Mard ko dard nahi hota

Boy oh boy! He is a monster when it comes to show of stunts, but is otherwise a softie which makes him adorable. There’s no limit to his daredevilry. My heart does a somersault; every time I see him hop on the TV set placed on a 4-feet tabletop from a 2-feet bed and then dive for the bean bag down on the floor. Like a skilled acrobat, he swiftly tucks his chin in his chest lest he bangs his head on the tiled floor. But, he is not lucky always. One slip and he falls flat. But, is quick to collect himself and sits there with hands folded across his chest, silently. “Did you hurt yourself?” I ask him with my heart in my mouth. “Nope,” comes a stoic reply. I know he is hurt badly, but doesn’t want to show his pain. Oh man, he’s not even four!

“Mard ko dard nahi hota,” rings an old friend’s humorous take on man’s innate behaviour of restraining himself from shedding tears when hurt. He bears the pain to the point of being superhuman -- no matter "how badly he has been beaten or how cruel the torture has been". But, “chot agar dil pe lagi ho to dard hota hai,” says a journo friend, “aur phir dil hi nahi, aankhen bhi zaar-zaar roti hain”. If a heartbroken man says that he is not wounded, he is not bruised and bleeding, then he is lying, he says, citing the case of his close friend, who broke a dozen hearts before meeting the same fate. Tears roll down his cheeks even today while nursing his wounds.
 
Salon terms the year 2010 as the year of tears for men. Citing an attorney, it states how male “machoism dominated early 70's. Men were not supposed to publicly display emotions as it was viewed as a sign of weakness. But stoicism gave way over the years to sensitivity as a desirable male trait, and by 2010, there were few fears for tears left among well-known American men”.

I have seen my father weep at the bidaai of my sister. I understand his crying as it was done at a time and in a particular circumstance that allowed him to lower his guard without the fear of ridicule. I am sure that he wouldn’t be moved enough by a good movie to let a drop out of his tear ducts. Not even by failure or embarrassment. How often we hear moms admonish their little boys, “Stop crying, be a man!” An oft-repeated phrase, ‘be a man’ means to look failure, frailty and fear squarely in the face, and not blink, says a feminist and a writer.
 
But down the years, men have become less inhibited in demonstrating emotions. In fact, we get to see more of this human side of the male now. What was once considered as unmanly, is now being viewed as a quality to have as an asset. The turnaround was ably captured in the Raymond’s ‘complete man’ ad series in 1990's. It broke the stereotypical image of a macho Indian man portrayed in Hindi films. “Raymond actually robbed the man of his mardangi,” says a columnist. And, instead emerged a “sensitive, vulnerable, versatile, caring, intellectual and fun” man. The next decade saw this softer side becoming more pronounced. Images of men crying openly began to fill the small screen space. TV actors left behind the likes of Archana, Tulsi and Parvati in the tear terrain. “It’s cool to cry as it shows that emotions are same for men and women,” says a TV actor. Not only on daily soaps, but also on the reality shows more and more men turned on the waterworks. Filmmaker Shekhar Kapur got so overwhelmed by the performance of a group of physically challenged kids on India’s Got Talent that he couldn’t control his sobbing. Sanjay Dutt -- the icon of macho Bollywood heroes -- wept on the Indian Idol 5 show after hearing the soul stirring AR Rahman’s Sufi number “Khwaja mere khwaja”.

Remember Qutubuddin Ansari! The face that flashed across the world as the face of the Gujarat riots -- eyes welling with tears, face covered with mud and dried blood, and hands folded in a plea for mercy. Or, cricketer Kapil Dev, who broke down on Karan Thapar’s show when asked if he had a role in match-fixing! And, can we ever forget our Men in Blue shedding the tears of joy and jubilation after winning the World Cup? Yes, the man has arrived – mard ko bhi dard hota hai…

Unfriendly persuasion

Even more than our choice of enemies, it's our choice of unfriends which reveals what we are....

Recently I was introduced to a fascinating new word: unfriend. The word, a verb, comes from the social networking site called Facebook and it means turning a Facebook 'friend' - or someone you keep in touch with through the site - into an 'unfriend', someone whom you find so utterly objectionable that you no longer wish to have anything to do with the person. Being computer illiterate I don't do Facebook (or Twitter, or YouTube, or any of those other e-things) and I'd never come across the term 'unfriend' before. But the moment I heard it, it struck me as being a word particularly apt for our times.

Unfriend. The 'un' prefix gives it a unilateralism that brooks no argument or compromise. An 'unfriend' sounds like those 'un-persons' of the Soviet bloc in the days of Stalinism, people deemed to be so beyond any hope of political redemption that their names were deleted from all official records and their faces removed from group photographs. Soviet un-persons were like human black holes; they were literally sucked out of existence. An un-person was not someone who'd once been a person and was no longer such (i.e., someone who'd once been alive and was now dead); an un-person was a no-one who'd never existed. Similarly, an unfriend suggests not just someone who was once your friend but is no longer so - is now in fact your foe, as opposed to friend - but is someone who for you has no existence whatsoever, neither as friend nor foe.

We tend to think in pairs of opposites, with each side of the pair reaffirming the existence of the other. So yin reaffirms its opposite of yang. Light reaffirms dark, and friend reaffirms foe, and vice versa. Your foe, or your enemy, reaffirms your existence - often more than your friends do - even as you reaffirm the existence of your adversary.

A prime example of an interdependent pair of foes is provided by Pakistan and India. Pakistan needs to have India as its adversary, because if it didn't it would lose its own identity which is premised on the fact that it is 'not-India'. Likewise, India needs Pakistan as its arch opponent. Because if we didn't have Pakistan who would we accuse of cross-border terrorism (as distinct from home-grown terrorism represented by Maoists and Abhinav Bharat), play cricket against, and wrangle with over Kashmir? If Pakistan didn't have India and India didn't have Pakistan, whom would Afridi have cussed after the World Cup, and whom would Indian fans have gloated over after beating Sri Lanka in the finals?

Of course it was Sri Lanka we beat to take the World Cup. But gloat over Sri Lanka? Where's the fun in that? No, instead we'll gloat over Pakistan, which has always been our favourite scape-gloat.

A nation is known by the enemies it keeps. So too are people. Those whom we oppose, and who oppose us in turn, help us to identify us to ourselves, even more so perhaps than our allies might do. There's no getting away from them; we need our enemies, as much as they need us. Reliable enemies - like India and Pakistan - are hard to find and it would be not just foolish but detrimental to self-preservation to unfriend our best foes.

So whom should we unfriend? Whom should I unfriend? Who is so undesirable in every way, so detrimental to my existence from day to day? The answer to that in 2011 Anna Domini is obvious: the scamsters and swindlers who've pushed this country into the abyss of moral bankruptcy. Yep. I can safely unfriend the corrupt. Press the 'Delete' button on them. Whom to start with? Who do I know firsthand, and not through hearsay or media reports to be involved in graft, who's certainly given bribes though he mightn't have received any? Delete the person? Unfriend him? Done. Deleted.

Yikes. I think i've just unfriended myself.

'Fast unto death out of place in today's India'

NEW DELHI: On Day 2 of his fast unto death at Jantar Mantar, Anna Hazare turned to face his companions fasting along with him. "For a corn cob (bhutta) to grow, a corn pod (dana) must be sacrificed to the soil. If that pod says I don't want to go into the soil, it will simply rot. It will end up in the thresher (chakki). But if it goes into the soil, it will ensure a field of corn. What is a man without sacrifice?" Around him, eyes swam, hunger pangs were ignored, tired limbs relaxed. The graying men nodded silently. They were here to sacrifice for the nation.

Sacrifice is not a term in modern India's lexicon. It is this idea of "going without" that gave Hazare's form of protest its edginess, say observers. "His whole action was so out of place in today's India that it immediately caught attention. It runs counter to current reality," says social commentator Santosh Desai.

In effect, the image that will endure from Jantar Mantar is that of a composed Anna Hazare in white and his fasting companions, mostly graying. "The old people who just kept vigil were the impressive part of the agitation. They sustained the spirit of the movement," says sociologist Shiv Viswanathan of the five-day protest that came to an end on Saturday morning when the 72-year-old Hazare broke his fast.

The main takeaway is Hazare's morally strong intent. "A fast unto death has a morality play to it. Hazare played on morality with the right cameos in it: a police officer, a sadhu. The movement then acquired its own momentum," says Viswanathan.

While the campaign received clamorous popular support, it is unlikely to set a precedent. There are murmurs of "blackmail" and "arm-twisting", but fears of the fast-unto-death protest being repeated are misplaced. It was of a self-limiting nature. For one, a set of conditions, a degree of legitimacy is required for a fast-unto-death type of protest.

Second, there are very few Annas around, says Desai. Viswanathan agrees that the fast-unto-death was a result of desperation of having tired of a variety of scams, a way of drumming up attention. That said, caveats must be put into place. "We do need a series of caveats. Tomorrow, if a bunch of separatists decides to go on a fast unto death, what would you do? The issues are procedural, and caveats need to be put in place for this kind of protest," says Viswanathan.

Adding to that, Desai points to the case of Manipur's Irom Sharmila. At age 27, in the year 2000, Irom Sharmila undertook to fast unto death against human rights abuse in Manipur, calling for the Armed Forces Special Powers Act to be removed. Taken into custody, she has been force-fed with a tube for a full ten years now. "The state can forcefully feed if the issue doesn't have certain legitimacy," says Desai. To that end, it is not a replicable model.

A demon named desire.....

Kama is the one opponent Gandhi did not engage non-violently nor could completely subdue. In contrast to his other opponents, the god of desire was the only antagonist whoe humanity he denied.



STICKS AND STONES: In his periods of doubt, Gandhi would characteristically look for lapses in his brahmacharya to account for his ‘failures’ in the political arena. With grandnieces Abha and Manu.

It’s hard to tell whether Gandhi was a man with a gigantic erotic temperament or merely the possessor of an overweening conscience. There has rarely been a public figure in the history of the world who, in his letters and autobiographical writings, has been as candid as Gandhi in dealing with his sexuality. A sympathetic reader cannot fail to be moved by the dimensions of Gandhi’s sexual conflict - heroic in its proportion, startling in its intensity, interminable in its duration. The god of desire is the “serpent which I know will bite me”, “the scorpion of passion”, whose destruction, annihilation, is a preeminent goal of Gandhi's spiritual life. In sharp contrast to all his other opponents, whose humanity he was always scrupulous to respect, the god of desire was the only antagonist with whom Gandhi could not compromise and whose humanity (not to speak of divinity) he always denied. For Gandhi, defeats in this private war were occasions for bitter self-reproach and a public confession of humiliation, while the victories were a matter of joy, “fresh beauty”, and an increase in vigour and selfconfidence that brought him nearer to moksha. By the time Gandhi concludes his autobiography with the words, “To conquer the subtle passions seems to me to be far harder than the conquest of the world by the force of arms. Ever since my return to India [from South Africa] I have had experiences of the passions hidden within me. They have made me feel ashamed though I have not lost courage...but I know I must traverse a perilous path”, no reader will doubt his passionate sincerity and honesty. His is not the reflexive moralism of the more ordinary religionists, of the (in W B Yeats words) ‘priests in black gowns ...binding with briars my joys and desires’.

We can follow Gandhi’s struggle with his sexuality only if we also view it, as Gandhi did, as a spiritual struggle. Gandhi's embrace of an ascetic lifestyle, his fasts and his radical experimentation with foods to find those that did not inflame the senses, were all in service of one of the three corner stones of his personal life - brahmacharya or celibacy, the other two being non-violence (ahimsa) and truth (satya). Of the three, he felt he might have at times fallen short of ahimsa and brahmacharya but had never lost his devotion to truth. The only way Gandhi could ever lose the high regard, even reverence, in which he is held all over the world would not be because of the discovery of any byways of his sexuality but if it was found that he had lied about them or, by Gandhi's own high standards, that he had not told the truth loudly enough. Such a discovery would strike at the heart of what made him a Mahatma: his uncompromising integrity.

Although he had taken the decision to be sexually abstinent in 1901, Gandhi took the vow to observe complete celibacy in 1906 when he was 38, and on the eve of his first non-violent political campaign in South Africa. The two, non-violence and celibacy, were linked in his mind, ‘... one who would obey the law of ahimsa cannot marry, not to speak of gratification outside the marital bond.’

We cannot understand Gandhi’s sexual preoccupations without understanding their source in Hindu Vaishnav ideas on semen and celibacy, which he had absorbed from his culture while growing up and which he had internalised. In brief, physical strength and mental power have their source in virya, a word that stands for both sexual energy and semen. Virya can either move downward in sexual intercourse, where it is emitted as semen, or move upward into the brain in its subtle form known as ojas. The downward movement of semen is regarded as enervating, a debilitating waste of vitality and essential energy. If, on the other hand, semen is retained, converted into ojas by brahmacharya, it becomes a source of spiritual life and mental power. Memory, willpower, inspiration - scientific and artistic - all derive from the observation of brahmacharya. Gandhi is merely reiterating these popular ideas when he writes that sex, except for the purpose of generation, is “... a criminal waste of precious energy. It is now easy to understand why the scientists of old have put such a great value upon the vital fluid and why they have insisted upon its strong transmutation into the highest form of energy for the benefit of society”.

In Gandhi’s periods of doubt, such as the one from 1925 to 1928, after his release from jail, when he was often depressed, believing that Indians were not yet ready for his kind of non-violent resistance to British rule, he would characteristically look for lapses in his brahmacharya to account for his ‘failures’ in the political arena. In another emotionally vulnerable period comprising roughly eighteen months from the middle of 1935, we read: “I have always had the shedding of semen in dreams. In South Africa the interval between two ejaculations may have been in years. Here the difference is in months. I have mentioned these ejaculations in a couple of my articles. If my brahmacharya had been without this shedding of semen, then I would have been able to present many more things to the world. But someone who from the age of fifteen to thirty has enjoyed sexuality - even if it was only with his wife - whether he can conserve his semen after becoming a brahmachari seems impossible to me. Someone whose power of storing his semen has been weakened daily for fifteen years cannot hope to regain this power all at once. That is why I regard myself as an incomplete brahmachari."

Another dark period covers the last two years of Gandhi’s life when during the country’s Partition and Hindu-Muslim riots, he felt unable to influence political events. For an explanation, Gandhi would characteristically probe for shortcomings in his celibacy, seeking to determine whether the god Kama had perhaps triumphed in some obscure recess of his mind, depriving him of his spiritual and mental powers and thus, ultimately, of political efficacy. Thus in the midst of human devastation and political uncertainty, Gandhi wrote a series of five articles on brahmacharya in his weekly newspaper, puzzling his readers who, as his secretary N K Bose put it, “did not know why such a series suddenly appeared in the midst of intensely political articles.”

In reflecting on Gandhi’s sexuality, we must concede the possibility of sexual celibacy to a few extraordinary people of genuine originality with a sense of transcendent purpose - Swami Vivekananda, Tolstoy (who Gandhi took as his model), and even Sigmund Freud, who became abstinent in his middle age. We can also never know whether Gandhi was a man with a gigantic erotic temperament or merely the possessor of an overweening conscience that magnified each departure from an unattainable ideal of purity as a momentous lapse. A passionate man who suffered his passions as poisonous of his inner self and a sensualist who felt his sensuality distorted his inner purpose, we can only empathise with Gandhi’s conflict between the spirit and the flesh. Gandhi’s agony is ours as well, an inevitable byproduct of being human and thus divided within ourselves. We all wage war on our wants.

Power women

Business Today magazine published its annual list of 25 most powerful women in Indian business. Rather than individual names, the trends thrown up by the listing are interesting:

1) 14 of the 25 women featured are between 41-50
Says Swati Piramal,"Women typically peak after the age of 40 because they lose time in bringing up children."

Many of the high flying corporate women echoed the same sentiment. While there were some who managed to have kids and get back to work with no interruption to their careers, others did take a break or slow down for a couple of years. But they had no regrets or sense of 'loss'.

Because whether you become a CEO at 37 or 43 does not really make a difference.

Although as per BT statistics, the 'average age' of its list is declining every year.

2) 11 of the 25 women on the BT list are from the banking industry

Yes, ICICI Bank contributes 4 out of the 25 (5 if you count ICICI Pru Life), but clearly women are making a mark in banking. There are a few other names which I think could have made the list but perhaps BT wanted to give representation to more industries.

Interestingly, Media, Entertainment and Advertising - which are perceived as being sectors where women dominate/ are very visible/ 'have lots of opportunity' - actually account for just 4 out of the 25.

And in all cases the women are owner-entrepreneurs - Radhika Roy (NDTV), Ekta Kapoor (Balaji), Preeti Vyas Giannetti (Vyas Giannetti Creative), Shobhana Bhartia (Hindustan Times).

Remember the furore remarks made by Neil French created in 2005?

3) 12 of the women on the BT list are MBAs.

Look more closely and 8 of the women in banking are MBAs while 2 are from Delhi School of Economics (Renu Karnad of HDFC and Manisha Girotra of UBS). Kalpana Morparia is the only non-MBA, non-eco grad (she holds a law degree and had joined the bank's legal dept back in 1975).

While these statistics do not mean that all women MBAs who enter finance will scale heights, they do point to an environment which is more enabling and offers more equality of opportunity than industries like consulting or marketing.

Is this becoming an influencing factor in the kind of career women graduating from B school are choosing? I'd certainly like to know from some of you!

If image is everything...
Here is a statistic which the magazine did not compile: 15 of the 25 women featured are wearing saris. That includes all the women in banking except for J P Morgan's Vedika Bhandarkar in salwar kameez.

The only two women who have chosen distinctly Western clothing are Pepsi'sPunita Lal who appears in semi casual and Kiran Mazumdar Shaw who is photographed in a proper business suit in the 5 page spread devoted to her.

I have nothing against the sari - it is a very elegant dress. However, fewer and fewer women below 35 are opting to wear saris to work on a daily basis.

So I wonder if, say 5 years from now, 60% of the women on the BT list would be seen in saris. And if not, would they opt for salwar kameezes or Western style business suits? And if salwar kameez will it be the traditional style, dupatta et al or something more on Indo-Western lines??

Meanwhile brands like Allen Solly have launched women's Western wear formals and these are becoming popular with younger women.

But a well designed range of no-fuss salwar kameezes (less ornate and flowy) could give Western formals a run for its money. It's more comfortable - and suited to the average Indian woman's less-than-perfect body shape.

I know there are brands like W but we need more.

A couple of observations
If you are asked to pose for the cover of Business Today magazine, would you choose to wear the kind of clothes you regularly wear to work (printed or plain sari with border), or 'dress up' (sari with embroidery etc)?

This time, all 3 of the amazing women on the BT cover kind of looked like they were ready to leave for a party. Personally, I think they look far more elegant in the more sober clothes they have been photographed in, inside the magazine.

However one could argue the flamboyance on display just shows that they are secure enough to show off their feminine side. But yeah, quite different from Naina Lal or the ICICI women who (after years of gracing these covers) make way for a new set of faces.

Speaking of which, there are apparently 8 new names on BT's list. Which is great but as a reader you can't help wondering how these additions and deletions are made... 

I mean sure, it's a 'subjective' list ( based on 'informal polling of consultants, headhunters, analysts, know-it-all corporate types' - says the magazine). But a small 'kahan gaye woh log' section might be of help in putting the disappeared names into perspective.

For example, Hema Ravichander quit as the HR head of Infosys to become an independent consultant. But what happened to some of the others? Did their companies go downhill, or did the editor just say, "Yaar wahi chehre dekh dekh kar bore ho gaye hain."

Either of which I guess is a valid enough reason...

With International Women's Day being celebrated, you see and hear more about these women. But as Britannia CEO Vinita Bali said to BT, after visiting villages around Muzaffarnagar in UP where she saw as many girls enrolled in school as boys,"You can talk about women in powerful positions in business but the real changes are things like this, which didn't happen 50 years ago."

Very well said.

P.S. All pics used here for purpose of illustration only - they are copyright Business Today. I would gladly link to their website but it happens to be password protected.

Thus, management is a process of aligning people and getting them committed to work for a common goal to the maximum social benefit - in search of excellence. Major functions of a manager are planning, organizing, leading and coordinating activities -- they put different emphasis and suggest different natures of activities in the following four major functions..

The critical question in all managers' minds is how to be effective in their job. The answer to this fundamental question is found in the Bhagavad Gita, which repeatedly proclaims that "you must try to manage yourself." The reason is that unless a manager reaches a level of excellence and effectiveness, he or she will be merely a face in the crowd.

In this modern world the art of Management has become a part and parcel of everyday life, be it at home, in the office or factory and in Government. In all organizations, where a group of human beings assemble for a common purpose irrespective of caste, creed, and religion, management principles come into play through the management of resources, finance and planning, priorities, policies and practice. Management is a systematic way of carrying out activities in any field of human effort.

Its task is to make people capable of joint performance, to make their weaknesses irrelevant, says the Management Guru Peter Drucker. It creates harmony in working together - equilibrium in thoughts and actions, goals and achievements, plans and performance, products and markets. It resolves situations of scarcity, be they in the physical, technical or human fields, through maximum utilization with the minimum available processes to achieve the goal. Lack of management causes disorder, confusion, wastage, delay, destruction and even depression. Managing men, money and materials in the best possible way, according to circumstances and environment, is the most important and essential factor for a successful management.

Management guidelines from the Bhagavad Gita
There is an important distinction between effectiveness and efficiency in managing.

Effectiveness is doing the right things.
Efficiency is doing things right.
The general principles of effective management can be applied in every field, the differences being more in application than in principle. The Manager's functions can be summed up as:

Forming a vision
Planning the strategy to realize the vision.
Cultivating the art of leadership.
Establishing institutional excellence.
Building an innovative organization.
Developing human resources.
Building teams and teamwork.
Delegation, motivation, and communication.
Reviewing performance and taking corrective steps when called for.
Thus, management is a process of aligning people and getting them committed to work for a common goal to the maximum social benefit - in search of excellence.

 

Pee-Pal Bonding

Being a man, there are so many traits in women that I fail to understand. One of these is the socializing that goes in any restroom amongst Indian women. There are so many dynamics and complexities involved in a process as simple and as fundamental as peeing. A restroom in a multiplex in India, has swarms of women hanging out there. Sorry to disappoint you curious men who are reading frantically to know what exactly happens in a ladies restroom. I ain’t telling you that. But if you know what I mean, I don’t see why for something as quick and as uncomplicated as peeing, women have to drag the entire group of friends into cramped restrooms.


My friend and I used to hang out a lot. Invariably after a movie she would have to go seek a restroom and drag me there. In college, when you suddenly saw the entire group of girls leaving the class laughing and talking in a hushed hushed way, much to the curiosity of the other guys and to the consternation of me, you should know that the group leader needs to empty her bladder. I wonder if the entire group follows her to cheer the group. It’s like paying a visit to someone’s home, where you accompany a leader when she needs to pee, and I’ll accompany you when you need to pee. On a funny as well as a scary note, I wonder if women holding pompoms cheer the peer (all puns intended) with a “yo-yo-yo-pee-pee-pee-we-are-here-to-accompany-thee” song. My friend told me that even if she had nothing to do in the restroom, she could hang around (hang around in a restroom?), look at herself in the mirror and wait till she is done. What more, she feels I am an imbecile who cannot get the pee-reflex myself at the beck and call of her reflexes.


I’d stay back, I don’t wanna pee now- is what I made the mistake of telling her once, to which she rolled her eyes and told me that I could hold her paraphernalia, refresh my make up, and converse with her over the cubicle.

I fail to understand the restroom dynamics, and why women feel so comfortable dragging their friends and relatives and sisters and mothers to the restroom. Perhaps one reason could be the safety factor involved, just to make sure that you aren’t locked up in the restroom with no one to find you, stranded unable to undo the tight knot in the churidar rope, or not confronted by some pervert rapist lurking in the dark alleys who attacked innocent young girls wanting to empty their bladders. But this factor aside, I fail to understand why every time women go to a restroom, I would be lost in a carnival going inside, with slim fashionable women refreshing their lipsticks and looking bitchily at other women through the mirror, voluptuous aunties with ill-fitting churidars holding the hands of the cranky, troublemaking little monsters while they noisily chatted with their bhabis and nanads (sister-in-laws). If this is a way of female bonding, I wonder if there aren’t other ways of bonding. I mean I have seen men who take sutta breaks (breaks to go out for a fag) and perhaps discuss everything from the status of the stock markets to the vital stats of their girlfriends (note: I have a feeling that when girlfriends become wives, men discuss the vital stats of other women, but then, correct me if I am wrong). But at least in a fag break, you are not obliged to hear the gurgling sounds of water (never mind the other associated noises) while you embarrassedly stand amongst a group of women animatedly conversing. And I would do anything to know if similar animated conversations and bonding sessions prevail in the men’s restrooms too. I do not know if this is a shortcoming of mine, but I could never pee in peace if there is a crowd standing outside, and that too, a crowd of known people of all things. Years back, I had read to my utter disgust in this book that the husband used to get aroused looking at his wife pee. Frankly, a husband like this would make sure he never ever entered the restroom again.


Perhaps there are certain dynamics in bonding, certain brewing chemistry that I am missing out on, something the specialists of sociology, psychology, and women studies can throw light on. Interestingly, I have never seen such gregarious behavior amongst the girls here (unless they are the desi girls once again). Girls here mean business, and no hi-hi-ha-ha or post-pee socializing while soaping hands. Anyway, enough about this, for I am already beginning to feel uncomfortable as my kidneys are reprimanding me. But if you are reading this and if you know me personally please stop asking me to accompany you every time you need to go to the restroom. I need no loo-cializing anymore.

Blog-Bitching

1. Hey you saw the recipe of chicken stew she posted last week? It looked like it tastes yuck !!!

2. Hey you saw the way she was wearing these tank tops in the pics she posted? With her huge frame and her lack of dressing sense, she looked horrible!!!

3. Hey you know they went to Hawaii for their anniversary. I read it in her blog.

4. These days she is writing a tad too much on the women’s rights and liberations issues. You think her boyfriend dumped her?

5. Hey you saw she put the pics of her pets on her blog, and goes gaga writing about them. How funny and jobless.

6. Man, you should have seen her in the tiny shorts that she was wearing. Uumm… err…. Uhh… she looked hot !! No wonder men don’t look at us.

7. Suna hai aajkal janaab PWC mein kaam kar rahe hain?

8. Shaadi ke baad America to aa gayi, but the poor thing couldn’t learn how to dress properly. Paise aa gaye par taste na aaya.

9. Can you believe it? I met her. I FINALLY MET HER IN PERSON !!!

10. It seems she is planning to visit India next month. Lucky her.

11. These girls went to San Juan Island for the long weekend? How come they never told me about it?

12. Don’t you think these guys are a lot into these daaru party these days? I wonder what their livers are made of.

13. Baatein to itni badi badi karti hai blog pe, I know how narrow minded and prejudiced she is. But no, no, don’t ask me how I know. Arre kahaa na baba, I can’t tell you. Arrey na na. (Pause….) Achcha listen about what happened….but don't tell anyone, okay?

14. See how she rants about the disadvantages of being in a relationship, the encroachment on personal space and stuffs. Who knows, she must have been unable to patao any decent guy so far. Wait wait, is she lesbian?

15. Man, they eat beef curry for dinner, and then proudly write and post pics about it? Shame on them. Ram Ram !!!

16. Why do you think every horrible looking girl ends up with a handsome looking guy? Read her post? (Silence)… Kuch karr yaar !!!!

17. Lagta hai uske in-laws aaye hain for the delivery. Free mein nana nan(n)y aa gaye, aur kya?

18. Yaar in logon ka kutta ghar mein fart bhi maarega to yeh uske oopar blog likhenge. (These people can blog even about their pets farting). And there would be some 80 comments to it… like… oh, kitna achcha fart rahaa hoga. Yaar apne yahaan to kisi tarah se comment numbers reach a two digit. I tell you, only very few have an appreciation for quality writing.

(Reply)- Arre no worries yaar. Her blogs are Govinda/David Dhawan movies. Koi class hi nahi hai. No wonder she gets so many comments. Your posts are like… like…. haan Satyajit Ray movies. Very classy. Sachhi.

19. Ek handsome boyfriend kya mil gaya, bas usi ke bare mein chapar chapar chapar likhti rehti hai. I wonder what the man saw in a woman 5 years his senior.

(Reply) Arre banda andha hoga, aur kya.

20. Chal chal ab bahut ho gaya. Phone rakh aur kaam pe lag (Enough of bitching now. Let’s keep down the phone and get back to work).

We do it all the time. Trust me, it’s therapeutic.