachna Parmar is a spirited woman, with strong opinions and stronger principles. She also happens to be a dear friend who I merrily take for granted.

Just as she had given up on hope that I’ll ever write a guest post for her, I shocked her with this ->

As the lifetime member of SODS (Society of Disgruntled Siblings), I finally unburden my heart of its woes in The Curse of the First Born.

As the young couple hold their labour of love in their arms, their hearts fluttering with excitement at having accomplished such a Herculean task - their bundle of joy snuggles up to its mother’s bossom, blissfully unaware of the travails of being the first born. 

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