Of Dolls and Dremels

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Have you heard cars, badass weapons, tech. gadgetry etc. being referred to as toys for the boys? I bet, you have… and have you ever bristled over how stereotypical and possibly sexist that is. Well, I have… and I always get mad when I hear or read it.

Who decides what I, as a girl, ought to play with or what I should fancy under the Christmas tree, wrapped up in elegant gift wrap? I love cars, machinery, electronics and gadgets… and I don’t think I take too kindly to being judged for it. And, no… it is not just these things that I like, I am a huge fan of dolls and soft toys and baby animals and all things ‘cute’. I do hate pink though… unless it is a shocking shade of it.

I believe that it is a stupid idea to force people to segregate interests and bracket them as male and female ones. Why should a woman who likes to knit be looked down upon and thought of as a ‘bored housewife’ or a woman who has an active Pinterest board of fun & creative crafts be considered a ‘sit-at-home-mom’. For all you know, they are probably taking time out from their corporate jobs to have some fun and de-stress. A hobby that does not involve a heavy tool box and machine tools and loads of grease is no less an interesting hobby. I love to build little shelves and tinker with electronics just as much as I love to bake or quill.

There is this Samsung ad that is an irritating example of the prejudiced view of a big part of our society.

Look at how it has a woman (in pink, naturally) in what is, according to Samsung, her natural environment (the kitchen) saying she uses the computer to share pics of her family. Notice how all the men reportedly use their computers for ‘serious’ stuff… and even, work! Ha!! Oh… and if that wasn’t insulting enough, they hand her a screw driver and she looks at the thing as if it is an alien dick. How hard is it to unscrew a laptop? Samsung (and a whole lot of other tech companies) have to dig themselves out of that trench under the rock they are in and see the light of day to know that women have working brains… and they can figure out tools and computers and more just as easily as they can figure out the exact temperature the meat has to reach for the perfect Beef Wellington (which, by the way, is 55°C.) Also, pastels are boring… next time you get a gadget out for women please don’t do pink!! Red is good. Red is passionate.

Sarah (my imaginary - for now - daughter), loves the Sang Noir Veyron and let’s Tia, her teddy bear drive it while she fixes the broken microwave so she and Tia can together bake that batch of chocolate cookies shaped like LOTR characters. :D 

And you can FO for judging me… both for liking dolls AND my imaginary daughter.

Also, I have to go fix the goddamn office printer!

Travel Blues

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I hate air travel. I know it is the most convenient form of transport, the fastest means to get anywhere. But, I feel it is a nightmare to be cooped up for hours on an armchair and it gets worse if your co-passenger is unsavory.

It is so much nicer to travel in a train where you can get up from the seat once in a while, stretch your legs, walk around… and if nothing else, there is always something outside the window to look at. Clouds or the dark night sky gets quite boring after a while on an aircraft.

I wish the whole of the civilized world was connected by an immense railway network… underground, over ground, under sea, long bridges, scenic routes, over deserts and plains and hill ranges. It would be quite a feat of engineering and a delight to travel the lines.

Last night on my flight back to Kuwait, I had a particularly nasty co-passenger. He was sloshed and kept drinking throughout the journey and he wouldn't shut up or let me sleep. He started of decently enough but soon his behaviour deteriorated into an annoying mess. I am normally not sociable while I am travelling, I do like to keep to myself and be in my own world of imagination… and not being left alone to do that was extremely irksome. I didn't want to create a scene on the late night flight and disturb the other sleeping passengers and even then I had to raise my voice and be outright rude to him (which is not exactly my style). When he didn't relent, I tried to change my seat or even get downgraded to economy class just to get away from the horrible fellow. Unfortunately, the flight was packed. Finally, I spent around 50 minutes of my 3 hour flight standing in the aisle space near the door with the steward and hostess to avoid the creep.

Well, glad to have gotten rid of him. When I narrated the incident to someone, he chided me for playing the victim, for talking about the incident in detail and so reliving the miserable moments and making him feel miserable in the process about something that is over and about which nothing could be done… about which HE could do nothing about.

Narrating the incident was not reliving it… it was therapeutic, a way to get it out of my system… a way of assurance that stuff happens and you do not let it simmer and boil within you but let it out and be cleansed. Obviously, that didn't go well for me. As usual, I decided to rant on my blog about it and purge it… and not be judged in the process. Thank you!

BBMing!

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When Apple or even Google (Android) comes up with a new product or the tiniest update/upgrade for an existing product, everyone goes hyper irrespective of the relevance.

BlackBerry puts forth a tried and tested and much loved product for the rest of the world and any hype is frowned upon, their marketing mistakes are blown up to look like management blunders that could cause another 'Depression'.

The point is that BBM is a great product. It is one of the best if not the best messenger service out there. It beats the others in speed and efficiency and more importantly it is reliable and it is secure and private. Just knowing your email ID or phone number does not put you at risk of being a spam target... The BBM PIN ensures that.

So be glad that BBM made it to the other platforms and stop whining about the hype.

Enough with the stupid jokes already!

Achievement? Being of Indian Origin!

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In India, we have a very simple approach. We wait for people who have Indian roots to achieve something good in life, like going to space, designing overpriced speakers, winning Nobel prizes or beauty contests. Once they do that, we declare them Indian citizens in one fell swoop. No visas, no red tape and absolutely no care for whether their Indianness had anything to do with their achievements.

-- Krish Ashok ('The browning version' in The Hindu)

According to the Indian media, even achieving something of their own isn't needed for someone of Indian origin to be hailed for 'placing India on the global map'... being within a 50 meter radius while Kate Middleton gave birth is enough!

*Rolls eyes*

Ego Boost!

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Changed my profile pic to a painted version of me... Now I have both a caricature and a digital painting of moi!

Let me tell ya... it is quite the ego booster! :D

Digital painting of moi!

Caricature of a cartoon!

Morning Nightmares

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Picking up the newspaper in the morning (or opening the news website on the computer) has become an experience akin to the opening scenes of a nightmare. It’s a nightmare that plays out every morning and that holds you in its horrifying thrall for the rest of the day.

Is it that human life has become cheap these days? Has the world decided to completely disregard human dignity? Everywhere around the world, the civilization seems to be sliding down into a state of anarchy that would soon be completely beyond our control. The traits that set us humans apart from the other animals… such as compassion, love and the ability to apply rational thought have been taken over by the more primal and base instincts of anger, violence and lust. It is like mankind is unraveling at the seams… it probably would just take one strong pull to disintegrate the fabric of humanity.

Yes, there were wars and battles in the ages gone by… fights over land and power, conquests and witch hunts and lots of violence in the name of defending or expanding realms and empires. But those were the rowdy teenage years of mankind when the hormones were ablaze and there were wild oats to be sown. Didn't we all settle down to a mellow age when we were mature enough to understand that life has a beauty and dignity to it that needs peace to nurture it?

Ideas like religion were meant to be instruments of peace, guidance to the peoples of the world… their right to choose and follow a set of principles they felt comfortable with. Today religion is not too different from organized crime. The atrocities committed in the name of what is supposed to be a spiritual bridge to attaining nirvana (eternal peace of mind…and not specifically a Hindu idea) are so horrendous that I can’t understand how any ‘god’ can approve of it?

Then there is the great financial divide… the rich vs the poor. We invest so much of our time and efforts in complaining that the rich have it easy, I find it simply a mark of inefficiency that we do not all instead strive to be successful and probably help ourselves cross that gap.

Closer home, in India, the media in their calls to awaken the people of India talk about a ‘real India‘ which according to them consist of only the downtrodden, the sick and poor, the underprivileged and the destitute. How true is this picture? What about the cities in India, the urban centers, the working middle class which statistically forms a major chunk of the population and the rich and über rich of the country… are they unreal? Do they not belong to the country? Benefiting one strata of the society at the expense of the other would just deepen the chasm between them. I know there are people who have brilliant ideas that can help uplift the society as a whole without alienating the people. Some of them don’t believe in the system and are hesitant to put forward their ideas because the system has always failed them before.

Today, in the newspaper I read about a woman who hung herself from a lamp-post in Kolkata during peak hours… and no one dissuaded her, helped her get back on her feet, figuratively or literally. The headlines screamed ‘Heartless Kolkata’ but not for a second did I believe that the scenario would have been any different in any other city. Human life has lost its charm as long as it isn't your own.

Women in India, both the citizens and the visitors, live in complete and constant fear for their dignity, for their very lives. Even though I hate to generalize, I am being forced to and I have to point out that men are increasingly losing hold of their senses… they are de-evolving into something worse than animals, because animals do have their own social codes and norms and strictly adhere to them. A large part of the public, including politicians and self-appointed guardians of ‘culture’ are busy blaming the media, the victims of abuse and everyone else other than the perpetrators of these crimes. These people are equally if not more responsible for the mistreatment meted out to women here. They are the ones who give these men the encouragement, that final push that instigates them to become monsters.

Every day, the newspaper puts forth a new horror story in the life of some woman in the country… and this story is the one that sees light among the thousands that get buried under threats made or carried out, under political or financial clout and under shame which the victims are often always made to feel. And this terror tale is very personal to every women in the country, for the mothers, sisters, wives, girlfriends, daughters...working women, students, housewives… even the unborn infant girl in her mother’s womb… any of us could be the victim… and all of us feel the pain, the heartache, the humiliation and attack on our dignity every time such an incident occurs. So why does our country let it happen to us every day… why does it let our picking up the newspaper or turning on the news channel become a painful disrobing of our dignity?

I am a woman. I fear for me and my kind. I have vowed to never return to India. I dread my nightmares would turn real there… and I am already scarred for life by the repeated attempts to molest my dignity by proxy. I am a scared woman... and I am not the only one.

The Passport Ordeal

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For the past one month or more, I have woken up daily to news that makes it hard for me keep my morning breakfast inside me. Crimes against women, crimes in general, the apathy of lawmakers and politicians, the callous attitude of the keepers of law, the nonsense spewed out when certain idiots open their mouths and the general untoward daily tidings have managed to turn my once heart felt respect for this country to utter disgust.

Where once I had hope for a nice future here, I no longer have the inclination to chase that mirage. It is a mixture of helplessness and the inability to ignore what goes on around me. I would do what little I could to assuage my own fears and concerns regarding life in India and yet it would still not be enough. Of course, sense dictates that change takes its own sweet time… but, I want to live my life now…dammit!

With all this darkness around converging around me… suffocating me, my government issued passport has become the passport to light. It is like the key dangling from the pocket of the gaoler sleeping within reach of the prison cell. Yet, it has been a bit out of reach…

My passport expired a couple of months back and I have been running up and down to get it reissued/renewed. A simple process in most countries and so it was here too as my previous experience suggests. This time however, I had quite a tough time, applying, getting an appointment and then finally being able to submit the required documents… ironically, the process has been moved online for easier and faster access.

For a country whose IT force is world renowned, the government websites here all leave a lot to be desired. But, thankfully I cleared all those hurdles and then started the long wait. This time the ball had rolled into the jurisdiction of the police… it was verification time.  I understand that the police force is neither that numerous and certainly not flush with time to go to every applicant to verify their details. It makes perfect sense to call the applicant over to the station and get it over with.

So, here I was waiting and waiting and waiting… past the designated 21 days within which my passport was supposed to have reached me, past an additional 20 days grace period I spared in belief that a busy year-end might be the culprit for the delay and 5 days more I needed to take out for my own personal work. When there was no sign of a call from the cops or a beaming postman with a registered post, I went down to the police station and asked them if my file might have made its presence felt in the station. The cop, of course, told me to come after 5 days after I had checked all the file bundles in the room. As always in these cases, I thanked my immense patience and dug my nails into my palm and left the station. After 5 days I promptly returned to the hallowed halls of law to check if my file had decided to drop in. The cop had this blank look and seemed to not remember asking me to show up and insisted he would message me when my file did land. I offered to check their files again if he was too busy, but he had to have lunch and he could not leave the office attended by me, an outsider. Er… fair enough… Maybe! He did inform me that I might have to check with the CID office in my area as the passport files first land there and are distributed to the local cop-stations from there.

I went back home, disappointed, vented my frustration on Twitter and Facebook and booked a cab to the CID office for the morrow.

Early next morning, I woke up to the sweet chime of my mobile announcing a text message…  after all the headache the passport gave me, the message was like a GPS indicator beeping the location of the Holy Grail!

With papa retired a few days back, I had someone to drive me over to the station. Lucky me and lucky rickshaw drivers who were spared my usual tirade and refusal to pay extra.

I carried with me all possible documents I had and had not submitted at the passport office to ensure a swift verification. Considering it was a passport renewal, I did not think my Grade X certificate would be necessary… but the cop after going through all the documents which included my B.E. certificate and college Leaving Certificate, decided that he had to ensure that I passed Grade X! In his form he jotted down my education as B.E (Graduate Engineer) and promptly asked me to get my Grade X certificate and a letter from the Co-op Society of my building that says that I am a resident there since so many years (which is weird as I stay with my parents but I have been in Kuwait all this time). And he also told me to get it by 7:30 PM. I was back at the station by 7:15 PM. The cop gave me one look, looked at his watch and said it wasn't yet 7:30 PM. I was pretty impressed by the punctuality of the Indian police!

By 9:00 PM, my verification was finally done. I signed the required documents and made my way home weary, but happy that I am one step closer to that much needed ticket to escape from here.

Of course, the cop did inform me that the passport would take at least 25 more days to show up… now that is another long wait… and perhaps another story.

An incident at the police station while waiting for my verification did spark in me a new light… and in that light I thought I glimpsed a new hue of hope for this country: Khakhi! More on that later…

Radha Couldn't Care Less!

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So, some nincompoop(s) with a lot of time on their hands and nothing better to do in spite of calling themselves an NGO decide to do something that is actually going to affect the lives of millions of people in a positive way... they file an FIR against some Bollywood types (Karan Johar and Gauri Khan) for calling Radha 'sexy' in some idiotic movie (Student Of The Year)! 

I was being sarcastic if someone didn't get it... though, there's nothing sarcastic about the movie being idiotic!

Also, personally the said song doesn't appeal to me... but I am not going to file an FIR because a song gives me a headache!

I find it pathetic that they are even bothered by the song... I mean, if they didn't like it then why give it this publicity?

My second issue with it is that... it is fine to say Radha looks like an elephant when she walks... that is poetry (apparently) and acceptable but calling Radha 'sexy' is a criminal offence and "hurts Hindu sentiments"? From when did 'Sexy' become a derogatory term?

Though I can't remember the exact poem where Radha was called an elephant... I can assure you she has been called one by some famous Hindi poet. 

Third and most important issue as far as I am concerned.... The priorities in some people's lives are appalling! They are concerned about a mythological character Radha who may or may not have existed when so many real, living women are being ill-treated throughout the country in so many abhorable ways! 

I am sure Radha, if she did exist, couldn't care less about what nonsense songs are being written about her while her sisters are being treated like crap. She was quite mature and open minded from what I have read.

Seriously, Dikhao pe mat jaao... apni akal khud lagao!

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Mind-Rape!

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I usually refrain from posting about social issues on this blog as this is more of a personal space. But, this problem here has become a thorn in my side for so long that it has become personal enough to be noted down.

Every day as I browse the news networks of the internet... of all the violence, crimes and corruption that is rampant in this country, one category of news hits harder home… being a woman, the reports of crimes against women are each like a splash of scalding water on my face. Even worse than that are some of the comments that these articles elicit from the common people who read them. The news about these acts seems to bring out the absolute best in our politicians with their thoughtless remarks and senseless attitude.

Add to that certain factions of society the very existence of which seem to be to keep the women of this country suppressed and hidden within the four walls of a prison.

So we have actors-turned-politicians like Chiranjit who can’t even try and ‘act’ sensible and politicians like Mamata Banerjee (there is no point in expecting any kind of rational argument from her) and the Khaps who never fail to spout stupidity every time they open their mouths and that is something they do too often. 

These are just a few examples of people who make these nonsensical remarks.

According to these ‘brilliant’ people, the causes for rape are…

• Women wearing short skirts.
• Women interacting with men.
• Use of mobile phones by women.
• Fast-food consumption (no kidding… check the screen shot below.)
• Girls being married off at a decent age.
• Women going to restaurants and pubs.
• Women walking in the street (especially if you are in Delhi.)
• The western culture (because apparently every wannabe rapist does a course in it.)

If you notice, the most prominent cause in most of the reasons above are women. And these are only a few of the inane reasons given.

So according to these super ‘intelligent’ people…

We women seem to invite every man in our vicinity to strip us of our ‘westernised’ sarees / salwar-suits and sexually assault us while brandishing our cell-phones and eating fast-food… all this while we so horribly choose to marry at an age when marriage makes sense.

If you are an infant girl being sexually assaulted… well, you deserved it with your skimpy diapers and bibs!

Married women being attacked… why aren’t you at home hiding behind your husband and preferably wearing a veil covering you from head to toe?

If you are a victim of incest… well, I am waiting for the ‘learned’ people who made all the above brilliant remarks to come up with reasoning for this one.

What pains me so much is that not a single politician or lawmaker or person with influence has suggested that the menfolk and boys be educated and taught to respect women from their formative years. No one has suggested that these victims of sexual assault be sheltered strictly from being stripped of their dignity again and again by the people around them.

People do suggest and hope that laws against sexual assault be made stricter… and when these suggestions are made, the government just sits on them with no evident results.

Of course, when it comes to politicians treating the issue of crimes against women in the most blatantly idiotic manner, we Indians aren’t the only culprits… there are people like Todd Akin in the most ‘liberal’ country of the world… who make statements that reinforce your disbelief in MAN-kind!

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