child marriage is indian culture. Sex education is not.

Excerpts from an article in TOI:

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The Committee on Petitions headed by the BJP’s Venkaiah Naidu is a cross-party group up of nine Rajya Sabha members. The Committee has said there should be no sex education in schools because it promotes promiscuity and India’s “social and cultural ethos are such that sex education has absolutely no place in it.”

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Child marriage means huge numbers of adolescent Indians indulge in “legal” sexual activity. Mehra says politicians have long promoted regressive policy on the pretext of culture.
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If you teach someone the use of AK-47, he can very well kill hundreds of people in the streets. Still, you will not send your soldier on the war front without teaching them the use of AK-47, will you?? (unless you really hate the soldier).

Who will explain to these politicians that sex education DOES NOT TEACH YOU TO HAVE SEX AND BE PROMISCUOUS.

The same culture which forces girls to become pregnant at the age of 14, denies them information about what they are getting into. What sort of a culture is this? Messed up and regressive I would say.The reason why i stopped listening to the culture bullshit some years ago.

another one on bangalore weather

if you think its getting a bit too much on the weather then pardon me..im a mumbaiite.

this was a sunday..got up early in the morning and went to buy plants for the home sweet home..it had rained last night and it was still cloudy...no sun. I was driving down 100 ft road.

Now, this road is lined up on both sides by these big trees that hand shake across the road. and quite a few of them are gulmohur which is on full bloom btw. and there were hardly any vehicles on the road.

And then i felt that if blore was not the place that took me away from mumbai, i would have fallen in love with it. i mean how far would i have to drive from my home in mumbai to witness such beautiful weather and roads lined by such trees? i dont know...generally ppl start sweating as soon as they get out of bed in mumbai.

Cat shows and abuse

...all contents of a dance reality show "jhalak dikhlaa ja". I saw the episode this week.
Points to be noted:

Saroj Khan says: "I have seen cat shows" [pause] "in New York"
Point taken. You have been beyond viraar churchgate stretch. Or was that not your point? Also it was quite racist of her. As if our Indian cats are not good enough.

On a serious note:
Sonia Jaffar says: (on abuse in her past relation) "There is a God and he has redeemed me and today I can be here without being ashamed"
Pity we expect the victim to feel ashamed.

Also check out instructions to take care of babies. Will go a very long way in making you the perfect parent.

Damn it!!!

For the fun of it, as I have no work at office, as my boss has asked me to 'look up' AMI and as I have been 'looking up' AMI for past 5 days, I was going through a blog and came acroos this site, which tells you whether you are male or female based on your browser history.

Now, I have known with not much doubt, that im a bit boyish what with my friends telling me things like:

"You are a girl? from which angle?" ..i hope they didnt mean physically, I take efforts to maintain my waist-to-hip ratio.

"I dont like hanging out with girls. With you its ok, you arent a girl anyway."

"How could they make you a girl?"

"very late into the creation process, God changed Her mind and made you a girl. Thats a plausible explanation."

But I was shocked to read the result of the above site:
Likelihood of you being FEMALE is 31%
Likelihood of you being MALE is 69%

Site Male-Female Ratio
google.com 0.98
wikipedia.org 1.08
blogger.com 1.06
indiatimes.com 1.86
orkut.com 1.08

I wasnt expecting a 97% female or something but 69% female would have given me something to argue over next time my friends commented on my 'girl' quotient. There goes the chance. Damn it!!

Im off to searching for manicure tips.

I would like to thank...

Do you know the feeling when the male ego is crushed? by a female. The feeling when men who if put on a level playing field do not even come up to your shoulder level but still feel you are inferior just because you are a girl? (OK the last rhetoric was only for girls) And do you know the feeling when you very personally crush that cloud of superiority that clouds their vision?

I know that feeling, the smug malicious satisfaction and I can safely say, i love it.

Without getting into details of male delusions of grandeur (one day ill write a book), i would like to thank my mom and dad for making me the person I am, for giving me the oppurtunities so that i can get on a level playing field with men, for making me capable enough to compete with THE 'superior' male..capable enough to compete with him and kick his ass.

score card

as i mentioned a post or 2 earlier, i recently completed one year in bangalore...a place i hated to come to..nothing personal against this village but just generally, i hated to leave mumbai and my family..and the power cuts, the 11pm deadline and the fact that i cant go for a walk alone after 9/10 pm didnt help.

And yet here i am 1 year later..in this village. So, now its time to look back and take stock of the situation..what i have and what i have not managed to accomplish in this past year. Ask me why i have decided to write such a post out of the blue. Answer: its not out of the blue. I have just taken my GMAT and this was one of my primary goals when i came to this village. So i decided to take a look at all the other things that i have/havent done.

1. I have taken my GMAT and managed to do pretty well.
2. I got a learner's license for 2-wheelers. I didnt do anything about it though. I was all set to get a 2-wheeler from a friend but the damn thing refused to start and my dad gave me his car, so i forgot about 2-wheelers.
3. I bought a complete catalog of stuff you need for a house: refrigerator, washing machine, tv, cooking gas, every single thing thats in my house with my own money :)
4. I managed to see the trash collection vehicle after one year of staying here. This part sucks about blore..early in the morning, one guy and one gal and their loud speaker teach you the civility of not throwing garbage on the roads and stuff. AAAHhh it sucks!! its the most depressing thing to hear early in the morning. And it took me close to one year to see the source of this wrath. Though they had disturbed my sleep quite a few times.
5. I havent yet managed to go to commercial street..the shopping mecca.
6. I have become a loyal benetton wearer coz the store is really big, spacious, beautiful, and a 2 mins walk from my house. Also, i love the clothes and colors. One of the reasons why i didnt go to commercial street.
7. I havent gone to nasa..the pub. This was the place i went to when i first came to blore in 1997 with su and maggi. But ive discovered some other good places.
8. Power cuts dont pyshce me any more. The first time i experienced a power cut i went into a depression. The second time, i was like what if the power doesnt come back for 2 days. But 1 year in this village has made me more comfortable with power cuts. When at home, I keep my laptop, mobiles charged and you'll never catch me without candles at home.
9. I am done with my trip to orange county, coorg..another one in my to-do list that i made before coming here. and it was beautiful.
10. I am yet to see nandi hills though.
11. I havent started my guitar classes or dance classes.
12. This one takes the cake: I have got (or shud it be gotten...damn you GMAT) used to driving without wearing the seat belt...it has been a real problem for me..i just cudnt go even 100 mts wihtout wearing the seat belt and i could see that here it was absolutely fine to drive without it. But I could never do it..somehow. But one day after almost one whole year of wanting to do it, I suddenly realized that I had been driving without the seat belt for some days without even noticing. So a good habit..given up.
13. I play baddy and TT and carrom now :)
14. I havent gone for a trek.
15. I sat on my terrace in awesome weather (really f**king awesome), listened to great music and had wine. I even drank in the rain. something i cant even imagine doing in mumbai. first the building has 34 floors and i need special permission to go on the terrace..second, the weather is just the opposite of really f**king awesome. i would sweat to death.
16. I saw a rainbow from the door of my house. Again cant even imagine this in mumbai.
17. I often see monkeys from my office terrace.
18. I have never seen such a beautiful night sky from my window like the one i see here. (for that matter, even day sky)

Cheers to one good year!!

pride and insight

its amazing how much insight almost-complete strangers can give you about yourself. Must admit, before this I was never open to other people dissecting me, but now i dont go all mad if you say something a little nasty but true.

I mean imagine a white guy i met on a bus ride to the airport says something like "you have a lot of pride"..and im like "yeah he may be right..just a tad bit but right" see its like it was cold and he ordered hot chocolate and i took something cold to drink and he suggested that i could change my order..then he offered me his drink but nope..moi stuck to my chilly drink in chilly weather.. and then he came up with that pearl of wisdom and i shall repeat for effect "you have a lot of pride" . i didnt have the brains to order a hot chocolate or even a tea, anything hot..on top of that i couldnt even admit that i could've done better.

My friends have tried earlier to make me realize the same thing, but they were like "you have such a huge ego problem" or "you are such an egoist" but i never thought about that..ego was never an attribute i associated with myself..i was like..no im like damn awesome and amiable and cool and friendly and tolerant and i can put up with a lot of things of a lot of ppl. Lets be very clear here that im not denying that im any of that..i am all that with a touch of pride..:P

and to think about it its not too bad to have a little bit of pride, is it? so now when ppl around me say that you have a very big ego i only say..."its not ego..the word is pride/self-respect" depending on the situation. you know what? a little pride is very essential..you have to value yourself before expecting anyone else to value you..and then how can anyone not be proud of what they have grown up to become? I am.