Life is easy kya karein

I want to start swimming again after gap of more than a year. I need to get a doctor's certificate which states that I am physically fit and do not have any skin disease. I go the doctor. He is a busy man. By the time my turn comes, he has only one prescription paper left. He says that there are more people in the queue after me and if he has to prescribe antibiotics, it has to be written on the paper where his name, address and details of his degrees are printed. I am asked to come back the next morning  when he will get his stock of the  prescription note pads. I put the reminder in my Digical on the mobile phone. These are important things of my life like getting Atta from the chakki i.e. flour from the flour mill, buying coriander leaves or 'Dhaniya patta' aka 'Kothmir' from the Bhaji wallah  (vegetable vendor). As I wait at the Doctor's clinic on a lazy Saturday morning, my cook Masi passes by. She is shocked to see me here, in spite of knowing that I was ...

My friend once told me " Parul, for you, whatever choices you have made in life are the correct ones. Other people's choices always fall short". I feel this is true for me in a lot of instances. Even my posts take such an arrogant moralistic stand that I wonder is this what I do when  my "life is easy kya karein". Since the onslaught of mobile phones in our lives, I want to stay connected. I want to appear intelligent. I want to be cool. Was this need there even before the onset of social media in my life? May be.  The people living in our Mumbai chawls, so many have Smartphones. They are watching live TV, downloading movies on their Smartphones. I thought the word 'Smartphone' was a slang. I just figured it is a word in our dictionary and also in Wikipedia, which is like what the Encylopedia was in my times. In the upper middle class households, all the young children want an iPhone. It is definitely a status symbol for them. The students are into ...

After fiddling on my Whatsapp, I realised that the battery won't last till I get home. Promptly, I got talking to the lady next to me. She was laden with diamonds and had a very pleasant personality. I noticed the huge rocks on her ears and craved for the Patti bangles she was wearing. Really liked her choice in jewellery.. basic and top notch. She was planning to get her son married. He was 27 years old. She was getting great marriage offers for her son. She started showing me the girls on her iPhone whose proposals had come. They were like today's youth. I kept wondering why these young educated girls want to get married so soon. I even saw their Facebook profiles on her phone. Most of them made sure all pics were with a group of girls and they looked decent. No pics with guys their age or at a pub or a party. All were daytime pics or at someone's house. Found it a little strange considering they were rich modern girls in their early twenties. The lady was clear, she do...

What is the "Freedom of Expression" ruckus all about? Does it mean to talk ill about individuals? Does it mean make fun of everyone's beliefs? What is humour? Does humour have categories? What is satire? Why are we all taking up for AIB and not for Shireen Dalvi, the only woman editor of an Urdu daily? Artist M.F. Hussain painted Hindu Gods and Goddesses as nude figures and made cartoons of all our national leaders and national emblem. That was art, right? That is Freedom of Expression in India. If you ever get offended by anyone's humour , you are Right wing. I thought wing was a part of a theatre, where performers had to wait before going on stage. Its only now everything 'not okay' and 'not liberal enough' is termed as 'Right wing'. Leela Samson removing all Ganesha idols from Kalakshetra is artistic but any removal of a Cross or a Majar from the road side by the city corporation is seen as Right Wing. I read film reviews which actually ...