(oh!) …………You are a housewife?

The Oh is obviously in brackets because even though people might not vocalise the sound, it’s very much there. Why have I chosen a topic and a profession that is as old as society if not the hills? Well, being a recent entrant into the ‘housewife’ category, I can say that I have seen both sides of the coin and ‘housewives’ get the rawest, dirtiest, most unrewarding and painful end of the deal (co-operative husbands notwithstanding) By the way I also intend to address the term ‘housewife’. Let’s see what this unpaid labour does the minute she wakes up-
1. Put out the tea kettle (so that it’s on the boil by the time she finishes her ‘stuff’)
2. Before the rest of the household wakes up (children, husband and in many cases in laws) prepare tiffin boxes (one short break and one long break so that makes 5 lunch boxes for 2 kids and a husband)
3. Also get breakfast ready
4. Meanwhile dishes, vessels are quietly piling up
5. So after the morning hurricane leaves, the lady/ mother/ maid/ daughter in law silently picks up after the rampage- night clothes, water bottles, uncapped toothpaste tube. She folds fluffs up pillows, spreads fresh bed-sheets, and dumps the laundry in the washing machine.
6. As the clothes are being washes, the clothes line needs to make space, so she also has to fold the dry clothes and keep them in the respective wardrobes. There, major work done.
7. Now how about some coffee or that tea? By this time it’s already 8.45 to 9 am.
8. Lovely, just as she is about to have that first hit of the day, ding ding (that’s the door bell)
9. Oh it’s the mopping, cleaning.
10. Ok now, so she has to segregate clothes for hand washing, sort out the bedrooms a bit, out the keys away so she can do her job.
11. Ok now for that tea that has gone colder than dal tadka.
12. Its 11am. The cleaning lady has done her number.
13. How about some breakfast now? Oops she has to go to the gym
14. Off goes Our Lady of Hard Work and spends an hour to 70 minutes sweating it out.
15. Have a bath, some more clothes…….she remembers to also put out the morning lot of threads to dry.
So before she can really out her feet up, it’s almost thirteen hundred hours.
Some more reading and then cheers, its fifteen hundred hours and thirty minutes.
Time for the hurricane to come back home, so you have school bags by the door, shoes, socks flying and kids heading straight for the fridge……
I. So while the lady tells her kids to wash hands/ feet/face, she is frantically trying to get some snack ready for the hungry stomachs…
II. So while the snack is cooking, she empties the lunch bag and dumps the smelly lunch boxes intot he sink
III. The snack is ready, the boxes are washed and drying nicely, the kids are happy and satisfied
IV. Then she collects the plates that the snacks were eaten in and washes some more.
V. What’s for dinner aai? Asks the daughter and the Lady of the House remembers that little end-of-day-chore.
DINNER- all is good. Rice and dal in pressure cooker, tomatoes and onions chopped finely for salad with dahi, today we will have pithla, and methi subzee. So methi is washed, chopped and cooked. Finally as dinner is getting ready so is the kitchen sink that is filling up with kadhais, bartans, covering plates, spoons and pans. So The LOH (Lady of the House) sorts that out, cleans the kitchen platform. Hey you have forgotten to make phulkas….and then she also make phulkas to that the family eats a tasty, wholesome, hearty meal.
As a sign-off, she cleans the dinner plates, puts the left-overs in smaller containers or pots and into the fridge, wipes the table clean and switches off the light that has given her warmth and vision while cooking.
At last she is ready to go to bed, when the younger one has forgotten to do his homework, the elder one can’t find her history textbook both need fresh pencils. Our LOH gets on with it and finally as she dreams of a leisurely bath and wallowing luxuriously in the body lotion, gives it up for a quickie (a bath I mean) and collapses into that bed while already planning the lunch for the following day.
I am too exhausted to even introspect here . So I will hammer that out tomorrow. But before I sign off, let me include all the illnesses, repairs, bills that need tending, supervising and paying respectively that the sacred LOH needs squeeze in the time for.
See you folks and have a great Tuesday!

China China…..what an inscrutable face..

Oho, I feel so vindicated. Latest new- A.Ak Anthony has declared that China is shoring up its muscle along the border now hopefully, India will flex a few of her muscles. Flex for flex, bicep for tricep, brazen claims for deadpan defiance. Come on India…..

Ok now onto something entertaining.
Why is it so hard for famous people (read actors and actresses) to dress normally.
I was going through photos of people who attended Surinder Kapoor’s prayer meeting. Surinder Kapoor for you information is Anil Kapoor’s father who passed away recently.

Everyone was wearing white without fail! I guess once an actor always an actor, the script always follows you wherever you go and you see a drama being unfolded whenever ten or more people get together. I was present at a post-funeral occasion twice or thrice and have been discreetly told by those grieving that it would be ‘nice’ to wear white. I immediately dug up my wardrobe. Not that it needed any digging, the number of clothes I have can be measured by a couple of inches on the ‘footpatti’ at the most! So there I was a hand on my forehead and my mind beset ny anxiety.

Did I have to buy a new dress to attend the occasion where the dead would anyway be smiling from atop a wall via a garlanded photograph? To hell with it! I thought if these people were grieving then they shouldn’t be caring what people wore and in which colour to the event. This is called orchaestrated grieving. The women were all clad in Asian Paints white that was softened by lace work and chappals that were silvery white.

Oh how could I forget the huge sunglasses that covered their faces from the forehead to the last fold of the chin. And the men! It was quite entertaining! I saw a pic with Rakesh Roshan looking (or trying to look dapper) in a colourful white shirt that showed off his biceps! If it were a normal death-day event then this would be considered obscene. And the footwear! Probably all of them made a trip to the Bata shop the same morning or the earlier evening. White shirt, blue jeans and chappals that you would wear on the beach or the bathroom. Chappals???? Hritik was wearing chappals, so was Akshay Kumar and Aftab Shivdasani. Bathroom Chappals? Well if you follow decorum ass far ass white is concerned then might ass well let your feet lead the way.

Have a look folks, it indeed is very amusing. The ladies in ill-fitting churidar kurtas with equally ridiculous footwear and men looking like they have gone for a cup of chai at a tapri and unshaven too. Nice look as I said for that casual chai or gossip at the Amrutatulya but not nice if you are attending a ‘filmi’ prayer meet or for that matter just a prayer meet.

Once upon a time, I hated Pakistan......

......hated it enough anyway to turn me into a rabid fan of cricket when we played them. Fanatic and violent enough to wish that our bowlers hit them where it hurt the most. That wish was granted when Tendulkar did exactly that and sent Shoaib Akhtar with his tail between his legs. I rejoiced. After that though my it all went downhill. How can you hate an entity who has become old and weak and dying? No, no let me assure you, I didn’t become pacifist, but the it just wasn’t any fun to hate Pakistan, no longer fun to point fingers at it as the outside hand. Javed Miandad had been replaced by the genial Inzamam and Afridi who were genuinely likeable.

Now however the mantle of bearing the weight of my hate goes to.....The People's (liar liar) Republic (how ludicrous) of China (the only honest thing about its name). It started ten years ago when I realized on my repeated shopping trips to Tulshi Baug in Pune that there was something different about toys and clothes and even plastic containers that I was browsing for. They were all made in China. Right from pencil cells to computers to electronic peripherals to cell phones and erasers and the popular toys were all flooding in from China. Even the Ganpati statues were being imported from that China. I hated it. The decorative items were made in china too. Sharpeners, novelties, cheap toys, items of clothing and even food like chocolates and bubble gums, lamp shades, glassware, crockery, watches; the local shops were being glutted with these and the quality was suspect. I would prefer a cycle made in Pakistan but China?? Now way.

Be local buy local, this became my motto. Then came the Arunachal Pradesh issue. China claims Arunachal Pradesh as its own. It’s like claiming the neighbour’s parking lot as your own when he has in fact paid 13,000/sq ft for it and has the requisite papers. The you also lay claim to the car parked on it since you already have claimed the ground it stands on as your own. Next come the inhabitants of the car. You start showing sympathy for them, try to befriend them, help them and finally also claim them as your own and allege that the family members have been starved and ill-treated. Then you stop the guests from visiting the house because that is allegedly your house so how can you have uninvited and unfamiliar people who ‘claim’ to know those living in the house, when in fact it is you have been living there.

And so on the so forth. However China has been extremely persevering with its claims and consistently building on it, exactly like that of the ‘parking lot’ example. It’s amusing at first, then irritating, then becomes a nuisance until it grows into a dire, serious problem . A problem where the neighbors start taking sides (forget that this problem shouldn’t have cropped up in the first place) and express the sentiment that maybe, just maybe there might be some truth in the to the person claiming the parking lot as his own. You are doomed.

That China has balls to back it is evident from the claims, threats and protests that are more brazen than the ones before. Your disbelief keeps growing until finally you believe what China claims. Bingo, mission achieved!

Wha wha whitest of white! Our obsession with the colour white!

We have come a long way indeed. Or so say the articles in newspapers and magazines. We have come to believe that yes, we have become more inclusive, more tolerant and less discriminatory of our complexion which is generally brown/ dusky/ wheatish but certainly not fair/ pale and white. The media backs it up by throwing up the name of Bipasha Basu, the Bong Bombshell and who is NOT fair. Well neither were Hema Malini, Rekha, Mumtaaz, Zeenat Aman, Parveen Babi, Meenashi Sheshadri or for that matter Madhuri Dikshit or Sreedevi. Madhu Sapre was not fair and neither were other models and actresses who made it big despite their non-white complexion of course due credit must go to the make-up men who were ready with tubs of fair paint and brush.
My point is, nothing has changed. We are neither more accepting nor more inclusive and our obsession is gaining dangerous proportions as evident rising number of fairness cream advertisements and all-white faces and bodies that we see in TV. Honestly when was the last time you saw an actor/ actress in her or his natural state of body? Not in the buff you pervs!
Even Mallu John Abraham looks white and let’s not forget Priyanka Chopra whose skin colour has ‘improved’ despite her Mallu genes. No, no I don’t mean to be degrading or demeaning here or even racially abusive. I am just shaking my head at our need to change the skin-tone of our own people into that of the pucca sahibs or the Aryans both of whom left the country (or blended in) sixty and six thousand years ago respectively. My history is a bit blurred as far as time lines are concerned but the essential core of the argument remains. Why can’t we see our baby as beautiful?
Did you check the ads on TV? Everybody these days looks like they suffer from a skin pigmentation problem. It couldn’t have been more stunning in all its glory in the ‘chammak challo’ song from Ra 1. All the chorus dancers look like they have been selected only after ascertaining that they have a pigmentation problem. Why even Shahrukh Khan looks very Aryan (blue eyes and fair skin) so then why the hell not go the full monty and dye your hair blonde? Kareena is naturally fair so she is excused. But I am sure the director/ choreographer must have said “sabsey gori lagni chahiye”!

Are we rich?

....so asked my daughter one day as soon as she came back from school. Tricky question that. She is old enough to not be fed a cock bull fairy tale but enough to not really understand economics slash money.

Fortunately she was distracted by a phone call from a friend and not even my offering of taking her out for a pizza would have separated her from the phone (she has her priorities so right! Friends before parents or anything else for that matter)
So there I was, desperately looking for an answer that would satisfy my daughter and me as well. Are we rich?

My mind harks back to an interview of Shekhar Kapoor’s many years ago in a film magazine. I am the last person to read anything related to Shekhar Kapoor. I just don’t like him, don’t like his mumblings and don’t like his preening and posing as an intellectual film maker (what’s wrong with just being a film maker?) I haven’t seen Elisabeth (or was it Victoria or Mary?) and don’t follow his Cannes outings (does anyone? We are fans of Aishwarya Rai here and her many experiments with the mercurial subject called fashion).
BUT this interview I will never forget for he actually echoed my sentiments and I remember having blurted out a heartfelt and spontaneous ‘Wah wah”. He was asked if he was rich and the answer he gave made me weep. At last here was a thought we both had in common and this was enough. He answered “I have enough money to buy books and music without a second thought” Maashallah! What a beautiful answer! It was like a Haiku, delicious in its brevity and so precise in its expression.

That evening I steered the topic around my daughter’s question and delivered my answer neatly like a batsman waiting for that perfect loose delivery and hit it resoundingly for a massive six, way outside the stadium. “I think we have enough to buy us books and CDs”. Of course that answer cost me because my daughter took it literally and trapped us quickly into taking her to a bookshop. But I did see a fleeting expression of wonder in her eyes. Probably because she expected a different answer, or expected us to talk about money or how it is a precious commodity and how we should spend it wisely. Instead I had expertly negotiated this minefield of an answer. Glad to not have to explain wealth or lack of it to my teenage daughter.

Thanks Shekhar Kapoor, see this much we have in common.
By the way, when I was in Mumbai some time back, I bought a yellowed copy of a book called Masterclass. It had the name ‘Jayant Kriplani’ inscribed on the first page. This is a terrific book in the sense it’s not like any other I have read before in style and story. It is leisurely even in the con-job that is central to the plot. More about the book later though. Got to grab a coffee….sorry no more using the word grab as far as food is concerned! So got to have a quick coffee and run over to the Metro Water Office.

See ya folks and have a great Friday!

What makes TV enjoyable?

Mindless entertainment? If that were the case then I would be hooked on to the sundry serials where women my age have quivering lips and men my husband’s age have flaring nostrils. Kaun banega Crorepati? Now that is different.
I was never a fan of Kaun Banega Crorepati. All these years from 2001 on, I was quite content to let my husband describe the show and also rhapsodise endlessly about that tall man with French beard, velvet suits and kindly eyes that reached out to contestants. I also briefly saw the this show during the last season where I thought Amitabh Bachchan appeared tired and really just wanted to get on with the show. He was unwell and the show was aborted midway.
But let me tell you, from a non-believer to fervent convert I am the naya Mullah whose each sentence is interspersed with Allah as my husband watches me with amusement. Amitabh is an actor par excellence but that alone could not guarantee the complete thrall that he holds over the contestant, spectators and the TV audience. There have been other good actors who tried their hands at this format on other channels from Anupam Kher to Govinda and of course the man who dared to put his hand in the viper’s nest and…………Shahrukh Khan. Nobody remembers his stint. It was inconsequential, pedestrian and the show actually fell from its lofty heights that Amitabh commanded to the boring plains where Sharukh held court. It was not the same. SRK was no AB. Ok I can only speak so much or gush only so forth about the man who Baron Baritone. Channel bosses at Sony are smart. Amitabh cannot ride the show endlessly into that glorious sunset. There has to be entertainment portion too that gets it hooks into the audience.
And this is the reason I watch Kaun Banega Crorepati and that I the reason I dig Amitabh Bachchan more so as an anchor than as an actor. Every contestant brings with her or him a story to the episode. It is strange that the stories come out touching us and have us rooting for the contestant despite Amitabh’s high- wattage presence. His sunshine never ever overshadows the conditions that the contestant come from. The questions are relatively easy compared to previous seasons’ but the plot is there, oh yes! It is very much there and drives each episode of KBC into another shining example of TV entertainment.

Through KBC I have learnt so much about our country and its people, how they live, what they do, how different they are than me in the sense of dress, dialect, economic status, social and cultural histories and their prevalent situation. It couldn’t have been highlighted more glaringly when I saw the episode where the contestant was from Kashmir and had killed militants when confronted by them. The contestants are all from the lower middle class to abjectly poor households. They have all faced economic breakdown and have come back stronger from it. They know the despair of hearing a jangle of coins in the pocket instead of feeling the crispness of bank notes. I hang on to their every word and worry. I can count the creases of tension on their faces and feel every drop of sweat running down their faces when the prize money appears to be slipping away and out of their desperate grasp. I come to know names of smallest town or villages or even cities in India that I haven’t hitherto heard of and scurry over to the Atlas to find it. I love the different accents that the contestants speak in and then try to identify them by their regions.
Quiz takes a backseat. It’s the byplay that is India that I enjoy the most.

Soup not Saar, Salad not Koshimbir!

The older generation is catching up with gen X at least as far as the ‘diet’ fad is concerned.
I noticed this when I went to dine at a friend’s place and noticed her mother sprinkle something that looked like sawdust into her dal. “It’s rusk, you know”. No I don’t. Then it turns out that ‘rusk’ is nothing more than apna ‘toast’ that is so delightful when you dip it in chai. I asked her “Kaku, why do you eat this rusk? Poli aahey na? Or maybe you can leave the poli on the tava for a little bit longer and make it into a crisp khakra? "No I am trying to limit my carbs”, she answered. It made me feel rather like a villager who has his honest Bhakar goggling all the while at these people were indulging in culinary masturbation.
Shappat, I am not lying. This was the gist of the conversation and the 60year old mother of my friend used carbs instead of carbohydrates. I have no idea that eating rusk limits carb intake or even that rusk is not a carb or why should she limit her carb-intake in the first place. I take it since they are well-travelled (read have been to Yoo Ess of Ae) and are health freaks (go for long walks in ill-fitting Reebok shoes) they must be talking sense, yet something didn’t seem right. For a lady who grew up in the 60s, this seems kind of strange.
Another very dear friend of my mother’s has quit drinking tea and has taken up cocoa instead. I fail to see the benefit in abstaining from one and embracing the other. Her son apparently has quit rice. So it’s been a year since he has had waran, bhaat, tup and limbu. I was shaking my head ever so slightly (I hope I didn’t look like a mad woman) at her lofty and holier than thou statement.
I see all around me that people have quit the most fundamental parts of their staple diet like poli, bhaat or waran or skipping dinner for a bowl of soup with a lightly toasted sandwich and a salad. When I say salad, it does not mean koshimbir you illiterate person, it is a diced and tossed dish made of raw vegetables like salad leaves that have no nutritional value . Sometimes I might get very sage advice like “ketaki you should eat more sprouts”. Sprouts? You mean mode aleylyaa usali? But I have them as a part of my meals and I see no reason to suddenly have 'more sprouts’. It’s like saying Yoghurt is good for health when in fact we have been having dahi or curd every day without knowing it was good for health.
The other day when I came back from work, a friend of my mother’s had come over and I joined them for tea. At the first sip, however i almost choked when she made a grand statement that she is going to replace tea with smoothie. I had vaguely heard of smoothie and I thought it was just another word of milk shake. Its shake alright but without milk. It is made with curd. YUCK! Strawberry and curds? Orange and curds? Berries and curds? What sort of combinations are these?
I rest my case and would like to believe that travel and exposure to food styles and cuisine cultures completely diverse from their own has made them go mad for a while. To translate the hindi proverb, people who have lost their way in the morning will find a way back home at night. Kakas and Kakus, please don’t bid adieu to what you ate and the way you ate it. We need you to feed us the way we were fed when we were little, we need that rich vein of gastronomy more than ever now when we have decided to patronise empty foods that feed the stomach but starve the soul!