MOVED!

This blog has moved to a very very foodie blog at

http://scatterthebatter.com

See you there!

Am I cook or am I cool?

It was the 7th Asean Summit, I think, that I read about a couple of weeks back. There was even a photograph taking up precious real estate. Nothing about the Asean Summit in it, though I'm sure that got enough press elsewhere in the daily, probably on the front page. Where this was, was on the inside and it showed the wives of the Asean leaders holding a cooking demonstration wherever this was supposed to be. If I'm a bit foggy about the details of who the leaders were and who their wives, it's because of the fog swimming in front of my eyes when they parsed through the print “cooking demonstration'. Who organizes what the wives of leaders do? Who thought it would be a great idea to show solidarity amongst the leaders' families (?) by arranging for a stove to be lit and some ingredients to be stirred? Wasn't there even one other thing they could have done? In the public eye?

You could argue, why not? After all, women are great cooks, their role as homemakers, wives, cooks, is special and is nowhere near demeaning. In fact, their role as all of these is to be celebrated. Their role as anything at all in this society needs to be celebrated. Yes, but seen in the context of the overwhelming majority of social images that depict woman in this role, was it a good idea? I did not see a husband in this picture, whose wife was a leader, but of course.

Does it enforce the stereotype that while the men discuss the fate of the Asean nations, the women cook? Which brings me to the point of this post. I have read and heard so much about the “real” Indian woman in the recent past that I thought it might be a good idea just to check out who this real Indian woman is. If I were to believe what I'm hearing, we are superwomen. With all, and I mean just about all, characteristics of every great Indian woman you've ever known rolled into one. We are whiz MBAs, glamorous dolls catwalking Parisian ramps, the best cooks dishing out wholesome meals for husband and kids, and braniac bank managers, (why, one of us is even the most powerful women in Indian finance circuit today). We are CEOs, directors, vice presidents and ministers. We make that perfect hanger for a Louis Vuitton bag or a Kimaya creation. We are also, please don't forget, Channi, taking in milk to the co-operative daily to support two children through government school. The gypsy woman, who has kept alive her familial talent and embroiders to earn a living today.

Wow, am I all this? No, I'm not. I am just one of them, or maybe two...stretching it. So stop telling me I'm all of this. Implying that I have to carry just about the entire nation's women's consciousness on my shoulders, doesn't make me carry it. It makes it harder for me to live up to this image, one that doesn't exist.

Yes, I'm superwoman enough to be juggling all of the stuff I have to everyday. We cannot so much as stop being one or the other. “Oh but aren't you the modern young Indian woman who has a career and a home and a family and a hobbies group and a music group and a chess club and a ...? You wanted everything, now why aren't you taking it?” Be everybody and do everything!

We are friend, daughter, wife, daughter-in-law, cousin, mom, colleague, boss, neighbour, shopper, chauffeur. We cook, we work, we play, we run, we bring up children, we look after all the family there is around us, we sell firewood, we sell bangles, we walk miles to fetch water, we work the fields and tend the sheep..what is left to do?

So stop telling us to do more, more, more..., or otherwise. Stop telling us to drape a saree if we're wearing cut-offs and to “discard it, aunty” if we're wearing one. To cook when we heat a TV dinner and to just order in when we're great chefs. To get a career when we love our stay-at-home hobbies and to get a life when we're at work. To stop being 'smart' if we learn English, and to stop being dumb if we're not.

If we drive fast, don't tell us we drive 'like women' and if we drive slow, we just have to repeat that. If we are a tourist, raped and killed in a foreign country, don't tell us we deserved it because we may have smoked our last joint just before. If we're successful at work, don't tell us that family time lies sacrificed. Be a good idea, if we were just left the hell alone.

Better discovered late, than never

Every time we plan to 'get away' for a bit, we hesitate to make it a long vacation, or one far away (with too few exceptions). So Mysore has pretty much seen the four of us heading it's way more often than in other directions. Small though it is, the city did offer up a surprise in the Windflower. Almost at the foot of Chamundi Hills, you will surely miss it's presence behind the Olive Garden restaurant, unless you're headed straight for it. Some pics from our last trip there...

Buddha outside the entrance to the spa... serenity starts here.

The backyards that house the outdoor shower for each ground floor room have red brick walls with just the right amount of green.

A long 'pond' forms the water body behind the cottages and it catches some amazing light.

The pond overlooking the cottages.

Mini oranges! That plenty of care goes into keeping the greenery so appealing and somewhat natural is very evident.
The walkway to the pool and restaurant.

The cottages are done up well, colors mixed well. The only unpleasant piece of design, if I can call it that, is the king size bed, which is placed on a platform with steps. If you don't watch out, bruised knees and shins are guaranteed.
Another view of the pond.

The pool is designed to stay a little private and still very open.

The swans don't look out of their element at all.

Blogger's block

What do you call the feeling that you get when too may random, completely diverse thoughts run through your head? And I don't mean run through your head occasionally. They run all the time. They're so quick and fast following one another that one cannot stop long enough to dwell on any one, to blog a significant length about it. Blogger's block?

Samples from today:

Some lives are like a lit cigarette. Once they are lit, even if you don't drag on them or blow to ignite further, they will burn anyway, though insignificantly, till they burn out.

How I wish I had entered that Peony Jade restaurant in Singapore. The name is so quaint and a perfect candidate for getting into an oriental mystery. If I'd peeked at the interiors, it would have been fodder for a story, perhaps.

I saw the minutest bug on an ochre yellow tile in my balcony. It was just a speck of dirt that didn't move. Till it did. I imagine that's exactly what we'd look like to observers in a far away galaxy.

Sea blue pilings by the pool, mini oranges by the sidewalks, serene Buddha by the spa, cobbled grey walkways and rust red outdoor showers - few places bring together the colors of nature as harmoniously as at the Windflower, Mysore.

The last thought is the only one I've put into action. It made me up and create a collage for my blog header. Pics in the collage: Windflower, Mysore; my water lily, my begonia in bloom, the Peony Jade and arbit buildings in Singapore.

Hopefully now I'll write about these places that impressed me.

How an eve-teaser becomes a role model

I've heard many people admire the Linea ads on the tele. They say they're mellow and refreshing, from the other in-your-face ads. I've heard it from colleagues and I've heard from the neighbouring tables at Coffee Days and Baristas.

While the first in the series might have been really so, I beg to differ on the second. Mellow, OK. Nice soundtrack, apt for what the car is supposed to do to you, OK. What beats me is how an eve teaser depicted as a role model for his younger brother is going down so well with people. You know the ad I'm talking about. Two brothers, the older whistling at a girl, while the younger (he couldn't be more than ten) looks on admiringly. He's thinking 'man, when am I going to be able to whistle like that? What an absolutely marvelous talent it must be, to be able to whistle like that a girl!'. Then he practices, poor kid, while the older brother actually benignly walks around him with a shake of the head. And then, he sees a Linea and the talent comes to him.

Now I don't care if boys whistle, or not, at a Linea. But I do, if the wolf whistle at a girl is being shoved at millions of viewers as a perfectly proper role-modelish thing to do.

And of course, the girl only smiles and walks by. That the smile is saying 'it's naughty but ok' is even more astonishing. But duh. Where have we see THAT stereotype before? Only in a million ads and movie songs, adding fuel to male imaginations that whistling, and eve teasing, sometimes dangerous eve teasing, is just what the girls are desperately waiting for.

Why am I picking on this one particular ad, when there are b'zillion of them out there? Because it's starting to take sexism where it should leave well alone. To children.

It's definitely not the first time children have been used in discriminatory ads. But that's another post.

What life's like now with Facebook

I never thought of myself as an online person. More a bookish person. In spite of "being in IT" as they call it 11 years. In spite of getting Hotmail, Yahoo and GMail accounts as soon as they were available. And in spite of creating blogs that I never used that I eventually forgot the user names and passwords. Now that really doesn't describe an online person, you might say. And you'd be quite right. For many, this must be a dichotomy to deal with daily.

Am I with it if I have a second life and a LinkedIn profile and 500 friends on Facebook? And of course, previously tracked 50 out of 395 friends on Orkut?

I used to be with it when I was spotted spending hours at the British Council, but that was then. Now, I've waited years before getting myself a copy of The Kite Runner, and reach for the laptop at 10.30 to check FB updates instead of reaching for that copy. Reading, from a hard copy book, if only ten pages at the end of the day gave it a kind of meaningful end. Got to change back to that starting today.

Selling health gets unhealthy

Was a time when kids enjoyed their milk fortified wit the latest new chocolate mix as much as they enjoyed the ads advertizing great taste or energy. Today, they're thinking about which drink their parents money should buy to oust the neighboring kids on their street. The sole purpose of the after-school afternoon drink seems to be a means of getting out there and proving they're better than the next kid on the block.

What are these ads selling? To the 8 to 15 year old age group? Not good health, vigor. Instead rivalry, one-upmanship and an unhealthy competition. Bad enough, such messages make little boys and girls constantly on the alert to come out on top of even lazy afternoon street games. What's worse, they begin to believe winning is the only way to go. Did the ad agencies and health drink companies forget there can only be one winner - in any game, in any sport? And not all their target audience can be that one winner? What happens to the psyche of those kids who come in second, or third or simply, by nature, have no inclination to sport or win at all? Perhaps marginalised, though subtly and unconsciously, because thats how the ads strike - if you're not a winner, you can't just be. With television such an invasive medium, little surprise this.

There are forums to take objectionable ads to women to court (that is a subject for another day). High time there were the same for kids.