tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-94633432008-06-10T19:08:02.705-07:00m.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04528436037850469448noreply@blogger.comBlogger169125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9463343.post-17268991883957034442008-01-30T09:01:00.000-08:002008-02-02T09:11:20.581-08:00

by now, i identify myself as (also) "a housewife and working woman". hmm. okay. so those are 2 roles i play, and usually there's no more of the day left by the time i finish with those two! the "working woman" is less difficult an identity thing to cope with than the housewife bit. its the latter that's been bugging me. how does a housewife define herself? the most banal answer (which also gets

m.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04528436037850469448noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9463343.post-74290706855602516272008-01-16T07:40:00.000-08:002008-01-16T08:08:36.765-08:00

i am currently working on a project for a foreign client. my team has mostly brown people, with a sprinkling of a few white people as well. most are very nice, but one specimen quite often makes me feel murderous. for the ignorant white person who comes to india (aka: why i'm wary of white criticism, aka: how you give other white people a bad name): scenario 1: you come here on work. you work

m.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04528436037850469448noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9463343.post-13497950149970412542008-01-14T08:58:00.000-08:002008-01-14T09:04:40.754-08:00

now that i've access to the internet and a machine to write from again, the biggest impossibilities to blogging have been cleared. plus i am settling into my new work, so i no longer feel creatively dehydrated at the end of a work day - doing this ideas thing 12x6 leaves me mentally exhausted though i love such work. and most importantly, i have been hearing such a lot of privileged trash talk

m.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04528436037850469448noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9463343.post-30875173355219362362007-10-12T01:00:00.000-07:002008-02-02T09:01:37.248-08:00

this morning we were discussing you, my place to scribble where i talk to myself and check if i can word some things, let off steam, think aloud. he spoke of you with finality, though it was i who said that you were dead. but thats untrue. i haven't run out of things to say. i merely haven't yet safely negotiated a space to talk from. - now that there is another person who would be affected by

m.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04528436037850469448noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9463343.post-13791799270293048172007-09-13T01:18:00.000-07:002007-09-13T01:42:53.011-07:00

hi. there's an awful lot happening offline in my life, hence the silence. BUT this is something i came across yesterday: if you haven't already read, heard, discussed, prayed, done something about the jena 6, buck up and start now, because it matters. - m.

m.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04528436037850469448noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9463343.post-30711434835990879952007-09-01T00:09:00.000-07:002007-09-01T00:27:47.888-07:00

i don't know about you folks, but i go totally batshit crazy when i have fever. i start thinking verrry carefully - you know, squinting mentally and really trying hard to be logical - and coming to absolutely ridiculous conclusions. its like being soo close to your needle when you're threading it, that you've your tongue out with concentration and you're breathing heavily and all...but then you

m.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04528436037850469448noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9463343.post-11212099387330438232007-08-06T04:29:00.000-07:002007-08-06T05:05:45.608-07:00

take an old-fashioned feminist who doesn't like the attention that Being Different attracts, and doesn't think non-conformity has to have a high-visibility component. add to that a strong tendency to be a peacenik. i am very, very picky about what ways i will "stand out" from the crowd. while sometimes non-conformity is intelligent and necessary for integrity to one's political beliefs, most

m.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04528436037850469448noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9463343.post-88081012399315785522007-08-03T02:55:00.000-07:002007-08-04T01:57:00.766-07:00

I've been tagged by the eloquent Laurelin for the 8 random things about me meme. So here goes again: 1. i'm emotionally quite impassive a person. i have to sometimes remind myself to show a reaction. 2. i tend to catch myself making the fundamental assumption that if i know it, of course you do. or you should - even i know it! 3. there's no such thing as eating too many vegetables. however,

m.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04528436037850469448noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9463343.post-11390490514968969152007-07-31T04:57:00.000-07:002008-02-02T09:01:37.249-08:00

through college, i kept talking to women who would sooner tell their parents they were going to jail for eternity, than that they had a boyfriend. parents were - and i think for the most part, still are - generally considered a cross between gorgons and medieval purists. this is for them (the women!) and because this troubles me: (before my mildly delayed honeymoon) m : ma, i kept saying i

m.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04528436037850469448noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9463343.post-1412431800918004722007-07-03T20:58:00.000-07:002008-02-02T09:01:37.250-08:00

hello. what have you all been up to? i've been scrubbing, cleaning, washing, ironing, unpacking, sweeping and swabbing. and for relief, i've also been painting and decorating. and making up silly happy songs to sing to myself: hip hip and hurray, i've got me a plumber to fix me drains - out with the slime, the grime and the guck, out with the filth that leaves me drains stuck! hip hip and

m.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04528436037850469448noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9463343.post-59191175338077959192007-06-05T03:26:00.000-07:002008-02-02T09:01:37.250-08:00

hmm. i just deleted what i started with, because i wanted this to be openly personal, and had instead ended up talking from a distance (as usual!). well.... here goes: if a face belongs to my childhood, i cannot categorise it in terms of good-looking or not. you see, i had grown up in a house where i was told that looks didnt matter. and more importantly, anything that ma told me when i was a

m.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04528436037850469448noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9463343.post-42866663103555604552007-04-23T03:26:00.000-07:002007-04-23T06:31:18.786-07:00

i do hope at least a few of you managed to catch oleanna on tv last saturday! i would've put up a reminder or something here, but i too had clean forgotten: i was indulging in one of my rare surfing sprees when i realised which movie it was and watched it (thankfully pretty much from the beginning). for those of you who didnt, the movie is actually an adaptation of a play by mamet. you can read

m.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04528436037850469448noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9463343.post-48252465374760587532007-04-14T10:28:00.000-07:002007-04-14T11:40:21.279-07:00

i chanced upon an edition of that gem of a magazine, India Today. "smart and sassy" said the cover page, showing a young woman. the story was ostensibly about how women are making it big in the corporate world. india today is india's largest english magazine, so i think it's a fairly representative visage for that fuzzy beast called mass media. i want to dissect the representation made by them

m.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04528436037850469448noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9463343.post-14762807349425419242007-03-31T07:36:00.000-07:002007-03-31T08:07:27.367-07:00

friday afternoon entertainment: we come to know that a couple at work is going to be married (to each other) shortly. it's common knowledge also, that they commute to and from work together. it's lunch break and people are eating in little huddles. a colleague (call him Z) stops by the cubicle where pair who are to be wed are lunching, and starts what he fondly imagines to be a polite

m.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04528436037850469448noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9463343.post-87560071313068098372007-03-17T22:42:00.000-07:002007-03-19T09:52:41.337-07:00

a recent hutch advertisement caught my eye. it seems to me a brilliant study in how to perpetuate racist stereotypes, so i'd like to discuss it here. you can almost imagine the ad agency's pitch to the company. "can't sell your product properly? damn natives can't understand english?" or "damn natives too stupid to understand your procedures? spell it out for those brown savvidges". voila. a

m.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04528436037850469448noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9463343.post-23130526118519171082007-03-08T08:41:00.000-08:002007-03-08T09:08:29.376-08:00

today we had a women's day celebration in my office (with the other company that shares our floor). predictably, it was organised by the women, the women dutched in for the lunch and the women alone sat together in the room. (i wonder if the men were murmuring "cheetangol" in another room meanwhile! :D) anyhow. if you think im grumbling about all that, contrary to appearances, im not. i was

m.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04528436037850469448noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9463343.post-69579850084295369432007-02-24T19:32:00.000-08:002007-02-24T19:48:27.795-08:00

one of the main purposes of feminism is to help the community of women come together. the production of knowledge is one of the important aspects of the first world-third world divide, something that also eventually becomes very gendered, making it a critical issue in the third world feminists' agenda. every time i read feminist theory about third world feminism, i invariably find references to

m.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04528436037850469448noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9463343.post-73055574436636267592007-02-23T08:58:00.000-08:002007-03-01T08:40:05.560-08:00

am trying to pin down some basics (as i understand them) as briefly and clearly as poss. please factor in inherent limitations of such a disgusting method of presentation! :D sexuality sexual orientation sexual acts is about attitudes is about emotional & physical responses physical responses for internal self expression may be expressed or

m.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04528436037850469448noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9463343.post-35093428568325169292007-02-16T20:23:00.000-08:002007-02-17T19:40:16.399-08:00

one of the reasons ive been absent here is that i was spending some time talking and learning about some women's issues. mostly, the other people were from women's groups or specific marginalised groups , working on a day-to-day basis with the issues that are especially pertinent to them. as usual, when discussing prostitution, the main discourse used by the prostitutes' rights representatives

m.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04528436037850469448noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9463343.post-57045716673339346232007-01-05T05:09:00.000-08:002007-01-05T05:33:43.884-08:00

thank god for cell phones. before i got one and discovered sms-ing, i used to mutter all this to myself, causing fellow shoppers and shop assistants to shoot me anxious looks and step carefully a few feet away from me. "yes. phone recharged. am trying to pick up a simple lip balm. its turning out to be a consumerist nightmare! do i want glowing skin along the way? glossy hair as opposed to thick

m.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04528436037850469448noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9463343.post-6909135431944088462006-12-31T11:30:00.000-08:002006-12-30T19:04:36.476-08:00

no i'm not drunk, i've just been clicking through the rajasthan forestry department site. they show you dazzling pictures of the animals you can see in the forests of rajasthan. the gallery starts the list with a breathless "tiger"-"tiger"-"tiger" and then charms you with these: hoopoo spotted dear sloth beer* flying squirals *would the drunken bums we'll see collapsed on the roads today

m.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04528436037850469448noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9463343.post-48819323026387491732006-12-29T19:31:00.000-08:002006-12-30T02:23:11.749-08:00

the yearly quota of two tags is about to be completed. evidently ive been tagged by vivek, whom i do not know - and who, i imagine, cannot possibly know me personally if he's a techie! :D in case you experienced a burning desire to know 5 inane things about me, 'ere you go: 1. i love bitter chocolate. it gives me shudders of delight. almost nothing in the world can depress me to the extent

m.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04528436037850469448noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9463343.post-75789148281858855582006-12-28T05:51:00.000-08:002006-12-28T06:23:10.010-08:00

its about lingual politics again folks - some stuff ive found about the vagina - the word "vagina" adopted from latin originally meant "sword sheath" or "scabbard". upholding the frameword, the word "clitoris" is from the greek kleiein which means "to sheathe" or "to shut". the noun form kleis means a key, latch or hook. i suppose it was inevitable that sooner or later we'd have the

m.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04528436037850469448noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9463343.post-52502022639536945302006-12-21T05:24:00.000-08:002006-12-21T05:53:05.703-08:00

i think one of the nicest things about the eastern cultures, is the way they show how one can use cloth for self expression - from sensuousness to businesslike sharpness. with mass media extolling minimalistic (or a lack of) clothing as the only way of making a statement or expressing an attitude, this photograph is such a terrific case for the other side! its supposed to have won a photo of the

m.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04528436037850469448noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9463343.post-1166103341119596522006-12-14T05:31:00.000-08:002006-12-19T19:48:26.643-08:00

this is what ive been listening to and chuckling over since december 14th, when sanketh first sent it to me. pliss to check this link out: its brilliant!!

m.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04528436037850469448noreply@blogger.com