A few weeks back, a top television presenter was caught on camera doing 70 mph on a busy motorway – chatting on his mobile phone. Jeremy Clarkson is well known to Britons and to see him chatting away whilst driving his Merc was too much for the public to bear. A vigilant passerby took a picture of him gabbing away and passed it on to the Daily Mirror. The papers took him to task royally and furious members of the public wrote on public forums everywhere, asking for a serious …

 Fresh out of college, I used to work for a local, city-based portal as a content writer and then later, Web Content Manager. In that guise, I met many interesting characters, attended many functions and generally led an interesting life. But of all the people I met, none affected me more than Vandana and Vaishnavi, founders of women’s charity organisation, Banyan.
I wasn’t a trained journalist so had none of the grit or the backbone needed to tough it out in search of assignments. All I had was a head …

Ever tried selling one of the stories from Ramayana or Mahabharata to a child today? Especially one raised on a PG or U certificate rating anywhere else but in India? Hair-raising, I tell you. For one, the stories are all way too gory for their bland tastes. Tell them so-on-so chopped the other bloke’s finger or head off and watch young eyes turn into saucers. The whys and whats and loud gasps would take days to stem, leave alone the increased Nightmare Alert.
If your child is not raised on an …

I tried… I resisted but I give up! I have to pay homage to Krish Ashok and I shall!
I came across his blog, entertainingly titled ‘Doing Jalsa and Showing Jilpa’ awhile back, whilst searching for, of all the things, Chennai 600028 mp3s! (Okay, for the illiterates out there, the title of his blog is a loose translation of the hit number from the Tamil movie entitled Chennai 600028.) I moved swiftly on, when the said jalsas and jilpas weren’t the ones I was looking for. Then, I tripped over this …

I know I am a li’l late but what with North Indians celebrating it for most of last week, Tamils on Thursday and Telugus on Friday and us lot on Saturday as that is the day we get off, I decided to ‘celebrate’ it on my blog on an entirely new day. Loopy or what?
Anyways, I hope everyone had a lovely festival. Was it as good as your childhood ones? (no, course not!) Did you make merry? Did you eat / drink too much? Go on, dish the dirt. What …

[Guest post by Ranju]

For the kick-starter, Rowing is a sport which is highly catching up in the city of Madras, thanks to Madras Boat Club. A membership here costs 50k for a year where in you will have put in 300 hours of rowing. As an annual event, the MBC conducts a Corporate Regatta which is aimed to bring in more people into this sport. In this regard, my friend’s mom, Neela, who has a production house of her own called Madras Houz, decided that it would be …

“Are you, Desigirl?”
“Um, yes..”
“Oooh, I thought as much. I read your blog frequently!” *camera flash*
“Oh look, it is that blogger, Desigirl. I read your blog..” *more camera flash*
“So do I…” *you get the pic*
“… me too!”
(Really? How come my blog stats don’t reflect this massive fanbase?)
Anyways, this isn’t my major fantasy come to life. It was what happened to me this Saturday. Ok, ok, so I exaggerated a bit (give me a break, I am a blogger after all!) but it was heady when someone actually came up to me …

What do you think of when you say ‘vathiyaar’ (purohit / Brahmin priest)? What image pops into your mind? Well, I generally think of this rotund person, poonool-ed, with an impressive kudumi (pony tail) and a carrying voice. Well now one can add ‘photo savvy’ and ‘inspired by Mani Ratnam’ to this profile.
Last Friday, I got up at the wee hours of the morn (what else would you call 3.00 AM?) to sit bleary-eyed at an Upanayanam (sacred thread) ceremony. That was the first time I learnt that some …

1. The MCs – why do they always feel inclined to do most of their speil in Hindi? Even though I understand the language fairly decently, the automatic assumption that everyone should be able to walk and talk the language is more than mildly irksome.
2. Why is that anyone who gets a mic in their hands feels inclined to shout down it? The same MCs are virtuosos in this regard. My mind boggles!
3. Why does the simple concept of queuing escape us? For the past week, I have been queueing …

Fellow blogger and one of my oldest mates, apu tagged me on this. And she says we have good ole Ams to thank for it. As it is a tag, I’d like to tag my fellow fem bloggers – Suj, Dee, Premalatha as well as my fellow mommy bloggers – Mad Momma and Tharini, as well as Kishore to take the baton from me.
Right, now let’s get started. What is feminism, exactly? According to the dictionary, feminism is the doctrine advocating social, political, and all other rights of women …

We gave P a big bday bash yesterday. We’d been telling him for quite sometime that for his 5th birthday, we’ll throw him a big party and we did. We invited every one of his classmates plus a few of his nursery friends as well as some desi friends whose kids fall in the 4-6 category. The pains started fairly from the word go. I did not have a complete list of his classmates and made do with an incomplete birthday list compiled by a mom and random inputs by …