With Diwali around the corner and the Wedding Season close on its heels, shopping is the thing on everyone’s mind. Clothes shopping, being the foremost. I went shopping too. As I stood in the queue snaking up to the trail room, a lady exited one of the trail stalls, and…
Karwa Chauth is an annual festival largely observed by women in the Hindi-speaking Northern and Central regions of India. It usually occurs 10 days before Diwali, and on this day women fast without food or water from dawn till they spot the moon, as they pray for a long and…
I am Tech-challenged. By that, I mean anything more than hitting the Send button and using Copy-Paste sends me into a tizzy. No, truly. And yes, when I learned to download and play games on my mobile, I felt like I had graduated from MIT. Yes, THAT tech challenged. Now…
As girls we grew up hearing, ‘There is safety in numbers’. We started believing it when we were whistled at, or followed, or deliberately brushed against, or had filmy songs sung loudly for us as we walked the streets alone. We protested, we raged, we swore to change things…
If I had an idli for each of the times I’ve been told, ‘The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.’ I would be able to cover the earth till it resembled one humungous idli, and even then had some leftover to munch on as I went about…
The reason I don’t need a drink is because I’m always high on life. I have had an inkling of it for a while now. Careful and constant observation has confirmed it. And I am now completely convinced that I belong to the fast-heading-towards-extinction species, otherwise known as, ‘Teetotalers.’ A…
First things first, I absolutely abhor this addressing a guy as ‘Bhaiyya’ business. I swear, even my trusted subziwala packs in inferior vegetables when I address him as ‘Bhaiyya’. Though my mother vehemently disagrees, citing my annual visits as the real reason. So imagine the plight of those guys who…
We at ‘Times of India’ are starting a new series on Bookmark called BOOKED FOR LIFE. It will consist of first-person accounts by book lovers on their relationship with their collections, favorite books, unfavourite books, reading habits and so on. Essentially personal, the pieces can be funny, nostalgic, righteous, ironic,…
The seeds are sown when ; You are asked to keep your distance from the boys, as soon as you are old enough to understand the word ‘different’. You are asked to come home before dark and not wander alone. You are asked to ‘behave like a girl’. It continues…
I hate being called ‘cute’ ! In Sharma-sisters lingo cute translates to ‘ugly-but-tolerable’ and in Mayuri-lingo cute translates to ‘ugly-but-not-vomit-inducing’ I hate being called ‘cute’ ! Cute is….stuffed teddy bears. Cute is….chubby kids whose cheeks you want to pull. Cute is….adverts like the Pond’s Googly woogly whoosh. Cute…