The Seven Signs of Ageing…

With apologies to Olay, here is a lovely tag passed on to me by Itchy. Ageing to me has always been the big boogieman standing right at my door, waiting to sink his scythe into me. All that age builds character lines, and adds beauty and such like doesnt cut any ice with me, because frankly, after you get them wrinkles, no one calls them character lines any more. They’re wrinkles. And they age you. And they make you invisible in a public setting. It makes one angry and sourfaced, and leads to puckering and frowning, and therefore, more wrinkles. The horror, the horror.

Short of using a steam iron to keep the face wrinkle free, and staying clear of all the fancy creams on the market promising to do so and actually just succeeding in keeping your wallet wrinkle free (my favourite cream? Johnson’s Baby Cream. Works the best. Better than all the anti wrinkle/anti ageing stuff I’ve tried and I tell you I am a skin care product junkie), staying wrinkle free is also a matter of attitude. Here’s where I think the years are catching up with me:

1] By the time the man says let’s make a night of it, I am already snoring with my mouth open and drool dribbling down my chin.

2] I wear sunglasses not to look cool, but to protect my eyes from hurting in the bright sunlight. And also to prevent the wrinkling that will happen from squinting in the sun.

3] My greatest moves on the dance floor are getting out of the way quick and finding a comfortable seat by the side.

4] My idea of exercise is bending down to tie the shoe laces to my sports shoes.

5] I still remember the words to inane radio commercials of my childhood “mahabaleshwar ka Fountain hotel, phone number yaad hain na?”, TT Underwear Aur Banian, Raju tumhare daant motiyon jaise chamak rahen hain,  but cant, for the life of me, remember the lyrics to a song in a movie I watched yesterday.

6] My idea of roughing it out is staying in a hotel without 24 hour room service.

7] I look at myself in the mirror every morning and think, for an almost forty year old, I’m in damn good shape.  Thinking this as a youthful me, intent on starving myself into anorexia would have been blasphemy.

And for my tips on anti ageing:

1] Eat a well balanced diet. Take a multivitamin daily. Take enough Omega Fatty acids in your diet or through supplements. Drink enough water to keep your bowels clear.

2] Stay out of the sun or use sunscreen. Use sunglasses and a visor in the sun.

3] Get a complete night’s sleep every day. Stay away from late nights as much as you can.

4] Cut out or cut down the sugar, alcohol, cigarettes and toxic negative thinking. Stay away from toxic people.

5] Spend time with children. Pray every night.

6] Get some exercise daily even if it is just a walk around your block.

7] Laugh as much as you can. And try to make the people around you laugh.

I tag:

Monika

Mama Mia

sands

Eves Lungs

Poppy

JLT

Ronita

Haffun girls.

Mile Sur Mera Tumhara…

I have some memories of this and of the man who made this. Suresh Mullick of Ogilvy and Mather. I was a young trainee journalist with The Asian Age. And duly packed off to interview Suresh Mullick. It was a good thing for me that back in those days we had no internet and google baba and I was appropriately raw to not be overwhelmed by the great advertising and marketing gurus I interviewed. So I interviewed Suresh Mullick and Shunu Sen and S M Dutta with the kind of insouciance that comes from extreme youth and ignorance. Had I been doing those interviews today I wouldnt have been able to get the questions through from chattering teeth.

Back then, I think I wouldnt have been overwhelmed by anyone except Bon Jovi and Michael Jackson, I was at that age. So off I trotted to the Ogilvy office, hoping to wrap up the interview in an hour max. I learnt, to my surprise, when I landed there, that my subject had very different plans. In fact, my subject dapper in a suit and a very oldfashioned pair of spectacles had kept his entire day free for the interview. Which was not an interview of him, but an interview of me. We went out for lunch to the Library at the President. Lobster was ordered. I was a greenhorn at managing cutlery to attack the crustacean, he laughed and ordered me to use my hands. He asked me about my childhood, how I grew up, my family, I could barely get in a word edgewise to ask him my questions about himself. I drew out little bits of information in the course of our conversation which I had to commit to memory. I was not allow to jot down notes. Mullick was a nice avuncular gentleman, and someone completely different from anyone I’d interviewed earlier. He had a subtle sense of humour, a slight Woody Allenesque look and a gentle interest in what I planned to do with my life, quite flattering for a little nobody just out of college, and who had wandered into journalism quite by default. He knew and knew about things. Music, books, art, cricket, I remember feeling quite awed by the breadth of his knowledge. And his words still stick in my head, “Always do what you enjoy. The moment you stop enjoying something, move on.” I didnt quite understand him then, but I do now. And I think its a maxim I’ve adopted. He would call up occasionally. Chat a while. Always asking what I was working on, if there was anything interesting I was writing. Asking me to send in copies of the interviews I’d written for him to read. Discussing articles I had written, dissecting them in the most gentle disarming way.

Thank you Mr Mullick, for your kindness to a trainee journalist. You made me believe that true greatness is in making the other person feel good about themselves rather than tom tomming one’s own achievements.

I’m not going to write about his work, there are folks who have done that better and more indepth than I could ever hope to in a five minute post.

Sridhar, (ex Director O&M India), has just launched a book on  Suresh
Mullick, the Creative Director who directed Mile Sur. Read it here: http://periscopedesign.co.in/index.html

A study after my own heart.

And no, I havent paid them to conclude this.

I could also add in the pursuit of slimness that the more time you spend sleeping, the less waking time you have to eat or forage around for leftovers, or call for takeaway.

Therefore, goodnight. I’m headed off to get my recommended zzzzz’s.

I can just see the dietiticians and obesity management clinics so going out of business.

Am I a behenji?

Had this rather interesting discussion the other day amongst friends and I’m still to arrive at a conclusion.

Two friends who I considered the ultimate of coolth have labelled themselves behenji. I thought I was too. Though I am most uncomfortable in a saree and a salwarkameez and I can count the occasions in a year when I wear both on my fingers.

This is what the Urban Dictionary defines behenji as. And in the colloquial speak, Mayawati has become synonymous with the word behenji.

I dont fit in the salwar kameez wearing bracket. Nor do I always speak in Hindi or Punjabi. Nor do I pile on the gold.

But I do think like a behenji I argued. And I meant that in the most positive sense. I have what some might consider terribly old fashioned values. No alcohol. No cigarettes. No using foul language. Monogamy rocks. Respect your elders. Doing your puja paath. Lighting the diya. Doing the occasional vrat. Celebrating festivals. Touching feet. The works. I might not get the sindoor on, or wear the shiny blingy sarees but I could be a character from one of them television serials. Except of course, you wont find me in the kitchen.

So what is behenji according to you? And do you fit in?

A tag

From Doli.

Tell your readers 10 things about you that they may or may not know, but are true..

Tag 10 people with the award, and be sure to let them know they’ve been tagged (a quick comment on their blog will do).

Link back to the blogger who tagged you.

Now after so many years of blogging I am almost sure there is absolutely nothing that the readers of this blog dont know about me. Even down to my nose hair greying.  And I think I’ve done this sort of thing before. Listing out stuff no one knows and some stuff no one would care to know about me. Therefore this is a tough task, Doli.  But in my recent spirit of not sitting and hatching tags, and awards and such like till the hatchlings are ready to leave the nest.

So, without much ado, here are ten things I bet no one knew about me.

1]I am terrible at telephone conversations. I cannot make long pleasant conversation for the life of me. I keep it short, crisp and over and out.

2] I am a horror movie addict.

3] I cannot step into public without lipstick on. If I’m stretched on the bier without lipstick, am sure my corpse would sit up and apply some on them lips.

4] I believe in ghosts and the supernatural and the paranormal.

5] I couldnt be bothered about coordinating what I wear, therefore I live in jeans and black tshirts.

6]My waist size at age nine was the same as it is today. I was, erm, a very healthy girl.

7] I pray every night before sleeping.

8]I have a before bedtime ritual that I never skip. Wash face. Apply face cream, body lotion, cream on the feet and socks. If this is not done, then I am at the point of dying and couldnt care less what I look like tomorrow.

9] When I develop a dislike to someone, I cannot even pretend to be civil to that person. 

10] I have never worn a strapless or a spaghetti strapped top or dress.

And I tag:

Sunayana

Itchy

Dipali

Eves Lungs

Poppin’s Mom

Chox Box

Suki

Mama Mia (Abha)

Gypsy Girl

Golkamra

Get down to it folks.

Did you run?

At the Mumbai Marathon? Were you out there, wearing your best running gear, rubbing shoulders with the celebrities, enjoying the entire spirit of the event? Did I run? Do you even need to ask?

Of course not. I never run in a public situation. Unless I have a bus or a train to catch. Of which I have had neither to catch in a long while. I walk. In stately fashion. Hoping I dont trip myself up. Like any person who has zero athletic abilities, my interest in the marathon is a bit voyeuristic. For one I admire all the buff folks out there in their sports wear running for a cause.

Among the non so buff people (read the aam junta) 

More than 22,000 people were running the 6 kilometre of the dream run this year. A total of 38,000 people participated in the Marathon this year.

There was a lot of celebrity around, from the ones who were running to support a deserving charity. To the ones who were there to be photographed.

Women in the crowd had enough cause to faint with Akshay Kumar and John Abraham as eye candy. For the men, Vidya Balan and Genelia and Gul Panag and Amrita Rao provided a sight for sore eyes. I am told by the ones who ran, that the marathon gets better and better every year, and that I should seriously participate to be part of the spirit of Mumbai.

I am a girl who needs her sleep. I will egg the runners on by positive thinking and high frequency thoughtwaves transmitted via the television set.

This is what really scares me in a crowd situation of over 38,000 folk running.

Guess who would have needed that saline drip had she landed there?

Be right back

Drowning in too much work, too little time. And too little sleep. Be back in a bit.

The benefits of a big behind…

And no, its for the express purposes of cutting a swathe through the crowd. Though it comes in handy for that too, I must confess.

I have always been a rather generously proportioned girl. That is not a good way to grow up in an era when stick thin insects are venerated to and top fashion models can actually count the bony protruberances on the surface of their skin caused by almost minus levels of body fat. I remember starving myself into anorexia and no menstrual cycle for six months when I was sixteen in an effort to rid myself of my curves. Yes, I got my stick thin figure and with it, PCOD. Not to mention countless enquiries about my health and well being and concerned neighbours sending in special dishes to fatten me up.

I piled on the weight again. I thought I looked hideous. The spouse begged to differ. But thats another story and a bigger post.

Fat on the hips is stubborn. It hangs on grimly. It doesnt melt away by wishful thinking (though positive visualisation is to be wholly recommended in situations needing additional reinforcement, apart from diet and exercise), and worse, we have Beyonce and J Lo making them behinds fashionable enough to be flaunted, making the pressure to flaunt them big behinds unbearable. Why does the same behind look bootilicious on Beyonce and like one had just to stick on a little grey tail on me. The answer lies, my dears, in the packaging.

Therefore, this is dedicated to all ye women who are apologetic about a little more on your booty. Be proud of your behind. It shows you are intelligent, keeps you safe from heart disease, and helps you make intelligent babies. Phtooey to them stick insects. We got our fatty deposits right where they can make a difference.

Read this:

London: They can play havoc with your stress levels when you’re trying to squeeze into skinny jeans. But big bottoms could be good for your health, according to British scientists.
    A team at Oxford University has claimed that carrying extra weight on your hips, bum and thighs is good for one’s health, protecting against heart and metabolic problems, reports the BBC.
    Hip fat mops up harmful fatty acids and contains an anti-inflammatory agent that stops arteries clogging; big bums are preferable to extra fat around the waistline, which gives no such protection, the scientists said.
    According to them, having too little fat around the hips can lead to serious metabolic problems because there is evidence that fat around the thighs and backside is harder to shift than fat around the waist.
    Although this may sound undesirable, it is actually beneficial because when fat is broken down quickly it releases a lot of cytokines — linked to heart disease, and diabetes — which trigger inflammation in the body, say the scientists.
    Lead researcher Konstantinos Manolopoulos said, “It is shape that matters and where the fat gathers. Fat around the hips and thighs is good for you but around the tummy is bad.”
    Manolopoulos said in an ideal world, the more fat around the thighs the better — as long as the tummy stays slim. “Unfortunately, you tend not to get one without the other,” he said.
    Fotini Rozakeas of the British Heart Foundation said, “This research helps us better to understand how fat acts in the body in order to develop new approaches in reducing heart and circulatory disease. PTI

That is not all. My big hips are also indicative of my intelligence, and are also indicative that I, had I decided to churn out a football team, would have spun out mini Einsteins.

http://www.physorg.com/news114062670.html

Now I know the spouse was thinking far into the future and the cognitive abilities of his future progeny when he evinced admiration of them fat deposits on the rear. He, like all good red blooded caveman providers, is biologically programmed to select a mate who will give him clever offspring. And yes, my bigger hips could also let a bigger brained baby out more easily, theoretically, never mind that the good doctor just took a scalpel and made a quick bikini cut incision and got the squalling kid out. Its another point that the squalling offspring is showing signs of intelligence only when it comes to Bollywood song and dance routines. He might still make a career choreographing for Bollywood films and earn his keep.

Read this:

Two researchers, Steven Gaulin and William Lassek believe our attraction to an hourglass figure may have evolutionary significance. In a recent study, Lassek and Gaulin found that a woman’s waist to hip ratio had an impact on a child’s intelligence; curvy women birthed children with superior cognitive abilities. “Men respond because it’s reproductively important,” Lassek believes.

Omega-3 fatty acids, the same fat found in flax and certain types of fish, are believed to be the source of the benefits. These fats compose much of the human brain (which is 60% fat by dry weight). They are selectively stored in the hips and thighs beginning in adolescence. Notably, women do not begin metabolize these deposits except during the third trimester of pregnancy and during lactation – peak times for a child’s brain growth.

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Of Aman ki Asha

The new year began with a new initiative from the Times of India Group in collaboration with the Jang Group in Pakistan. Called Aman Ki Asha, this initiative seeks to strengthen people to people goodwill between the aam junta of India and Pakistan, and thereby do away with hostility and negativity that perveades the relationship between the two countries. As far as an initiative goes, it is an honest to goodness effort at building goodwill. As someone who has been working with 26/11 victims for the past year, I agree that any effort to promote goodwill between the populations of these two countries is welcome. Will it work? Not immediately. But as a start.  As drops make up an ocean, any step towards peace and goodwill will ultimately add up. It is a start, and a brave one at that, and that by itself needs to be admired. If this is a marketing gimmick as most Cassandras have been decrying, I’m all for it. Gimmick or not, it is a welcome relief from the baying for their blood stridency which had taken over most reporting on Pakistan post 26/11.
I’m not going to delve into the history of the conflicts between the two nations, the festering anger, the two wars we have fought, the countless incidents of terrorism and infiltration and the proxy wars. That is something political commentators would do better commenting on.
What I find interesting, and very commendable, is the television commercial to promote this new endevour has as its unifying factor, Bollywood. In a gist, the TVC shows a desert terrain, with people of both countries across the barbed wire, playing a kind of dumb charade wherein, the people from Pakistan finally manage to communicate the name of an Indian feature film, Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge. The people on the Indian side of the wire rush to dial a request for a song from the film to All India Radio, and both songs enjoy the song when it is aired. Simplistic? Perhaps. But an indicator of how much Indian movies are enjoyed in Pakistan.
Pakistan banned Bollywood movies in 1965 after the Indo Pak war. But cable networks, pirated DVDs and a thriving underground market for Bollywood ensured that Bollywood movies were available to the Pakistan audience the very day of a movie’s release in India. Indian movie stars are as revered across the border as they are here in India. This ban was lifted recently, by the Pakistan government, and subsequent to this cinema halls in Pakistan screened “Taare Zameen Par” which was the first release after the ban was lifted. This was followed by “Singh is Kinng”, “Kismat Konnection”, “Welcome”, “The Killer”, “Bhagam Bhag”, “Race”, “Golmaal Returns”, “Jannat”, “Bhootnath”, “Karzzz”, “Hello”, “Love Story 2050″, “Dostana”, “Yuvvraaj” and “Kidnap”. In fact, Mahesh Bhatt had announced a romance from his banner Vishesh Films, to be shot completely in Pakistan last year. Maybe he had something right, when he conceived of an Indo Pak collaboration to alleviate mistrust and hostilities between the two regions. In fact Raj Kapoor could be the pioneer in this, with his film Henna (which was subsequently directed by his son Randhir Kapoor upon his demise) which featured Zeba Bakhtiar, a leading Pakistani actress. Ironically, her ex-husband, Adnan Sami is currently working in Mumbai, creating music for a number of Bollywood movies. Salma Agha made a hit film Nikaah, Reena Roy married (and subsequently divorced Pakistani cricketer Mohsin Khan, which is also another great binder between the two nations, our common passion for cricket), Akbar Khan attempted to take forward the film-friendship exchange with the showing of his magnum Opus Taj Mahal in Pakistan. Interestingly, the film starred Sonya Jehan, the granddaughter of the famous singing legend from Pakistan, Noor Jehan. Pakistani comedians and comedy shows have been popular in India for decades, and Pakistani sit-coms like Dhoop Kinare and Tanhaiyian reached cult status in the bootlegged video cassette market in the 1980s. Indian films have gone the whole hog in depicting Pakistan as the enemy too. The spate of these came post Kargil.
But culture cannot draw sustenance from political enemity. The politics of distrust and hatred can only be eliminated not through further strife and war, but through concerted efforts to find a middle ground of connection and bonding.
We share a common culture, we have common references, we have the same over the top penchant for living life large through our films and entertainment. We love our musicals, we are two countries carved from one. While the politics of terror and hatred can play itself on a platform sponsored by forces beyond the control of the aam junta, the people of the two countries can leverage the powerful binding influences of entertainment and culture, movies, music and literature to create a shared heritage that goes beyond the politics of hate. Aman Ki Asha? One can always hope for peace. And commend the attempt.
 
Links: http://www.pakool.com/featured/aman-ki-asha-a-shot-in-the-dark-bound-to-fail/
http://blogs.hindustantimes.com/separated-at-birth/2010/01/04/aman-ki-asha-marketing-peace-with-pakistan/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4617447.stm

Link: http://www.afaqs.com/perl/advertising/storyboard/index.html?id=3158
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Nothing to say…

Truly. Really. Nothing to say. No words of pontificating wisdom. Nothing.

Its called a writers block, I’m told. It is a malaise that affects the best out there. It comprises sitting in front of the computer, staring at the blank screen, waiting for the words to form in your head that string themselves into a sentence with meaning and finding nothing emerges. Nothing coherent that is. You decide to give up and come back later, and so you do, to find the process rinse and repeat. You read up the newspapers, trying to hunt down something that will pique your interest, that will get your goat, anything that will make you want to comment, say something. Nothing strikes you as worth writing about.

Not even the fact that they are seriously contemplating cloning the woolly mammoth in the near future and you could take your kid and point out the living animal from the Ice Age series he so loves. No matter than said woolly mammoth might need to be transported to the Artic or the Antartic in order to survive, given the heat wave which has us sweating through what is supposed to be winter here. No, that’s not exciting enough. Not even the fact that this might excite them scientist types to get bold enough to start cloning dinosaur DNA and result in a situation where we might soon be reduced to dinosaur fodder, with TRexes roaming our cities, with their sharp teeth glinting in the sunlight.

Not even the fact that a chappie innocently chewing on his naan in London found that the darkened parts of the naan were a xerox of the face of Christ. Can you imagine the horror. This is a true incident, and I quote: Plumber David Howlett, 34, was enjoying his meal at India Dining in Esher, Surrey when he saw Christ like markings on the blackened parts of his bread. The other diners who came to take a look at the bread also found it a bit spooky since it was the twelfth night.

I wonder whether he ate the bread eventually, or whether he carried said naan home and had it framed for posterity. I wonder what a rational person would do if the face of Christ stares at him from a bread. Would he take it as a sign? Did he go forth and multiply? And I wonder if the hand that took the bread out of the tandoor has been suitably venerated.

In the same issue I read about Roxxy the sex robot which kind of makes women redundant. That was a sobering thought. For Rs 3,20,000 odd, any man could say to hell with the nagging, and the fights and the not tonight darling. I wonder when they will come up with the male equivalent of the same.  I’d vote for a male robot who tidies up after himself, has deep and meaningful conversation with me and lets me be in charge of the television remote control.

Be back when I do find something worthwhile to talk about.