Old loves: Phir Kabhi

Coincidentally, I watched two films with a similar theme last week. Both dealt with aging couples meeting soul-mates and finding someone to share the loneliness of their old age. The first, Pyar Mein Twist, opens with widower Yash Khurana (Rishi Kapoor) handing over the reins of his business empire to his son Rahul.

Serially speaking

A month or two ago, I read an article in The Hindu criticising, what else, TV serials, with special mention of the Star Plus offering Pratigya. Though I've read hundreds of such articles, I finally decided to delve a little deeper into this much maligned world of megaserials, with special notice taken of above mentioned Pratigya. I have to do a whole new post on this specific serial, but here's what I learned in general.

And wow! What a revelation.

The adventure of the three sofa sets

I just got back from Chennai, where I went to pick up Ken after his month of lazing around on the couch with POGO and chips. He's 4 kilos fatter and has developed teenager attitude. But that is a not-so-important, temporary problem compared to the chaos I feel plunged into whenever I visit my parents' home. Apart from all the emotional baggage, it's physically overcrowded! Not with people. With furniture!

Take for instance, our sofa sets.

Censored or uncut?

The other day a single friend told me that her friend watched every film twice before she allowed her children to watch them. She wondered what I felt about such censoring. I suddenly realised that even though I never thought of it that way, I was pro-censorship for kids.

Considering that my parents let me off so easy, it seems surprising that I feel compelled to take this route but I have realised that I would much rather draw the (however ineffective) Lakshman Rekha than run after Sita.

It would be nice to have....

...a tiny online form where you can fill in your email ID and request the author of a private blog for an invite?

When a blog author has a private blog, and you try to access it, you come up against the following cold message: "It doesn't look like you have been invited to read this blog. If you think this is a mbistake, you might want to contact the blog author and request an invitation."

I've blogged about this earlier, but I never realised that there was no feature that allowed folks to "contact the blog author." Why is there a tiny online form where you can fill in your email ID and ask the author for an invite?

Doesn't this approach assume that the author does not want to share the blog with strangers? What about folks like me who want to share their blog only with strangers and use the private blog feature to weed out The Family?

Makes me wanna SCREAM

This post is a response to Bhagwad's comment on Sorry, no Saree. He said that "People must stand up for themselves. There is always emotional pressure and one assumes she can withstand it." He wondered if there was a physical threat to the woman who refused to wear the saree.

In this specific case, I don't know what she meant when she alleged that she was forced to dress in a certain way.

The symbolism of the saree

Continuing my train of thought from the previous post, I realise that apart from its grace and uniqueness to our country, the saree also has a lot of symbolism built into it.

This is best illustrated in Indian cinema, where the heroine starts off all bubbly and happy in pants or salwars, and then as her life gets more melodramatic and miserable, she moves to sarees.

Sorry, no saree

While dismissing a divorce case, the Bombay High Court recently ruled that the "Sari may be a bothersome garment, especially compared to 'Punjabi dress', but a marriage cannot be ended over it." Apparently, this woman's in-laws were forcing her to wear a sari and she found that it amounted to cruelty, while the law did not. I wonder what the ruling would have been if the in-laws had insisted on a bikini as the dress-code for the family bahus.

And it seems even more weird to me that if the woman is unable to stay with her spouse because she does not wish to conform to the clothing norms of his parents, she is still denied divorce.

My Son: The Racist

A few weeks ago, we were standing near our apartment trying to hire an auto who was willing to transport us to the bookshop at a fair price. Ken, to whom things always seem more painful and hopeless says, "We are NEVER going to get an auto. What will we do?"

"Perhaps you should try and learn to drive one when you're old enough, so you can always take us anywhere," I joked.

"I don't want to be a auto driver when I grow up," he retorted. "I want to be a racist. A car racist."

P.S.: Does that mean he will only drive Indian cars when he grows up? "I hate the cars of other races."

This is not Muthalik

The thing about being feminist and living around men is to try and get some balance. I feel the need for them to see things a little differently, so that my own life can move forward without my inner peace being thrown into chaos every day.

Fond as he was of his daughters, my father was unapologetically chauvinistic and controlling. Looking back, I try to factor in the insecurity that he was perhaps trying to deal with, but every time I came up against the chauvinism and control, it made me so very angry. Still does.

Meet Little K

While I go on and on about Ken, I realised that I've never really introduced you guys to the Little K. So here goes. Ever since my socialisation and nurture theories failed so spectacularly with Ken, I'm a better mother to the Little K. I let her be. I have got into the habit of trying to mould Ken so I can't seem to get out of that. But I've very neatly avoided falling into that trap with the Little K. Hence, being her Mom has been a joyride from Day 1.