A few weeks back, a top television presenter was caught on camera doing 70 mph on a busy motorway – chatting on his mobile phone. Jeremy Clarkson is well known to Britons and to see him chatting away whilst driving his Merc was too much for the public to bear. A vigilant passerby took a picture of him gabbing away and passed it on to the Daily Mirror. The papers took him to task royally and furious members of the public wrote on public forums everywhere, asking for a serious reprimand.

When I read the article the following day, a few words stuck in my mind.

And a police insider warned that if guilty, the popular Top Gear presenter could expect the same treatment as the thousands of other road users nabbed for the same offence.

The source said: “At a time when the Government and police are clamping down on motorists putting safety at risk by using mobiles at the wheel, it’s vital that police are seen to be taking action against all alleged offenders, no matter who they are.”

Fast forward to this morning, when I came across this article on Chennai Metblogs. I mean, what do you say to this respectable member of the press, who uses his press credentials to get away scot-free and then say, ‘Some police!’! There is no point blaming the traffic cops for their ineptitude if every Johnny carries some form of a ‘Get out of jail FREE!’ card or the other. Granted, I am no major fan of the said police, after the shabby way they treated my scared brother after a drunken bastard crashed his car into my hapless brother’s but this time, I am forced to question what choice do we leave them with, if we tie their hands so, for every pitiable reason?

We constantly say ‘we are like this wonly’ when quizzed about the lax Indian attitude to most things under the sun. Are we like this wonly or are we making sure we are like this wonly?

 
Fresh out of college, I used to work for a local, city-based portal as a content writer and then later, Web Content Manager. In that guise, I met many interesting characters, attended many functions and generally led an interesting life. But of all the people I met, none affected me more than Vandana and Vaishnavi, founders of women’s charity organisation, Banyan.

I wasn’t a trained journalist so had none of the grit or the backbone needed to tough it out in search of assignments. All I had was a head full of ideas – ideas on what was great and good about my city that I could showcase on my website. Through a teacher at college, who was a good friend of Vandana, I heard of Banyan and was really impressed to learn about two women, who, in the prime of their life, threw away a regular lifestyle and immersed themselves in caring after mentally challenged women.

It sounded like a plot of a movie – too fantastic to be true. Clueless about what to expect, I asked for an appointment to visit the place to write about it. That visit and the women I saw, changed me and I honestly feel, I grew up in that space of two hours I spent at Banyan. I remember crying bitterly on my way back to work. Seeing those women, in their bedraggled state, not knowing what was happening to themselves or where they were, affected me like nothing had.

Though it has been years since I met them and the women and their organisation have come a long way since, I constantly think of them and their dedication to their cause. I cannot think of two better examples of women to salute, on International Women’s Day.

If you’d like to donate, please visit this page to learn how.

Ever tried selling one of the stories from Ramayana or Mahabharata to a child today? Especially one raised on a PG or U certificate rating anywhere else but in India? Hair-raising, I tell you. For one, the stories are all way too gory for their bland tastes. Tell them so-on-so chopped the other bloke’s finger or head off and watch young eyes turn into saucers. The whys and whats and loud gasps would take days to stem, leave alone the increased Nightmare Alert.

If your child is not raised on an Indian filmi diet, then the damage is manifold. Stunted far-fetched imagination, refusal to accept outlandish suggestions and the uncanny ability to put their finger on the one point of niggling abnormality are all just a few of the side-effects.

Take Krishna, for example. The whole baby Krishna- Bhoothana story was declared no-no the minute breastfeeding as a concept was introduced. Being an only child, P has led a much sheltered upbringing and the concept of a baby feeding off a lady’s er, chest, brought forth series of shrieks from my young lad. The Kalinga nardhan story also suffered a similar fate, when the gravitational forces (damn the school’s Science week) and the inability of the parents to keep an eye on their child (Krishna, that is) were brought into question.

I actually managed to sneak in a story of Chathrapathi Sivaji during yet another problematic mealtime, in an effort to make him eat his pasta from the corners of the bowl. This did work for a while and then disaster, in the form of Rajini’s super-dooper hit film hit and now the Chathrapathi got mixed up with ‘Vaaji, Vaaji’ and we were back to Square -1.

I am nothing if not persistent. So tried a different tack and told him the story of Ekalavya over breakfast cereal this morning. Buoyed by the fact that I wasn’t met with rapid fire questions that blew holes into the story, I bravely plodded on. Till I came to the part where Drona asks for Ekalavya’s thumb as guru dakshina.

That was when my luck ran out.

“He asked for the boy’s thumb? Why? That is so gross! Did the boy die?”

“Er, no. It was just his thumb.”

“Why did the teacher want it anyway?”

“With the thumb gone, Ekalavya cannot use a bow and arrow anymore and Arjuna would be the champion shooter, that’s why.”

“Eh? So what if he can’t use a bow and arrow or his right hand? He can use his left hand! Or he can use a gun! Pow pow pow! Easy, see?”

Sigh.

My gran and her kind did not know how lucky they were with us, I tell you. Seriously.

I came across his blog, entertainingly titled ‘Doing Jalsa and Showing Jilpa’ awhile back, whilst searching for, of all the things, Chennai 600028 mp3s! (Okay, for the illiterates out there, the title of his blog is a loose translation of the hit number from the Tamil movie entitled Chennai 600028.) I moved swiftly on, when the said jalsas and jilpas weren’t the ones I was looking for. Then, I tripped over this blog again and decided to delve deeper.

That was yesterday.

I still haven’t finished splitting my sides. The dude has a real quirky way of talking about stuff and the fact that he’s from my own neck of the woods means I can actually understand what he’s going on about – most times, that is! Where else will I come across pearls such as ‘nor am I fully cognizant of social mores and anto-social yogurts’, ‘How does one make a quintessentially Italian dish Russian? By Putin in to it, a glass of vodka?‘, ‘Jabba di Hutti (Finest Pnjaabi cuisine on the planet Tatooine)’ and the incomparably ‘snooty’ Les Sappadeaux. He killed me!

So, as you can imagine, browsing his blog was more enjoyable than wading through Interactive Design : beyond human-computer interaction. (No offence to Jenny P, et al)

From a louwr’s guide to Chennai to Navrathri to desified Chinese cuisine to Delhi survival guides for Madrasis to the funniest review of the Order of the Phoenix, the bloke even has a funny map of Chennai and when I came across the area labelled ‘Weekendboozapuram’, I fell apart. Krish Ashok – you so totally rock, dude!

Whilst on the subject of funny Tam stuff, the following vid is unmissable. I found it thanks to Sayesha‘s entertaining blog. Please do not sue me if you split your sides and are unable to put them back together. There! I’ve warned you!

Thank you Sayeesha and Buffalax!

I know I am a li’l late but what with North Indians celebrating it for most of last week, Tamils on Thursday and Telugus on Friday and us lot on Saturday as that is the day we get off, I decided to ‘celebrate’ it on my blog on an entirely new day. Loopy or what?

Anyways, I hope everyone had a lovely festival. Was it as good as your childhood ones? (no, course not!) Did you make merry? Did you eat / drink too much? Go on, dish the dirt. What is your best diwali memory? share, pls.

For the kick-starter, Rowing is a sport which is highly catching up in the city of Madras, thanks to Madras Boat Club. A membership here costs 50k for a year where in you will have put in 300 hours of rowing. As an annual event, the MBC conducts a Corporate Regatta which is aimed to bring in more people into this sport. In this regard, my friend’s mom, Neela, who has a production house of her own called Madras Houz, decided that it would be great for us to participate. I have done some music – related work such as jingles, sound edits/recording for the company and hence qualify as a part time employee there. Apart from Neela, there are 2 other women working in the company, Uma and Sharmishta (my friend, Neela’s daughter). So the four of us decided that it would be fun and fitness combined for us if we signed up for this year’s Regatta. So that’s exactly what we did. Little did we realize how serious we were becoming about this event. Every morning, 5 hours past midnight saw us standing in Boat Club waiting for boats to be pulled out! Initially, it was quite hard, considering a) I NEED my sleep! b) The inviting(?) smell of the “koovam”. But as the sport got exciting, it didn’t matter. I got over my sleep issue and I just got used to the smell (Honestly, it isn’t that bad, considering they take special care of the course where we row!).

We practiced for 2 long months, almost everyday! The one hour in the morning with extensive coaching by the Club coaches did us real good. We got better by the week and we realized how strong we were becoming and how a sport changes the way you look at your day/week/life. We rowed as 4 on a boat and also took part as two entries (MH A & MH B) in the pairs contest, with two each on one boat.

As race day got closer, we started practicing in the evenings after work as well. Only then did we realize how excited we were about winning the race. Even though the buzz around the club was that 4 of us were going to be a tough team, we still wanted to make sure that we live upto that. There were many teams from all over the city, with 7 women’s only teams, from companies like Sify, Element K, Lion Bridge, JWT, O&M and of course, Madras Houz.

The heats began 3 days before the final race. A race is 750 meters and only two teams can race at a time. Each team had 2 entries for the pairs and we did too! So we got cracking down to the first race. This was easily the scariest part for me as Sharmishta and I were a team and we were to take on corporate oarspersons (not rowers ) who have had experience for about 5-6 years, in our FIRST EVER race!! Quite tense, we sat on the boat and till the second we heard the “Are you ready on the inside? Are you ready on the outside? Are you ready? ROW!” we didn’t realize the amount of energy in us! No more thinking after that and we took her home to the finish in style and won our first race!!! YAYY!

After that, there were 3 more races that we had to clear to reach the finals and we did so quite well! And guess who we met at the finals?? MH B! So us Madras Houz girls won both the first AND second place in our first ever Regatta! Result! Element K won the over all championship as they had a guys team as well. But we were more than delighted with our loot! Huge trophies are always a high! If only we were given a free membership to go with it Even the press paid us a visit on the day of the finals.

A little background on Regatta: this event has been held for the past 80 years and has been successful in churning out few on India’s best oarspersons. The excitement, the festive air, the spirit, the fights, the shrug offs, the pre and post dinners, the beer, which sure excites all the men and everything else that comes along with the package, it sure is a delight to be part of the entire extravaganza.

At the end of the day, all that effort did pay off and I loved the entire experience. Sometimes, even today, I almost stumble out of my sleep at 5 AM in the morning to look for my sneakers to hit the club, and before I realize I still have the Regatta – Hangover, I head back to sleep

“Um, yes..”

“Oooh, I thought as much. I read your blog frequently!” *camera flash*

“Oh look, it is that blogger, Desigirl. I read your blog..” *more camera flash*

“So do I…” *you get the pic*

“… me too!”

(Really? How come my blog stats don’t reflect this massive fanbase?)

Anyways, this isn’t my major fantasy come to life. It was what happened to me this Saturday. Ok, ok, so I exaggerated a bit (give me a break, I am a blogger after all!) but it was heady when someone actually came up to me and asked me if I was the blogger who masquerades under a strange name. Well, as it was a group I had found thanks to couple of fellow bloggers, I shouldn’t be too surprised but can you blame me for my surprise / shock ? After all, I am not one of those A-list bloggers we keep hearing about. Heck, I can list my five readers in a flash.

And now, it seems like I have a multitude reading my blog.

So I query again, what the hell are you doing Blog Stats? Why aren’t they registering? Is this a conspiracy you hatched with AdSense?

S and I generally steer clear of desi groups and get-togethers. Regular readers of my blog (yes, you five) know my feelings regarding such do’s. But when I learnt that about a 100+ of them were going to gather under one roof, I was more than a bit intrigued. When further enquiries suggested most of them might even be from the same neck of the woods as me, it was the work of a moment to send a ‘yeah, count me in’ e-mail to the mahanubhavs who were organising the shindig.

Further e-mails detailing party events mixed tamarind in my tummy. Parties with themes of ‘Voluntary participation is mandatory’ scare the jeebies out of me. After a major part of my teen years spent making an ass of myself on stage, I have a healthy aversion to giving a repeat performance in front of random folk. ‘Don’t worry, it is a group thing’ was NOT the words that put balm on my soul. Still, I was desperate to give an airing to one of my newly acquired saris, if only to justify its presence.

So, off to H Hempstead we went. The adulation started off almost straightaway.

“Are you so-and-so?” queried the lady at the front desk.

“Can we have little P on the stage please?” shouted another over the PA system.

Boy have we arrived or what?!

Apart from random niggles like an unpalatable lunch (par for the course where HSB, London is concerned!) and a failure to win the Snacks competition (match fixing, sez I!), much fun was had by all. Though we hardly had time to do any major networking, S and I managed to make friends with a lovely family, meet the better half of a long-lost mate from the hometown and in S’s case, corner the only other golt bloke in the whole gathering. Not a bad result, I say.

Maybe the next time the party bandwagon can roll into our corner of Essex. Maybe THEN my kesari will win!

Last Friday, I got up at the wee hours of the morn (what else would you call 3.00 AM?) to sit bleary-eyed at an Upanayanam (sacred thread) ceremony. That was the first time I learnt that some folks other than Brahmins also prefer the groom to be poonool-ed. Since I had always been under the surmise that doing so ensures their status as Brahmins, this seemed to be a pointless exercise for the non-Brahmins to get upto. But if I am getting a free meal and a chance to take one of my never-used-before collection of silk sarees out of the wardrobe, who am I to complain?

The vaathiyaar’s ringing voice at that ungodly hour (pardon the pun!) carried on for miles and woke up the crows sleeping in the tree outside, neighbours desperate to finish their 8-hour quota as well as P, sleeping soundly upstairs, who complained that some ‘loud voice disturbed him and woke him up’. Even as he bullied his hapless victims into tying their tongues into knots, pronouncing the various unfamiliar Sanskrit mantras, the ‘kalla poonool‘ (emergency thread for the renegers) addition didn’t seem to faze him an iota.

But what impressed me the most was his ability to judge the perfect camera shot and arrange the cast members accordingly so as to be assured of the perfect photograph.

“Maami, setha ippadi thirumbungo!” (aunty, please turn this way) admonished he, when an errant maami blocked self and the newly-anointed Brahmin with her ample behind.

“Maama, maamikki ippadi kumkum vechi vidungo!” (uncle, put kumkum on wifey’s forehead just so) on advised the chap with one maama decided to make use of his free left hand.

He was also the consummate multi-tasker. Armed with a mobile phone, he proceeded to take calls for future appointments whilst directing the main cast of members by miming, pointing and directing. One wonders what he would accomplish with the help of bluetooth and a Blackberry! Gen X vaathiyaars eh what?

1. The MCs – why do they always feel inclined to do most of their speil in Hindi? Even though I understand the language fairly decently, the automatic assumption that everyone should be able to walk and talk the language is more than mildly irksome.

2. Why is that anyone who gets a mic in their hands feels inclined to shout down it? The same MCs are virtuosos in this regard. My mind boggles!

3. Why does the simple concept of queuing escape us? For the past week, I have been queueing up at various places – supermarkets, juice outlets, coffee shops, banks, ATM counters and many other places but every single time, I have been bumped out of the queue at the last possible minute - starting with the immigration counter at the airport when I landed!

4. Why do we mix up gregariousness with loudness?

More on this issue soon. Now the MC at the Club Mahindra joint is bellowing into his mic so let me escape this room and save my ear drums.

Right, now let’s get started. What is feminism, exactly? According to the dictionary, feminism is the doctrine advocating social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men. Feminism in an Indian (or desi) context is a wierd thing. It is like Antartica – everyone knows what it is but no one wants to go there. To most, life goes on as it always had, as if feminism never existed.

Like I mentioned in one of my previous posts, I realised what feminism truly is and that I am a feminist only after I started blogging actively. Till then, I was going along with the Antartic effect. Having been brought up to be fiercely independent, I did not question my right to do things my way. I always thought that that was mostly thanks to my folks’ outlook towards most things concerning self and sibling. But I realise now, it is thanks to them being feminists (in their own setting) that they could go with the choices they made, which in turn made it easy for me to go with my choices, my way.

But to many, this is not the case. I have heard of many, many cases where the girls were so ‘protected’ that many had hardly ventured into the Big Bad World on their own. S frequently jokes that I had a lot more freedom growing up than he did!

In that sense, I feel feminism is linked to your basic freedom as a child. If you, as a girl, are raised as an equal to your male siblings, then you (and your siblings) will grow up to think the same way. If, on the other hand, you are told right from the time you were a child that you must defer to your male siblings or that they come first, then chances of both sexes retaining this and forming a template to their lives, is very high.

So, what has feminism given me. Well, it has given me the right to be me. I can be my own person and not be defined as someone’s child or wife or sibling or mother. I can be my own person, in my own right, charting my life the way I want. It lets me be what I want to be. Heck, it gives me the right to make that choice. It puts me in the driving seat of my life.

This basic right is denied loads of women across the country. For them, the alpha male has to make the decision – should they work full-time, do they stay at home,
can they do this or should they do that. Every time a woman is unable to act independently, she is denied the right to freedom.

In my opinion, feminism is synonymous with freedom. And for feminism to truly flourish in a desi setting, it is imperative for not just the women, but the men to become feminists as well.

Read Ams’ and Apu’s view points.