Teeth that Sparkle!

Someone gave me a compliment today. My day was made. It's a compliment I've received many times before but it had been sometime now. Someone told me today that I had very cute teeth!

I have very crooked teeth but when I smile, they brighten up and some people like that.

Just like this blog. It may not be perfect but I would like to believe that sometimes, somewhere it's making someone smile.

And so, Teeth that Sparkle.


P.S. It's been 5 years since I've been blogging. Much has changed in these 5 years. I've never targeted any particular audience. I never commented on other blogs to get comments on mine. I've never been consistent in expressing my views. From funny to depressing, from boring to intriguing, from poetic to random, the posts have been varied. It's been more of a personal development space rather than a public forum. I've become more expressive in person and it shows on my blog. I'm glad that I can share everything with the world. I'm glad that nothing is a big deal. I'm glad that I don't care anymore if the cameraman wants me to smile with my teeth in or teeth out! 


Thankyou, dear Blogger, for sparkling my life with a very crooked but immensely cute teeth!

Cocktail ...bitter tale!

Being disappointed with Hindi cinema I had stopped going to the theatre. Then came Cocktail, looking fresh with pretty girls, stunning locations, and well, hummable songs. If you watch the movie from entertainment point of you, you would probably not be disappointed. But it hurts at many other levels.

Veronica (Deepika Padukone) is a 'bad' girl. She drinks, goes to pubs, wears skimpy clothes and sleeps with random men. Her parents have probably abandoned her with oodles of money. She has no purpose in life. Enter Meera (Diana Penty) - a timid girl abandoned by her husband on the streets of London with no where to go. This Salwar Kurta clad damsel meets Veronica in a drug store and accepts her invitation to stay with her.
As fate would have it, they become best friends and Meera shows off her petite figure with much ease. No, she doesn't start drinking and sleeping with random men. Why she didn't take the other 'bad' girl traits from Veronica is a mystery.

Saif plays the charmless casanova. His and Veronica's is the perfect jodi. For kahaani mein twist, Saif tells Meera how she's adorable and how she will meet a man who will never leave her side. And that was it. He becomes a good guy who falls in love with Meera and she reciprocates. This good girl becomes hungry-for-love-backstabbing bitch!
Veronica also realises how her life is vain and how she needs a house and a husband to pamper her. Ok, hungry-for-love-sati-savitri. Meera leaves Saif for her best friend Veronica. Veronica does everything to gain Saif's love. But obviously Saif wants what he cannot have - Meera.

Anyway, the story is not important. I wanted to see a liberated woman, who she is, till the climax of the film. I didn't want her to change for a typical Indian man with double standards. Why is a girl who is 'bold' termed 'bad' and a girl who isn't loyal to her friend termed 'good'? Why are 'shorts' bad and 'salwar kurta' good? If I don't pray, can't cook or can't impress the mother-in-law, I'm not suitable for a boy? Saif's mom Dimple tells Veronica, 'tum ladki achi ho, par kapde bahut chote pehenti ho'. Disgusting!

Bollywood is an important medium of showing the world what India is. Heck, it is an important medium of showing who we are to our own countrymen and mother-in-laws. Indian girls are not who they were 50 years ago. We have changed, for our own good. Clothes and alcohol certainly don't define us. According to the media, we take home the good girls and we play with the bad ones.Why? I don't even think that this is entirely true. We can't blame the Guwahati men if we accept this movie with open arms. Afterall, the girl was drinking and probably not dressed in Salwar Kurta - she was indeed a 'bad' girl. Ofcourse they had no right to judge her and ill-treat her, but it's our moral responsibility to show her the 'right' path.

We need writers, movie makers, journalists, to tell these men how wrong they are. Movies like Cocktail will do no good to our scarred society. For heaven's sake, don't watch it.

The World has ended.

2012 was rightly predicted as the end of the world. Let us not wait for earthquakes or droughts; the end of mankind has already happened. It happened right in front of our eyes, in Guwahati, in full public view, when a mob of 20 molested a girl.

People watched, made videos and looked at the horrendous act in glee. Did you watch the whole thing on TV or researched for it on You Tube? Congratulations, you are one of the reasons mankind has ended. Did you forward the picture of the absconding bastards? No? Well done. You are one of those who would mock the world for its atrocious deeds and do nothing about it.  

I’m not a Hero either. By blogging about it I’m not doing anyone a favour. Being a woman I have been touched by disgusting men. I cried myself to sleep and didn’t do anything about it. I’m sure you or your mother,sister, wife or daughter has been ill-treated in one way or the other. We should have known that  by keeping mum we are preparing for our own doom. We should have judged the end of mankind then. 

If you and me who are not doing enough, the thousands who live in Guwahati sharing a neighbourhood with these men are turning a blind eye, the Police who is not able to catch the culprits with possibly all the clues and the Indian Government who is not taking this matter more seriously than the falling rupee and their candidate for the next, useless, Vice President, then isn’t this the end of Mankind?

I feel so small, so ashamed that I share the air with people who objectify women. I feel ashamed to know that half the population will blame the woman, you know, usne bhi kuch kiya hoga tabhi to uske saath aisa hua. I feel disgraced that people will thrash up a man for accidentally hitting a car but stay put when he touches a woman. I feel sad; deeply disheartened  that the Mankind has ended.