Confessions of a Tall Indian Woman

How many of you have been in the exact same or worse situation? Hot Sunday Morning and you drag yourself to the car to pick up groceries from a nearby store. Take the car out and BOOM! A big black trash bag is hurled across by your neighbor to hit the garbage bins and they just miss your windshield. You try hard to stay cool and lower your window to request the hurler to be a little more mindful. Before you can open your mouth, you hear a high pitched monologue on how the bin has moved and the person driving the car needs to be wary of the road. Sure yes, flying garbage bags is the next thing to avoid on the roads.  Just keep driving and in the next 300 meters you see a car coming towards you on the wrong side of the road. You slam the brakes to avoid a collision. The excuse you hear now is" Its Sunday, there is no one-way, you need to be careful". Really? After hearing the 9-5 rule for one way roads , this is definitely another feather in the cap.  A little annoye...

Why the question ? Summer holidays while growing up meant two months of unadulterated fun. Whether you lived in a nuclear or joint family it meant meeting friends,cousins and play. Broadly kids between 5 to 15 in the road or apartment met in the morning at a common point and played . You need to go home for lunch and then again regroup to continue playing indoors. This could be at a common friends place as it was too hot to step outside.If this was tough you meet in the evening and play anything from 7 stones to doge ball. Parents if they were working will be home by 7 and you get to discuss the days fights and highlights and then read and sleep. Summer holidays also meant multiple trips to the libraries to borrow books and keep a count of how many you can finish in the holidays. If it was closer to weekend , you may be allowed to get the ice cream from the vendor on the roads, who will  ring the bell (that sound as a kid your ears are tuned to) between 7:30 to 8:30 PM. Weekends m...

GO! Most of us are familiar with this and the race that ensues at most sports day. My perspective is after seeing kids sports day and the learnings from the same. It's incredibly insightful to sit in the sidelines and observe parents and kids exhibit a myriad of emotions .  Just imagine a simple three step kindergarten race involving a few balls , plates and hoola hoops. The joy the teachers would have got in devising a simple race to ensure it's an inclusive environment and every child participates. Then you hear about the same from the kids almost every day leading up to the sports day. Each time the enthusiasm focuses on the fun team spirit and rarely they will tell you who came first unless you ask them.  Cut to sports day and you see kids all lined up ready for the race. On your mark get set go and the race begins. The interesting part is if you are a parent you can observe the parents in the sidelines and that's just so interesting. Edging the kids, yelli...

Working mom's. 4 more shots. Few more women oriented drama's streaming on Netflix and prime. While it supposedly captures the conflicts of a modern day woman , some of the scenes are cringe-worthy.  This got me thinking on PENN a series aired on doordarshan ages ago. Think it was a 8 part mini series with actresses from mainstream cinema directed by Suhasini. The first episode is still so fresh in my mind. The mother daughter duo constantly bickering till her marriage and she leaves home. Touching scene that's still etched in my mind.  Have you seen it? It's a mini-series with each episode dealing with one phase of a women's life. Powerful and poignant I am so keen to unearth and watch this series again. I am sure it will resonate with me a lot more now. And I just did a quick search on social media and found the link on YouTube and here it goes https://youtu.be/3xcISdu4Fys Do yourself a favor and watch it. If I can recollect it with so much clarity after m...

March 8th is around the corner. If you haven't still been invited to a panel discussion, debate or awards ceremony to felicitate women consider yourself lucky! Don't get me wrong but till date I have never understood what this fuss is all about.The level of celebration has been taken up a notch. Pink balloons and roses at work, thank you cards and what not. While I am not an anti-feminist each year I wonder if something meaningful can be done this day for the women it actually matters. Gender equality, pay gap issues are all great topics for panel discussion around like minded people in an environment that is doing almost everything right to be conducive to woman. I will say this aloud. I am happy in my current state of being a working woman and the only real issue I may want to discuss is how to empower women who aren't as lucky as me to get here. I understand the intentions around the hype surrounding this day. But can this be channeled to something meaningful? Even if i...

Follow your dreams. Channel your passion. Wake up and smell the coffee...  Words you hear often and with most Bollywood movies endorsing the mantra " You live only once. Follow your passion". Of course with a fancy BGM and even fancier locations, this seems close to reality and worth pursuing. Nothing wrong in this assumption but when you look at the larger 9-5 going regular office going people it's almost like you have assumed they are unhappy. The focus on alternative career paths is just such a eye opener and am glad that things are moving in the right direction. But what I am wary about is the exaggerated sense of finding your passion that doing a regular mundane job is dismissed without any credit. Working in a regular corporate set up for close to 15 years I can safely say the following just based on my experiences and people I have interacted. Of course there are exceptions. Here are a 10 reasons why 9 to 5 isn't passe and it can be interesting for a m...

Growing up the one major pull factor when we returned home was the extra ghee roast my Patti made for us. Or another vivid memory was visiting my maternal grandparents every weekend. Whether my parents joined us or not we will pack our bags and leave on Friday evening and get back home only on Sundays post dinner. No agenda except being fully pampered by grandparents through stories, yummy food and lots of fun. The unconditional bond between thatha, pattis and their grandkids is something that is so close to my heart. As I see my kids grow, I recollect these stories with pride and realize what an undeliable impression they have had on me.  Math and English became my first love thanks to my paternal grandfather. The strong importance to academics and it's advantages couldn't have been emphasized more and I still continue to do so thanks to him. Career growth emphasis for woman  in his generation was unheard of and that's why every time there is a milestone profession...