Quo Vadis?

It can be tough to be a woman in India but is it easier in many other places? I wonder. This post was inspired by another post by a blogger I like. The following is a set of random observations that collectively seek to answer one doubt: I know of  a man who at the young age of 18 was forced to become the man of his house, take up a job and take care of his mother and three sisters due to the untimely demise of his father. With just a class 12 he put his sisters through college and got them married. Today each of his sisters is well settled with their families and he married late and is blessed with two daughters. He has worked very hard and has put the elder daughter into a prestigious engineering college and his younger daughter may join her in a few years too. He has always been tied down by debt moving from one expense to another for all the weddings and all the responsibilities that he took on or rather was forced on him. The other day when I asked him why he chose...

I have started walking daily after so many broken resolutions. Actually I have completed the 21 days of habit forming schedule and so walking has become routine. Living in Anna Nagar with so many parks can be a blessing and with a park very close to home I have made it my morning haunt these days. A worrying BMI, a family history of diabetes were some of the reasons for this walk routine but among them is my desire to complete a 10KM run in the next Chennai marathon. I remember completing the 5 KM run many years ago and never got around to it again since and each year I resolve to do it next year and this year it seems I will do it. I always enjoyed running and mix my walk with short runs aiming to build up stamina before I go for the longer runs. Sadly I have not been able to find newbies like me in the neighbourhood as yet to train together. I realized among the many benefits of exercise is time with myself. The early morning cool breeze and just you pushing yourself to th...

What do you do when the traffic light ahead turns to red? If you are not on foot, I suppose the universal rule of law is that you stop. It is quite plain and simple and usually the above statement is non-negotiable. I say usually because in Chennai and I would like to believe in many other parts of India, the red light is subject to negotiation and even debate. These negotiations are between the driver and his / her conscience and it appears that the winner in most cases is the driver. Stopping at the signal appears to be the most difficult thing to do and for some it can be an annoying distraction when a light turns red. For some others standing behind someone waiting for the light to change can be a life altering moment and usually ends up in exaggerated outburst of road rage. Usually I get bullied by some idiots behind when I wait at a traffic light simply because it appears that there is no traffic from the adjacent lanes, forgetting for a moment that lights also p...

In case you missed it, it is Women’s day today. The day when businesses fall over each other with special offers for women, when the media honours women from every field many whom they may have never realized existed on 364 other days, when oh never mind, you would have got the picture by now. However well-intentioned it may be many of them are hollow and everyone seems to have an opinion either for or against the celebration. Personally I say, why not? It’s like a birthday, everyone has one and we celebrate that day even if we do not celebrate the person the other days and everyone is entitled to one more day of being celebrated. So let me first wish all the women a very Happy Women’s Day. Having done that I would like to expose one fallacy many hide behind, that men and women are equal; they are not, not always. There may be one more, men are superior to women, they are not, again not always. So if you wonder then “is the corollary right” and have expressions varying from de...

Driving past the Stella Maris College while always pleasant is even better these days. The beauties outside the campus make you slow down for a second look and are potential traffic hazards. A thing of beauty always warrants a second look and when you have so many of them in one place you can be forgiven if you stop and stare. You move on feeling extremely annoyed and angry with this government for whitewashing the walls of the YMCA and other public buildings. Improper use or lack of grammar annoyed me no end. These days grammar has been reinvented along with the language being spoken. Among the many Tamizh dialects is Tanglish a forced marriage of Tamizh and English which has become the language most commonly used and understood by the common man in Chennai. Earlier we used to “fying” everything to make the English cousin of a Tamizh word, remember “suttufying” which sounds like shooting but means looting. The latest Idea ad in Tamizh, rather Tanglish is Poo Soothing! Looks lik...