In pursuit of passion: India’s first DIY woodworking instructor

I have written before against the popular trend towards quitting your day job to follow your passion, and about defining success on your own terms. But behind this clarity, as is always the case, was a lot of confusion. Books helped a lot when it came to finding my answers, as did long discussions with the husband, who is uniquely qualified to talk on the subject. He is a living, breathing example of someone who has always followed his passion.

His first passion – for sports, and more specifically tennis, he converted into his day job. He’s been teaching lawn tennis since over 25 years, so he is intimately familiar with both the ecstasy and the agony of making your passion into your day job {which is possibly a post for another time!}Continue reading→

Revealed: what women really want!

“I don’t understand what women want!” a male colleague wailed the other day.

To which another one shared this handy photo he had received on what’s app

Come on guys! We aren’t that hard to understand!

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#MondayMusings: Thoughts on the far-reaching social impact of the Trump Presidency

As a general rule, I don’t write about politics on the blog. No matter what my views may be and what arguments and debates I may have in real life or online, I keep all of that away from this space.

But the recent election results in the US have shaken me to the core. And though they have no direct bearing on me, there is no denying the wide-spread social impact of a Trump presidency.

I also think that the time is now ripe to have multiple conversations about righting wrongs – about inclusion and diversity, about the fact of a changing global order, changing race and cultural dynamics, and a shift in the old patriarchal systems and beliefs. And I believe this is a conversation that we need to have globally.
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#MondayMusings: How do ideas cross-pollinate?

I heard something new recently – Ghetto blogging. According to Richa Singh, who spoke of the concept, ghetto blogging is too much of the same content, style, and ideas across blogging, when every other blogger is doing the same content style, like a ghetto.

Which got me to thinking: this is a problem that is common across blogs {and the internet}, yes, but also with ideas.

Like the formulaic cinema of the ‘80s and ‘90s – that was the terrible era of Govinda and David Dhawan, when every movie was titled similarly (Hero No 1, Aunty No 1) and followed the same formula. Govinda was the No. 1 bumbling idiot and almost every dialogue was filled with double-entendres. More recently, Bang Bang was “inspired” by Knight and Day and Partner was a direct rip-off of Hitch. The originals in both cases were infinitely better movies, at least in my opinion! And the rip-off was immediately clear if you had seen the original English movies.Continue reading→

Imagine a world without words

Among the many worlds that man did not receive as a gift from nature but created out of his own mind, the world of books is the greatest… Without the word, without the writing of books, there is no history, there is no concept of humanity. And if anyone wants to try to enclose in a small space, in a single house or a single room, the history of the human spirit and to make it his own, he can only do this in the form of a collection of books. – The Magic of the Book, Hermann Hesse

Imagine a world without the written word. Without a way to easily access and share humankind’s collective knowledge. A world where books were not a thing, where reading and writing were unknown. What would such a world look like? Continue reading→

In defense of a child free life

Motherhood. It’s a biggie! It’s a life-altering, soul changing decision. You bring a new life into this world, an innocent little life that you are responsible for.

Society would have you believe that as a woman, it is your “duty” to have a child. That your life will be “meaningless” without one. That you will “regret” your decision when you are “old and alone with no one to ask after you”.

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Haider and the Hindutva brigade

Haider poster It’s amazing how a movie like Haider gets even the closeted hindutva brigade crawling out of the woodwork. It’s a movie. It’s more about a family than about Kashmir. Yes, it’s set in Kashmir, and yes, the major protagonists are Muslims. Does that make it an us vs them story? No. It makes it a human story.

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The insidious landscape of rape: it’s rise, possible causes, and probable solutions

Violence against women is a common theme in mythology. Statue “The Rape of Persephone” in Vechelde, Lower Saxony, Germany (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I am an ostrich when it comes to news on rape. I prefer to bury my head in the sand and not read or hear about it. But even for this ostrich, it’s become next to impossible to do so. After the shocking gang rape in broad daylight in Mumbai – because Mumbai is supposed to have been one of the safe cities for women, dammit – I heard about the brutal rape and murder of a nine-year old child in Gurgaon.

This makes me sick. Disgusted. Afraid. And I’m forced to take a closer look at the issue to try to make sense of the moral depravity that seems to have gripped this country.

But surely, India isn’t the only place where rape is a common occurrence. It happens across the world – in both developed and developing economies.

There’s the Stubenville High School rape case in the US; the brutal gang rape and murder of Anene Booyson in South Africa, where gender violence is “systemic” nationwide; rapes in conflict zones; in Brazil, where an American tourist’s boyfriend was forced to watch as his girlfriend was gang raped…

And that makes me think – why?Continue reading→

Nigella Lawson and the can of worms known as domestic abuse

Nigella Lawson at a Borders book-signing (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As images of celebrity chef Nigella Lawson being attacked by her art collector husband Charles Saatchi went viral online, it led to a maelstrom of debate that surrounds all narratives of celebrity domestic abuse.

The overt, more often implicit, blame was on Nigella for not “standing up for herself” and for going back to tweeting cutesy food pictures a couple of hours after the attack. Australian radio jockey Dee Dee Dunleavy went so far as to call for a boycott of Nigella’s books.

We think you are strong, beautiful and successful. We imagine your home is warm and smells of cinnamon, and if we dropped in we’d get a hug and a feed. We don’t like to think of you cowering from a thug. A man so boldly abusive he had no qualms about attacking you in public. Nigella, like it or not, you’re a beacon for women from all walks of life. If you want us to buy your books and watch your shows on how to run our kitchens, then we need you to make a stand on domestic violence.

This isn’t very different from the public outcry that greeted Rihanna’s decision to get back together with her ex-boyfriend Chris Brown, with whom she had split up after he physically assaulted her. (She has since broken up with him.)Continue reading→

Zombiefied: Social media and the rise of the zombie culture

“Why is Go Goa Gone a zombie movie? And come to think of it, why the hell is Brad Pitt doing a zombie movie?! ? Why? I hate zombies!”

“Relax, we are going to see a zombie apocalypse soon anyway.”

Those pearls of wisdom from the husband got me thinking – aren’t we, in a way, already seeing a zombification of society?

Traditionally, a zombie is an animated corpse resurrected by mystical means, such as witchcraft. The term is often figuratively applied to describe a hypnotized person bereft of consciousness and self-awareness, yet ambulant and able to respond to surrounding stimuli. (Wikipedia)

Look around you – at the mall, in the garden, on the road – and you’ll find people walking around with their nose buried in their smartphone. Chances are they’re either Tweeting or Facebooking or texting.Continue reading→