at last

the Government of India has not only paid lip service of taking responsibility for the horrors that Mumbai went through, but is also re-manning its key posts.
the Home Minister has gone, at last, replaced by the erstwhile Finance Minister, someone known for his 'will do' attitude.
the National Security Advisor has also put in his papers...
at the State level, why should the entire Government be not given marching orders? R R Patil's comments on the tragedy is now history... only if he lost one hair, i am sure, his tone would have been different... and with what authority is he talking about not putting in resignations? we need to invent some adjectives to describe his ilk...
hopefully, we will see a more responsible, tough guys in charge...

and the media too, after being reminded by an eminent film-maker, have now started talking about the people who were affected at VT Station... better late than never...

we just are a patient race, and believe in giving endless chances... is that to cover for our own inaction?

Mumbai, we are with you

the purpose of writing is is not to add anything to what has been going on now for the past 40 hours, the longest duration terror which has struck India and Indian sovereignity.
as usual, the victims are people who did not choose what has happened to them. first time of course, terror has struck the wealthy, though that is by no means any justification of what the terrorists have done.
one common logic that the media (the audio-visual) has been giving is: Mumbai with its resilience will bounce back to normalcy, as it had done post 1993 when the Stock Exchange, the Air India building, and countless other locations were blasted. then happened the 2006 July blast.
and for once, i could not agree more with Shobha De, who left-right-centre blacklisted all the politicians... true, the security expenses of the State exchequer that goes to keep these politicians safe is totally mis-spent. instead more money should be spent in the security of common people.
the role of the media in this entire coverage is not beyond question. while it is for them that the world gets to know what is happening moment to moment, questions remain on the way the coverage is being done. first and foremost, why show these things live? are we not giving banal criminals a place they do not deserve? second, why should top ranking (hierarchically) reporters fly from Delhi to cover in Mumbai, when there are local staff, well trained ones who are there? yes, i am referring to Barkha Dutt.
next is the issue of intelligence. when these terrorists came by boats, what were the Indian Coast Guards doing? and mind you, the Coast Guards are right across the Taj. If one sees a global pattern in what is happening, security in hotels need to be tightened.
what is confusing is: should the cops been more rash and stormed in? obviously, they feared for civilian lives. but what price are we paying for being patient, now that there is news of fresh encounters?
how long more will this whole fiasco last?

is expression the whole of love?

nope... or so i thought.
love is something which is to be understood, felt and cherished, silently, in privacy... this is what my socialisation was all about... my natal family never believed in love which was shown... so bro and i had one of the most down-to-earth upbringings... public hugs and kisses were taboo, nay i do not think, it ever crossed our parents' minds.
privately also, when just with their children, the only expression of affection i recall from Dad was in a coy, but broad smile and softening of his small eyes, behind his glasses. Mom also, now i feel, was too serious in her responsibilites as a homemaker and a mother, so much so that she did not remember to show either of us any affection, except on our birthdays, when she hugged us tight and blessed us.
with this notion of love, i stepped out into a world of my own, with B, 17+ years back.
my marital family belongs to two schools of thought on love. my DIL is a strict Dad, no-love-to-be-shown school. MIL, on the contary, is very expressive with hers for her children and grandchildren, and since her elder son possibly expected a replication of some, if not all traits, of hers in his bi(e)tter half, he got a rude shock, initially.
i was never (and still am not) a hugging, kissing kind, something which if you know me well, you would have known. i hate showing emotions publicly. in that, i strictly carry the torch of my parents.
my love is in the deeds i do... if i feel warmly for a person, it will be evident in my dealings with that person; contrarily, if i feel cold towards someone, i will show it, though, i feel, over time, the latter has mellowed.
today, i tried to rewrite the love-not-to-shown rule about myself... being B's birthday, i decided i will show off my **** for him... so i did cook some things he likes... and who noticed the difference first? not B, who went about the morning like any other Friday, but R, whose big eyes turned bigger... she ran to her Dad and both came together to the kitchen...
B just gave a stingy half-inch smile... i think i have infected him with my love-not-to-be shown bug, but R gave me a hug and tonnes of kisses.
i will try to do this more often, let's see if i can...

flexi hours and we

i have to write this, since i practise it and have all along advocated it... switched jobs in a jiffy, just so that i could work on my terms, not in anything else, but time. i have always felt that i need to decide my work timings, i need to be in command, though i would leave the targets to my employers... so i have always given the logic: you give me the target and the timeframe; let me decide how i want to work around it. and i am, if necessary, available online 24x7 (sounds marketing cliche, i know, though i am not an expert marketeer in any case)
what she says is true and i agree wholeheartedly.
yes, it is a fact that at the end of a tiring day, we feel a little conned... but what else is the go between fixed hours (which may or may not suit us, mothers and homemakers, who take those roles equally seriously), stiff targets and managing our times (which in essence is linked to the timimgs of our children, our spouses, our cooks, et al)?
i have experimented a lot in this domain. i have held jobs, cushy ones, but which required my presence at office for 12 hours. while it suited me fine when we were DINKS (double income no kids) and we were that for a good five years after marriage, once R came along, i was no longer ready to do it... started my working from home, started my poring over proofs at midninght in between feeds and comforting a cranky child...
the result -- i quit with a golden handshake.

get into another job, specifying clearly that i would be available only between 10 am and 6 pm... the result, i was unable to attend most meetings which were deliberately fixed after 5 pm, to suit the decision-making men in the company (i happened to be the only lady supposed to be attending those meetings)...
the result -- i quit again, moving cities, with B's new job...

the next stint, very rewarding in terms of the things i learnt on the job, but killing since most work started flowing late in the evening, after a full day at work, since i left on time and the refrain was, "you will do it, we know.".
the result -- quit yet again, this time with B's transfer to a new city.

yet another stint starts... again i specify that i am available only on fixed hours of the day, while delivering all the work on time... but the men i work with refuse to understand that while working in a team, there have to be some priorities fixed according to the lady member as well.
the result -- quit to leave the country, with B again.

sit at home for a six months, determined never to look around for a job, but is that possible with me? nope...
find writing work, strictly specifying that i am available only in the mornings...
this arrangement continues, but R has grown up, she can manage herself to an extent, though bouts of being ignored, periods of attention deficit happens. and her quote of the week is, "you love the comp more than you love me."... so to deal with that, i am hugging her tight, but a part of my mind is on the Cover Story i am supposed to put in today...

to be honest, however, i am largely satisfied with flexi hours. yes, there are taxing times. yes, we do tend to work more. yes, i too feel over-worked and over-taxed (i am working all weekends, in the evenings, sometimes in the nights), but i call the shots when it comes to my time, my home, despite minor adjustments, carried on fine. that, however, is possible because of the fantastic team i am a part of. most of us are women who have children, some are expecting... but we are pulling it off... with perfect understanding, perfect poise and balance, much to the chagrin of many.

my time obsession

this is one strong obsession i have and try as i have might, i have not been able to change it... it is in my upbringing. Mom and Dad always insisted for both of us that if we had to be in a place at a particular time, we had to be before time.
now in our respective professional lives, bro and I are misfits in some cases, correct in some others.
in 99 out of 100 cases (why not 100, i will explain down), we are correct... so in many conferences, i show up just a while after the organisers, while the other journos are either caught in traffic or in some other assignment.
today, when i called up Georgetown University at the nick of 1 pm, the time they are supposed to open and could renew my books, i was thrilled...someone is really following the clock, i mused.
and i insist the same with cab drivers, with R, B of course... and when a colleague who came home one evening and narrated the harangues i had with cabbies, B was cool and replied, "if city cabbies have such a tough time, you can imagine my plight."
but when i was five minutes delayed in a meeting this week, because of traffic (and the fact that in flat 40 minutes, i had to run to the pharmacy for R who came home with fever and B was in a meeting, not to be disturbed) and received a little less than double-didgit calls in exactly 30 minutes, my heart broke on two counts: one, i had done what i hate others do, make people wait; two, i had missed the record of being the super hyper human on the planet.
while i will take care about the first and will try harder to be before time in any meeting, be it an oil & gas conference that i am covering or a luxury house which is opening a new outlet, i am not sure what i can do for the latter. may be, in my next life, i will write for my own magazine, till then will have to grin and bear.

wilful exclusion???

yes, certainly. if after being in the region for four years, one just does not know the language, s/he deserves to be excluded.
after many conferences, meetings that address only the Arab media, leaving the English out just as one would treat furniture or flower pots, i have vowed to learn the language... but have not moved my little finger... so i deserve to be left out.
yesterday, one more conference at the soon-to-be-opened Museaum of Islamic Art, one more instance of reminding the likes of me that we were just present, but did not count...
it started right at the entry, where the security took away my ID card (for many of us, that card represents us, a number with a photograph), handed a Visitor Pass... i hung on to that piece of paper and after getting stuck in at least four different points of security check, landed at the venue, which had been shifted from where i knew it was being held...
for once, in a long long while, i felt i was on foreign soil... there were none who spoke English... every soul was Arabic speaking, so all my desperate efforts at communicating were falling on deaf ears, with a small, staccato phrase, "mafi english."
to top it all, the security who was escorting me from one wing of the huge building to the other, thought i looked like some Chinese or Japanese...
ok, i thought... may be...
but while at the Conference, it was painful to be excluded... messages were only being translated on request... but the speakers could not only speak English, they were good at it... and that was evident when a prominent TV journo insisted to speak in English since her channel is telecast in many English speaking countries.
so where do we, who represent just the local circulating press, stand? any idea???

do i have quirks?

yes, it is an endless list... and as this colleague says, there cannot be universal quirks... what is quirky for one, could seem perfectly normal in the other...
here are mine:

1. my addiction for music... some tunes, some songs give me a high, so much so that i go on tuning them on, to the point that i loathe them after a point of time. while writing this too, i am on an old ABBA number.
2. my love for wine... the idea of being high on wine excites me more than the actual wine since i tend to fall asleep after a while.
3. i still smell R though she is almost a teen. i still ask her who she loves the most, in the fond hope that she takes my name, though she studiously avoids giving an answer.
4. i cannot sleep without a book beside my pillow. it could be just be a para that i read while in bed, but the book has to sleep with me.
5. i enjoy one person's company the most, apart from B: myself and can spend hours with just her.
6. remember the birthdays, anniversaries, the kids' birthdays of all in the wider family, including first cousins and silently expect that they reciprocate mine, knowing fully well that they will not.
7. expect that B will wake up early and make me cup of steaming tea in bed.
8. i love to sleep and sleep and sleep.