Plight of the Housewives

I wrote this piece for my college magazine when I was in first year. Enjoy!

While the rest of the world wakes up to the sweet ring of their alarm clocks (only to hit snooze again), I rise to the never-ending rattle between my granny and her nurse. Alarm clocks, bah, humbug!

I hear people talking about their caffeine addiction. But thanks to my maid’s scratchy vocals, I can’t go back to sleep anytime before the sun sets.

The best day of the week for me is Not Sunday. That’s the day when my maid goes about her social calendar leaving me and my mum to do all the house-work.

Then there’s the everyday ritual where all the maids sit together for tea to gossip about their employers’ lives, new clothes and daily fights. I say, who needs a mother-in-law when you have a maid like that back home?

What keeps confusing me is who employs who? Are they working for us or is it the other way around?

“Kal chhutti karoongi bhabhi, baad mein mat kehna bataya nahi.” “Hazar rupaya badao bhabhi, varna kal se chhutti.” “Itne mehmano ki khatir nahi hoti bhabhi, khud safai kar lena.” “Kuch kaam aap bhi to kar liya karo naa.” name one house that’s stranger to such dialogues.

Theft and sneaking stuff is their birthright, but you dare not complain to them about anything. They can be the savior of the law at times too.

Their beloved threats-will file reports in the police station/will complain to the NGOs for maids. Any misconduct on your part and you will be boycotted from the house-maid’s community forever.

Who said we get it easy?

My school Days!

The following post was primarily written for http://playgroundofsmiles.tumblr.com/thesmilingplanet

My school always put emphasis on social service. As a student we underwent a special programme where we had to give less fortunate kids elementary education for 3 years.

So I went to a slum near my house and started teaching 9-10 kids who were more than happy to learn and share my school experiences. I helped 2 girls rejoin school and it was moment of pride for me.

After that, we had to visit blind school every weekend 2 hours a day. It was really awkward the first day.

I felt like i was trespassing in on someone else's world where i wasn't allowed to go, had no idea about the decorum that needed to be followed but these people turned out to be so kind and welcoming.

Lack of vision didn't make them any less of a person. I met scholars there, poets and even actors who depended completely on themselves and their Braille system.

I made many wonderful friends there who would ask me about my life, my school, my family. Some would ask me to read for them and some of the younger ones even raced with me on who can read faster.

All through my growing up years, thanks to my school and supporting parents i had the opportunity of helping society through small acts of kindness like these.

It is needless to say it built my character, brought about a dignity and sense of self-confidence in me. And hence I would like to nudge you all to take that leap and see yourself become a whole new different person. In the end, your actions are all that matter.

All of you who have keen interest in helping this world become a little better than what it is now, kindly go to the link and be a part of this lovely initiative. Trust me, there's nothing more fun than knowing you're important.

Honesty and Success!

These days, the game seems to have changed, success doesn't follow intellect, it follows superior's ass.

Everyday we're confronted with this question of morale, should I kiss this ass and be on my way to success, or should I kick mine hard, keep working honestly and wait for success to happen to me?

Well, if dignity is your biggest deal, there are many ways of keeping it.

• Born into money so that you don't have to work at all. Of course, this isn't something you can control so we can leave this option out for the Richie Rich/s of the world.

• If you Are a silver spoon holder and want to work, get your parents to lick people's asses to get you a job as a CEO or something equally reputable.

• If you're a woman and beautiful, gold digging is a Very viable option. Just sleep around with rich old guys and get any job in the world you like.

• Be cool, professional and maintain a distance from everyone, minding your own business, alienating your colleagues in the process and continue to exist for the rest of your days, hoping for success, that Will come to you some day.

• And the last one that comes to my mind is work hard, persevere with life, be sublime and success will come to you eventually. It may take time, but once you hit the high road, there won't ever be any going back.

Luckily,  I've met all four kinds of people in my short life - a friend who never wants to work, relatives who leech their parents off money and respect by using them as contacts, a talentless woman that slept her way up and a friend who is distant with everyone.

But I have yet to see the 5th kind. Yes, I've heard a lot about him and aspire to become someone like that myself one day, but like every sensible human being, I understand that its not easy to choose between professional and personal ethics. There may be situations where you may have to sacrifice one for the other which you learn to live with over time.

Lately, I have come across a lot of ass-lickers that only survive on kissing people on the bottom for getting their work done. In the process, even their hard work is looked down upon and mostly ignored by their pears And their superiors.

These people are whom I previously called friends and have now come to hate because of their despicable behavior.

This post is my humble request to anyone out there reading it, to have some respect, stop taking shortcuts, do something fruitful with your life and make your families and friends proud.

Let it Go!

This short post is for all of you that have lost your love, one way or another, in life.


Let your love spread out in the world, let it go. Sprinkle its ashes onto the fields, let it grow.


Open up the cage, make it free. It will reach new heights, come back like a blessing.


The happier it is, the joyful the world will be.


Let the positive airwaves travel into the atmosphere. One day, it'll come back to you when you aren't looking.


Let it flow, let it go!

Observing Earth Hour!

In keeping with my tradition of blogging about Earth Hour, here follows my lesson from this year.

Another year, another Earth Hour.

I've got lots to complain about this time around though. The goal of Earth Hour is to motivate, educate and aware people about the various harms that we are bringing to our beloved planet and the little ways we can make a difference to this world.

In order to do this, they need to market their initiative as well as they could. But doing so, they should have kept in mind less energy wasting methods.

In Delhi, people were invited to India Gate to watch Euphoria's concert during the Hour. They wanted people to print out their posters for a free entry to the concert plus mentioned that the stage will be all lit up with candles. They did not however mentioned that there were many microphones, generators and big screens installed. Plus, the numerous media vans that surrounded the venue.

In India, the youth is not really politically active. We just do what seems cool and what hundred others are doing. No questions asked, no answers given. Nobody talked about the adverse effects of million candled being lit up in that one single hour or petrol wastage by people roaming around the city. We just switched off the lights at home and hurt the environment another way.

it takes about 40 candles to produce the same amount of light as a 40 Watt light bulb and puts out a lot more CO2, so lighting candles during Earth Hour isn't exactly doing much for our greenhouse gas emissions. Although it is roughly carbon-neutral if you don't burn too many.

Basically, Earth Hour is about being grateful not only for mother nature but also for technology. By switching off lights for on hour, we learn how important it is to save energy so countless others who spend their lives in pitch dark can have some light at last.

Its also about realizing that united, mankind can face any challenge. If enough of us stand together to make this world a better place, we can Totally do it. So extend this Earth Hour and make the most of this knowledge.

The Ticking Clock!

The worst part of life, for some, is that you move on. No matter how strong your hold is, how deep your affection, time Does change it all.

It may take days, weeks, months or years, but change is inevitable.

Some learn to live with the pain, some suppress it and some simply replace it with happiness.

In this sense, time is a remedy and at the same time, a poisonous disease eating at your memories till what is left is either a rose-tinted picture or a sepia toned slightly torn photograph of the moments past.

What once was a bone-deep traumatic wound evolves into a slightly colored scar, a reminder of old mistakes; What brought insufferable pain earlier only brings light pangs to you now.

Some laugh it off, some remember fondly, some don't even have a recollection of what happened. We move on. The smarter ones reflect, it all happened for a reason while the simpler ones blame the Almighty.

But...we move on. In a way, its only fair on us. Nobody deserves to live with pain forever.

Life carries on like a carefree tide-ebbing and flowing with each passing day. We can either be the stubborn sea-shell on the beach-waiting for a connoisseur to pick up, the forgiving water that goes with the flow or the gutsy sand-welcoming each new tide with a smile and bidding farewell to the ebbs.

Whatever part we play in the bigger scheme of events, we do move on, lot of times against our wishes so why not accept the fact and let time run its course?

Eh, time, aren't you a bastard! :)

My Earth Hour!

It was my second time celebrating Earth Hour today and it was as much of a challenge as it was an eye-opener.

Now, everyone has different conceptions about this initiative called Earth Hour by WWF, which started in Sydney back in 2008 and has grown remarkably to become the world's largest global climate change initiative.

The task is rather simple as all we have to do is switch off our lights for an hour every year on March 27 from 8:30 to 9:30 local time.

The basic aim of the Earth Hour is to spread awareness about climate change for people to start taking an action against it.

As awareness programs go, this one is rather constructive as we end up saving thousands of watts of electricity worldwide in just an hour of global power shut down.

Many people are skeptical of this one hour lights out event, including me.

Last year, I asked my friend to participate in the Earth Hour and he asked me why should i switch my power off for an hour when our power grid does it for 4 hours every day. Brilliant question, i told him but i didn't have an answer to counter it. Not strong enough anyway so I bullied him into doing it.

This year, I celebrated my Earth Hour (after lots of arguments with my dad) eating dinner outside in the gallery and looking at stars thinking.

I would get restless at times because I had nothing to do. I decided on a no power Earth Hour, not even cellphone.

That got me thinking, how us human beings are caught up in so many different activities, always looking for some sort of entertainment, a distraction be it music on iPods on a trip from home to office or Twitter from cellphone. Neither of it is bad of course, but in the process we forget to give some time to ourselves. Just to be with ourself, not doing anything.

I found the answer to my friend's question too. And that is, yes, we should do it more than an hour an year. Instead of going all pious one day of the year, if we consume less electricity every day, it would make a much bigger and better difference than annual Earth Hour.

Earth Hour is not about switching off your light. Light is being used here symbolically, like a mascot through which the message they are delivering is that if united, we all can make a huge difference to our loving planet.

Climate Change may or may not be man-made, but its outcome would not be good for us because we are not made to survive such drastic change. Thats how dinosaurs died, remember? We may never be able to stop this climate change from happening, but what we can do is Try to slow down the process instead of becoming a catalyst ourself.

Does it make sense enough? To me it does and i might be wrong.

Earth Hour shows us how many of us our responsible human beings; how many of us actually care to help this world.

By switching off our lights (or any other way you participated) we tell each other, I am there and i am willing to make a change, in my life, in my lifestyle, for the future generation.

I agree, Earth Hour maybe an initiative by developed countries to shed off all their guilt in one hour for the damage they cause to our planet everyday.

If you live in developing countries like ours, India you needn't switch your light off. Electricity is a scarce commodity here already.

I have had my share of dark nights when power wouldn't come back for 2-3 days at a stretch. And Boy was it an adventure.

Some of us urban educated Indians who like to call our fellow countrymen cattle crowd cherish in the success of Earth Hours. What they fail to realize is that this pseudo-developed country attitude actually makes Us a cattle crowd wherein we follow the footsteps of actual developed countries into doing anything that makes us look their equivalent.

The Fact is, we aren't their equivalent. We are still a developing country. So before pointing fingers at people choosing not to participate in this Earth Hour we should realize what we are doing. What message are we putting through. What difference will it make. And are we doing it right?

I know what I did today. I showed the world (or at least people who care to see), my planet is important to me, and I would do my part wherever and whenever necessary to help others.

Remember, switching off lights today will not be counted as a good deed unless you try to cut down your daily carbon emission.

This is our Earth, this is our world. Be a real hero.