Girl Power!

I'm at the Lower Parel railway station. The clock reads 8.34 pm. The train to my destination is slowly pulling in on the platform. I do not have a first class pass this time. I'm tired and fervently hoping for the ladies coach to have, if nothing else, one tiny empty space against some seat for me to stand in peacefully without being shoved around. Looking at the men hanging out of the compartments though I begin to lose all hope. But then slowly and surely, it begins to resurface. The ladies coach is not half as much crowded and wait a sec, did I just see an empty seat?! Whoa! God does love me very much! Because next door I can hear the choicest abuses being hurled by men trying to get into the train themselves. And that's how my train of thoughts begins...

As much as we crib about guys having it easier than girls, I beg to differ. I love being a girl and can't thank God and my parents enough! For one, my life would be so colorless if I were a guy, literally. A guys brain can't distinguish between magenta and fuchsia.  For them both are pink and a color to be stayed away from by all means. The same goes for shades of yellow, purple, orange and every other color. Well I love all colors (most of them) and am glad that biased perceptions of a flawed society do not dictate what colors are normal for me to wear and what aren't. So sad for the boys!

Then there's the concept of change. If I want a 'change', I'll go for a new haircut, maybe cut my hair really short, or get bangs, or get layers, or get my hair streaked, or get a perm. What can a guy do? Lol! (And frankly I don't really look up to the guys who are obsessed with their looks. So when I write this, I'm not considering that breed, well actually, I'm never considering that breed.) Or if a girl doesn't want to mess with her hair, she'll try a change in style of clothes- wear a floral dress maybe if she's a jeans and tee kind of a girl. So sad for the boys!

Then comes the career. For a girl coming from a middle class family living in Mumbai, a career is not a mandate. She does not have to support a family or run a house with the salary. She works for self- satisfaction. And that's when your job becomes something you love to do. If it's not something she loves to do, she can take time off and find something that she wants. The family lifestyle or the family name will not suffer if she is jobless for a while. So sad for the boys!

What's also really sad for the boys is that-

It's so much more easier for a girl to skip a queue- be it at the bank, the bus stop, or anywhere. Basically, Ladies First it is. ;)

A girl can get moody, bitchy or plain vicious and quarrelsome one day; and blame it on 'that time of the month' the next day.

A girl gets treated to dinners and lunches ever so often.

She has doors held open and chairs pulled out for her. A girl commands refined behavior.

A single tear down the cheek is all a girl needs to have her way with the most hardened and brawny of all men! Well even a smile does it.

The world would be one giant boxing ring if it weren't for us girls. There would be no aesthetics and no beauty. I'm sure God is a woman.

THE INCURABLE FOODIE: Pizza Hut

Location: Phoenix Market City, Kurla West

The first thing that comes to my mind when I think of pizzas is Dominos. What can beat their goeey, cheesy, full of flavour, and CHEAP pizzas right? But one fine day, when it came to quenching our pizza thirst, my foodie buddies and I decided to be a little magnanimous and give Pizza Hut a fair shot.

So at first sight you quite like the ambiance  with cheery red couches and some large semi-circular tables. The menu is well designed and made me feel like maybe Pizza Hut would be able to compare with Dominos after all. They have a good variety of beverages and appetizers, a fine assortment of pastas and sauces and impressive offerings in the pizza space- a host of crusts and toppings to choose from and the best thing being a Gourmet Thin Crust Pizza section for the indulgent types. But wait a minute, why couldn't any of this taste as good as it looked on the menu?!

So we started with a Cheese and Jalapeno Poppers served with a sweet chilly dip and Onion Rings. The poppers were satisfactory and the dips were particularly zesty, I'll give it to them. The onion rings weren't, they were too oily, bland and needed some flavour. No problem, just the first dish we thought. But keeping up this composure was becoming difficult because the service there was pathetic. At first I thought maybe they were understaffed but clearly it wasn't so because I could see 2-3 of them wandering aimlessly here- there. The young girl serving us seemed joyful and likeable at first but when she repeatedly forgot to show up to take our order or clear the table it was getting a bit tedious to sit there and wait for her.

For the main course we ordered a Pasta and Bread. The pasta completely lacked flavour, was unusually dry and required generous amounts of tomato ketchup, tobasco, oregano, and salt to go down. The next disaster was a stuffed crust veggie pizza, you can't go wrong with a stuffed crust pizza right? If nothing else, you'll enjoy it for the cheese. How wrong was I?! It was stuffed only at the edges, the part of the pizza I usually never eat, and I wouldn't have minded had it been melting gooey cheese, but theirs was lumpy, thick and could only be seen, not tasted. The toppings weren't that great either! I could only take this much, especially after we were joined by a group of 10-12 children on the next table celebrating a birthday, you know what I mean?

We walked out quite disappointed and thinking how Pizza Hut could manage to serve food this quality when its competitors were upping their act so finely at every stage! Gross lack of ambition I must say! While it's a very moderately priced place, with a meal for two costing about Rs.600- Rs.1000, hey don't make me feel robbed of even that much! It's time the place realizes that their typical target group is more than willing to shell out good bucks to get a good meal. I'd any day prefer having overpaid for food that I loved than paying anything for stuff like theirs!

THE INCURABLE FOODIE: An Introduction

"So long as you have food in your mouth, you have solved all your problems for the time being."

          -Franz Kafka


As the title says, I'm an incurable foodie. I live to eat. Comments about my small appetite do not deter my love and I look forward to every weekend to try something new and exciting. Thankfully I live in a city like Mumbai, where every street offers a few dozens of restaurants and searching for good food joints is a treasure hunt. You will find the most delectable bites in the most unexpected places. And while I am on my journey, why not share it with you?

In this series I review some of my favourite and some not so favourite eateries and make my experiences more meaningful!

Revelations of the year 2012

The year 2012 has not been one of my favourites. But they say, tough times make tough people and so I am thankful for everything that happened because I'm a wiser person today.

This year proved to me how constant change is. You may be on top of the world now but it takes a mere second to change that. It's taught me to appreciate every single thing that I have been blessed with and not take anything for granted. It is very important never to pass up an opportunity to help others. Because we live in a karmic universe and karma is fast. There'll be plenty of times when you will need somebody to help you out, however safe and secure things may seem right now. You should feel deserving of that help when it is extended to you. 

Our professional lives and personal lives are very very different. It is crucial to realize this fact and keep them separate. I'm friendly, cheerful and a very straightforward person. I do not like to put on a face. But to succeed professionally you need to play a whole different game. The key to creating the perfect workplace environment for you lies in the following few things I learnt, very early on in my career thankfully. 

1) Never participate in office gossip. Smile and nod along but don't join in. Never take sides. You cannot take back your words and they are sure to come bite you at the worst possible time.

2) Build a wall around yourself. Do not allow anyone to walk into your personal space. Chatter about your family, marriage, friends etc are best left outside office doors. I do not imply here that you walk around as a stuck up snob who will not talk to anyone. The trick is in making people feel comfortable around you but never getting too comfortable yourself! Go figure ;)

3) If you sense bad feelings in your relationship with a colleague who matters, talk about it, communicate. Very politely, ask him/her, "Is there a problem? I would definitely want to get it out of our way if that's possible."

4) Never ever get drunk at office parties! You do not want your boss seeing you swaying uncontrollably or dropping things right? :D
(P.S. All the above rules become invalid if you're among the lucky ones who have found a best friend for life at work. Be very sure about that though :P)

And the most  important thing. Your life is your own, you belong to only you and are not answerable to anyone but you. So be brave and take decisions to change that which makes you unhappy. Even if it means that some people are going to be displeased. Whatever you do, there will be one set of people who will make you doubt, fret and worry and another that will quietly support you and help you in every way they can. Ignore the former, hold on to the latter and go for it! After darkness comes the morning, it's the law of life. 

BOOK EXCERPT: Eat Pray Love, Elizabeth Gilbert

Then he went on to explain in a mixture of English, Italian and hand gestures, that every city has a single word that defines it, that identifies most people who live there. If you could read people’s thoughts as they were passing you on the streets of any given place you would discover that most of them are thinking that same thought. Whatever that majority thought might be- that is the word of the city. And if your personal word does not match the word of the city then you don’t really belong there.

Giulio asked, ‘What’s the word in New York City?”

I thought about this for a moment, then decided. “It’s a verb, of course. I think it’s ACHIEVE.”

(Which is subtly but significantly different from the word in Los Angeles, I believe which is also a verb: SUCCEED. Later, I will share this whole theory with my Swedish friend Sofie, and she will offer her opinion that the word on the streets of Stockholm is CONFORM, which depresses both of us.)

I asked Guilio, “What’s the word in Naples?” He knows the south of Italy well.

“FIGHT”, he decides. “What was the word in your family when you were growing up?”

That one was difficult. I was trying to think of a single word that somehow combines both FRUGAL and IRREVERENT. But Guilio was already on the next and most obvious question: “What’s your word?”

MAGAZINE EXCERPT: THINGS GIRLS DON'T KNOW ABOUT GUYS from FEMINA, DECEMBER, 2006, by VARDHAN KONDVIKAR

OK. This list is a bit self-defeating because girls know much more about guys than we ourselves do. Frankly we’re not that complex. We’re like dogs – give us food, a cozy place to sleep, walkies every day and a few belly–scratches and we’ll chug along fine. But, like dogs, we have a few secrets, some as smelly as the dead rat under the bed and some not. And finally, let me stress that this list (I have picked the ones that I enjoyed most) was compiled through a fairly limited poll, and there aren’t strict rules for male behavior, but then there are always some weird guys who won’t agree with me…

We don’t lust after every second girl. We lust after every third girl.

We really really love our cars. More than you’ll ever know. And saying “You love that heap more than you love me” isn’t a good course of action, trust me.

We do get pissed off when women are mistreated. We aren’t often vocal about it, but rape, wife-beating, dowry deaths and female infanticide infuriate us. You don’t need to dominate women to be a man.

We don’t drive our cars that fast to show you how macho we are. In fact, most of the times, when there are girls in the car, we actually drive more carefully and gently than when we’re alone.

We don’t like cockroaches either. We may not scream and flap our hands at them, but that doesn’t mean we don’t find them dirty and annoying. Please regard any squashed cockroach as a favour worth repaying at some point, not a constitutional right.

We actually do find swearing funny. Really! We swear when we’re totally upset and then have a big belly laugh over particularly imaginative curses afterwards.

We don’t all love Keira Knightley. She’s pretty, yes, but she’s also dreadfully skinny and simpers too much. If you’re tempted to lose so much weight that you look like her, you’re an idiot.

We will not run screaming if you have pimples or frizzy hair or have put on one half of a gram overnight, so don’t believe the ads. And most of the times, we won’t even notice.

We do gossip. We love it, in fact. Bitching about our colleagues is immensely entertaining and we do it every chance we get.

We don’t care that much if our boss is a woman. If she’s hot, by all means let her stay!

We don’t think all pretty girls are stupid. Frankly, we know the female of the species is deadlier than the male, and we just need to feel we have some sort of chance of survival.

We will never grow out of playing computer games. They’re part of life. Accept it. And trying to wean your man off them is a very bad idea – you’ll just end up with a depressed, moping bore who weeps for his Playstation in the middle of the night. Now you don’t want that, do you?

We like babies too. We also think they’re cute and cuddly and generally smell nice. We just don’t get the point of getting all gooey over anything that’s bald and wets its pants.

We don’t really like going up against big muscular guys that you pick fights with. We can feel our teeth being loosened and our heads kicked in, and however much we love, just pipe down, okay?

Our messes are not messes. The way clothes are carefully piled in seemingly random order, the books lying around in unsteady piles, all make sense to us, and our delicate sense of orientation can be disturbed horrible if you try and tidy up for us.

We really aren’t listening when you talk about curtains. Even the ones who appear to, and can actually give coherent answers, are operating completely on autopilot. Any such coherent responses stem from the same survival instinct that causes us to freeze when we see a lion and avoid the dark.

Guys do cry. It takes a lot to do it, but it happens. And oh, if it does, never ever remind a guy of that. No, not even when you’re telling him how cute he is.

We love it when you dress up. Sure, it takes a long time, but the results are generally worth it. More than anything, that’s because we like it when you’re proud of yourself.

We’re really, seriously, terminally terrified of asking a girl out. At least, if she matters and this isn’t just for a date. So give us a break, huh?

We don’t know jack about girls. Girls are, on the whole, complex, thinking creatures, with more coloured wires than the average bomb. If we don’t get it right, don’t explode, okay?

http://www.mid-day.com/news/2009/mar/070309-Pramod-Mutalik-Shri-Ram-Sene-Oscar-awards-A-R-Rahman-pubs-dating-Gandhiji-western-nations.htm

Check out this interview of Pramod Mutalik, Shri Ram Sene, by Anil Thackraney, Mid-Day, dated Saturday, 7th March (Pg.6).

I can’t decide if I was more saddened or amused when I read it but I was definitely not surprised. Read it and you’ll realize that now is the time, more than ever, for us to shake off our stupor, sit up and really take notice.