The Do It Yourself List

Do It Yourself!

We all are living this crazy fast lives, where each one of wants to grow up and get to business. Not being in sync with oneself results in failed careers and more importantly failed relationships. Therefore before you are ready to welcome someone in your life(again!) do these following things all by yourself. They will give you an opportunity to realize many things about yourself and help you introspect. Go ahead, give it a read! :)  

Prepare a Meal, Just for Yourself!

Pick up the craziest meticulous recipe from a cookbook or the internet and explore your cooking skills. It could be a 3 course meal with wine or just a chicken cheese burger. Cherry on the top is that you don’t even have to share it with anyone and you can enjoy it to its last bite sitting on your couch, without pants! Who cares? :P

Explore a new place.

Head for a place you have never been to and prefer a place where even the local language is alien to you. Stepping out of your home, all by yourself will make you feel powerful. The thrill and experience of getting lost and walk around in circles. Knowing that you can get lost and then find your way back home is extremely validating than finding directions on Google Maps.

Sleep naked.

Before you meet your Mr. /Ms. Right, sneak up in your bed wearing nothing!! :D You will sleep better and will make you feel sensual almost instantly. Great way to be one with yourself. Imagine taking it all off to sleep it off! *SIGH*

Stay in Bed, Eat in Bed.

Let’s not confuse ourselves with lazing in your bed all day with lying there wallowing in self-pity. Great way to recharge your mind, body and soul. Also, you can skip your all protein diet one day and take a guilt trip to eating chocolate cakes, French fries or extra cheese pizza washed down with a big glass of icy cold cola.

Making your own touch perfect!!

Let’s get one thing straight: There is nothing more important than the relationship you have with yourself. Learning how you want things done — and how to do them right — not only makes you a better partner and lover, but it puts you more in tune with your own physical needs. And let’s be honest, nine times out of 10, it’s just more fun to take care of business on your own.

Buy something EXPENSIVE!

Save your money and buy something expensive, have ownership over something. Buy a new car, a house, a pet or just extremely expensive pair of shoes. Having the ownership right over something, no matter what, is an automatic visa into adulthood.

Go on a dinner date, ALONE.

Ever see those people dining by themselves and wonder if they feel lonely or sad? Here’s a tip: They don’t. If you’re not totally sold on the idea of dining by your lonesome (which isn’t the same as dining by your lonely), bring along a book, a magazine or a Sudoku puzzle that you’re working on. 

Stare at yourself naked.

We all are born equal. Earth is same to all mankind in general. Accept your body the way it is, it’s a maze of beauty, curves and folds. Look at your stark body and fall in love with the way you are shaped. Appreciate yourself before you give away the chance to someone else.

Pay your own bills.

Take care of your own funds before you manage someone else’s budget. Paying your own bills may sound not so good at first but being on top of it always is rewarding in its own way. Doing so you know that all your payments are made and now you can make a budget to fulfill your other needs. Learn to keep your spending in line before you have someone else in your life. This helps you save and keep you both from overspending. 

Wake up and watch the sunrise

Wake up early one morning and witness the sunrise. Sunrise signifies a new day, a new beginning, an opportunity to do things in different way, and it reaffirms that you are still alive. It’s a reminder that you are good, you are whole and, most importantly, and that you are here.

In moments like these, being alone isn’t just everything. It’s the only thing. And it’s beautiful.

The Outsider

Say No to Prejudice

We all are very proud to be Indians. Our patriotism is showcased in various forms when instigated by a certain mega achievement by some Indian. For example, Indian cricket team wins the world cup, Handful gold medals at some international sports meet, some space mission or just Shahrukh Khan receiving an honorary award from the French government. That’s it. We all are proud to be Indians only then and rest of the times we treat one another just like an Outsider!!

We all know this fact but strangely shy away from that racism, prejudice and xenophobia are rampant in India. It’s a strange mixture of prejudice, ignorance and centuries-old discriminatory practices, when communities keep to themselves and there are dining taboos based on caste. Even today you cannot eat with people not of your caste or marry into their communities.

We are a huge nation with diverse cultures and heritage and as our pledge says ‘I love my country and I am proud of its rich and varied heritage’. We are a nation where culture and habits change every 10kms, spoken language and staple diet changes with them too. And that is when the problem starts. Each state is like a different country with diverse languages, cuisines, clothes, customs, and climate. Punjabis are closer in terms of their food and language to Pakistanis than to Tamils. 

All these differences make people fairly suspicious of those who are not like them. And ‘people like us’ close ranks and bond. These closed communities are naturally full of prejudices towards the other, the outsider.  Every state considers itself superior. We stereotype each other mercilessly and there are jokes galore about food, clothes and accents (how residents of each state speak English, actually!).

There’s a huge North-South divide too. Yet, in pre-colonial times, India was a haven for persecuted people. We gave refuge to Jewish people, Parsis from Persia, Armenians and later Chinese who ran away from the Revolution, and Tibetans who fled the Chinese. These people kept their distinct, separate identities but they prospered and loved India.

There’s another side to us though. As migration takes place, across state borders within India, a kind of xenophobia begins. In Mumbai in the 1960s, Maharashtrians were incited by politicians to drive out south Indians, Madrasis, they called them who were stealing their jobs. Sounds familiar? Recently, the same paranoid party called for North Indians to be thrown out. Many poor, migrant Biharis were beaten up, attacked and threatened as they went about their daily grind, often working for a pittance. In Bangalore too, there are rumblings of resentment over north Indian techies who have flooded the city with their loud, noisy, in-your-face manners. South Indians are relatively quiet, stand in queues and can’t understand the chaos of a northern railway station. Students from North East India are mostly dubbed ‘chinky’. People ask them if they are Japanese, Chinese or Korean. There is total ignorance amongst us in most parts of India about the culture, indeed about anything North Eastern.

That’s not it, we stereotype women very easily too. We rarely perceive beauty in black or far-eastern women. In fact, most of us look for pale-skinned brides to get married to. Bridal ads ask for ‘fair skinned’ girls. So skin color is important and you can’t be beautiful if you are not fair. Prospective bride seekers swarm into the girl’s house to ‘see the bride’. They have no compunction about passing their comments, in front of the bride and her family. Sensitivity, tact or even basic good manners are not common among average Indian families.

Now a little reminder from our National Pledge that we recited like parrots at school assembly.

India is my country. All Indians are my brothers and sisters.

I love my country and I am proud of its rich and varied heritage.

I shall always strive to be worthy of it.

I shall give my parents, teachers and all elders respect and treat everyone with courtesy.

To my country and my people, I pledge my devotion. In their well-being and prosperity alone lies my happiness.

 Where is this compassion that we promised towards each other? Why are we so intolerant about our own brothers and sisters? We want to fight rape, crime, terrorism, poverty and so many other issues but fail to remember that all of us are sons and daughters of the same soil. All these issues will be self-eradicated from the moment we stop the hardwired mentality of plain worthless prejudice towards one another and stop treating others like ‘The Outsider’! 

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Kiss Of Love

Kiss Of Love

I’m sure by now you must have read somewhere on the news or internet or the social media about people talking in pro or against the whole ‘Kiss of Love’ issue.

To throw some light on what is this ‘Kiss of Love’

‘Kiss of Love’ is a non-violent protest staged by the youth of Kerala against the so called moral policing that the right wing extremist groups have been imposing in the state from time to time. The situation of moral policing and social bullying of the youth displaying acts of affection towards each other in public have gone from bad to worse in the last few years.

More background…

The youth in Kerala were brewing anger since a 26 yr old was killed in Kodiyathur, Kerala by a mob for loving a married woman followed by a few more episodes of similar cruelty for being open and liberal about ones way to express love. The last blow to the nail in the coffin came in when a café in Kozhikode was vandalized for allowing a couple to hug and kiss in their premise. The right wing extremists terms it as ‘immoral activity and attacked the café.

The Outcry

To protest against this moral policing a group took the matter on social media and soon attracted support from all across Kerala and also from other parts of the nation. A non-violent movement was called on 2^nd Nov 2014 near Ernakulam Law College campus and proceed towards Marine Drive in Kochi.

What really happened…?

The police lathi charged at the group gathered for the march resulting in arresting 50 protestors and injuring more than a 100 of them in the tussle. The members of the right wing parties who were also present at the venue to prevent the movement also got along with the police in the violence. None of the party member was arrested.

My Questions is…

What the f**k is the problem with people expressing their affection towards each other? Don’t we accept the western culture directly or indirectly in so many ways that we don’t even realize it? We should just stop being a hypocritical society and accept each other the way we are. Who are these so called right wing activists? Why don’t they get upset with rising number of rapes with women in our country? Why doesn't the scaring number of feticide worry them? I think these men and women of the right wing are just like those bullies in school who have heavy biceps but very little mass in their brains!!

So the Prime Minister appeals to the nation to embrace as much as new technology and implement them in our lives. But for his party workers to think beyond vandalism and moral fascism is impossible. We tolerate men shamelessly urinating in public, we tolerate dirt and garbage dumped on roadsides, we tolerate illegal migrants living on money of the taxpayers, and we tolerate our future generation dying of malnutrition or begging at the signals, we tolerate our mothers and sisters getting raped and killed and the common man even tolerates the rising inflation. But what we cannot tolerate is the freedom to love or express love towards each other in public.

Missing the POINT!

Unfortunately a whole lot of right wing supporters think that the protest was to get freedom to get into a sexual act in public. That’s where they are wrong. The whole point is, the moral police harassment has been experienced even by those who were just sitting with friends of opposite sex in public. Can casual hugging and holding hands be tagged sexual?  Expressing love to your dear ones need not be construed as a sexual act all the time.

I say it is time we STOP being cynical about being open and receptive to the idea of just being ourselves. It’s time we reclaim space for love and sexuality.     

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Happy Clicking!!

Happy Clicking!

Lately, some things on my social profiles on Facebook, Twitter or elsewhere have given me a stark realization. Suddenly I noticed that most of my friends are ‘Professional Photographers’.

So it made me think a bit more as to what is the reason people are drawn towards either getting clicked or clicking these ‘professional pictures’. I got onto thinking and tried to dig deep in quest of reaching the actual root of the situation. So let’s get started with my observations, shall we?

·         Profile pictures on social sites need to garner certain level of attention from friends. Unless there are couple of hundred likes and few 10’s of comments it’s totally not worth it!

·         Phones have become Mini-DSLRS. Phones these days come with 2^10 MP cameras in built that they actually shame the DSLRS.

·         Now that we have established that use of phones have bottle necked to clicking pictures alone, these phones have reached even the most common man of the country giving birth the selfie frenzy generation.

·         The App market are loaded with free picture correcting software’s. These apps are capable of even changing the skin tone to discarding deepest of scars of your face. Not surprised with mosaic like skin tones on your pics anymore!

·         Monkey see monkey do. If he can, why can’t I? After all my father’s hard earned money is totally worth spending on an expensive DSLR camera which I barely know how to use, but its automatic mode will do the job for me and I need to show the rubbish around my city which everybody else see every day BUT they haven’t seen it through my lens yet!

·         All of sudden a few pictures clicked, photoshoped with watermark of your name and a new FB page and BOOM you are now a ‘Professional Photographer’

·         Oh Food! Oh Mountain! Oh beach! Oh a bird! Oh my shoes! Oh my biceps! Oh what the crap! These sentiments have graduated to become life like pictures. They MUST be clicked and posted.

·         If I don’t click and post pictures online = OUTCAST!

Well, I’m no alien to this trend. I am a part of this gang way too. We are all in that time where we just cannot resist flipping our phones out and clicking a picture on doing something new, and that’s not it; just clicking and not posting it on FB or Instagram is a CRIME. Therefore the #Post #Online #With #Annoying #Hashtags is totally compulsory. ;)

So on this note, I would say keep clicking and keep posting because a lot of Mobile brands, Camera brands and the whole of Social Media would crash if we don’t! :)

Happy Clicking!!

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