To Keep It All Straight

While Jeffrey Archer can cut a long story short, expect people especially the ladies, an eight out of ten to do that with their hair as well, heehaw! If you were to ask the experts in the field, the 'trichologists' for the type of hair people wish for- straight hair would top their list. Now that is not in everyone's hand, on the head to be exact. All this desire and discussion therefore. Rapunzel was fortunate enough.She was spared the heat of iron and the froth of chemicals that all the hair of today bears with. On the straighter side, let us think of her problem too.Once if you have it how do you maintain it that way tell me.Very tough! All you folks out there who have had it will agree what  circus you feel you are in. Some are just born with straight hair while some of us desperately do everything for it. Apart from the banana shakes,vinegar,press boxes and the road rollers you wish your hair was underneath let us look at the other straight things that may inspire :

STRAIGHT ROAD...

Just in case if you find one in India, apart from the few in the big cities and you are able to travel in the traffic without your hair stand upright kudos, maybe you can afford to have all the time for getting that straight hair.Time is important firstly, give your hair that first.

STRAIGHT DRIVE...

The little master may have retired from the one dayers, but have you seen him play the straight drive? Right past the bowlers enough to make their hair stand up. It is all about Plan and Precision. Who better than him to teach that. Knowing whether the straight hair suits you, if it does are you ready to go through the ordeal without cursing yourself after you get it, that's an issue too.

STRAIGHT FALL...

I had read about the liquid luck Felix Felicis , a potion in the Harry Potter books, but sometimes the reality around amazes us more than the fantasies. What else can you expect out of someonw who has it in his name. Jump from a record altitude with the greatest free fall velocity twenty four miles towards earth like how Felix Baumgartner did, automatically your hair will stand straight up, well even the rest of the world's. All you need is More than Impulse.

STRAIGHT LINE...

y=mx+c

STRAIGHT HAIR = DESIRE X EFFORT + GENES

I was not much into math anytime but never failed to learn all the good from it. A straight line is made up of infinite points, so is our hair of molecules. And they say a hair cut does not pain, it does in a different way though. The Desire to have straight hair needs two important things for a complete equation. Your effort as much as your genetic fortune. The Inheritance of loss hair is an important factor.

STRAIGHT MEN...

Ironically in today's times these are people who women and men alike will fear of. Remember all straight things aren't good always. So if you cannot have straight hair There is nothing to lose, as long as we all are people with a straight conscience.

STRAIGHT BACK...

Okay, this is worse than having a hunch back. It is a matter of health where everything is almost wrong. Given the current scenario of our living it is easier to get this than the perfect straight hair. All you have to do is sit in the cubicle or your office room on the chair for hours together and then at the parlour for a few more. Just remember some things look worse when they are straight. Maybe the hair too. Accept it if something turns horrible after you try enough.

STRAIGHT TALK...

You can sit on the other side of the experts and Inquire all that you want like Karan Thapar does in his show Devil's advocate, because knowing what is it about your hair that makes it the way it is, is as necessary as getting the process right. Never get something done which would make you feel a bald head was better at the end of it all.

STRAIGHT FACE...

 No comments on someone who has been Straight enough.

STRAIGHT TOWER...

Of Pisa sounds impossible. But yeah even that leaning and tall wonder of the world could be straightened to some extent. It took them a painstaking twenty years. You may not need so much for the hair, what you would need would be a good diet of proteins, minerals and vitamins to Cement its roots because that needs to be Bloody Strong, and a good hair stylist with Magic Hands to reconstruct its architecture, so that you can shine under the sun like silk :-)

When there is so much straightness around us in this world. If not people work for it for a reason or the other, in a way or the other isn't it wit and will on our part to learn from them? Straight is good, straight is clean, straight is neat but remember straight is not always everything.

-R.

PS: This post is a part of The Straight Hair Experiment by Sunsilk & Indiblogger,  You can read the other craziest, wackiest, wildest experimental ideas here

Men Of The Country

If we are men of the country
On the ground, on our feet
Respecting the life
Of others as much as ours
Knowing the wrong
As much as the right
Safe in each other's arm
True in each other's eye
We would never be
Frail and feeble
Blaming the law
Mocking the leader
Letting our conscience sleep
Watching a wound cut so deep
And then wait for a chance
To tremble with the quake
To nail it to the wall
A picture not of that brave
But our heads down in shame
Knowing not the name
Walking with candles
Which last for more
More than our rage and grief
Therefore, only therefore
We come to fight
Together for a change
In a fear so obvious
For one fateful tomorrow
It could be you
It could be me
A slap is this one
Tight on our face
The one of morality
The one of justice
Which never shows itself
And hides behind our creed
Until someone is lost
To insanity, to cruelty
More than to death
What we are raped and ripped off
A very long long ago
Is what should dawn upon us
To change and deal
To care and feel
If we are men of the country

-R

The Real Crime

Pic Courtesy

  
Adharmabhibhavat krsna
pradusyanti kula-striyah
strisu dustasu varsneya
jayate varna-sankarah II

cH 1: 40 of The Bhagvad Gita

We are what we always were.There is no second thought that we pray all goddesses with every ounce of divinity. But at the same time the societal status of women is still a grey area for reform right from the age this issue has a mention in our scriptures. If you were to read the Gita you will know what I am speaking about. While in Chapter One itself Arjuna in all his dilemma to fight the battle tells this to Lord Krishna " When irreligion is prominent in the family the women of the family become corrupt and from the degradation of womanhood come unwanted children", well somehow we do end up blaming the women folk in a way or the other. We look at them as the more subdued and weaker gender. Women are portrayed to be what they actually better be not. Delhi our capital, or call it the rape capital, back then called Indraprastha is a hideous example. It all began a very long way ago, be it Draupadi being draped off or Sita getting kidnapped. And then the heroes had to step in. Sadly today's women are living in a worse time, having to go through a similar ordeal in the most beastly manner. There are no heroes mind you, only rapists.

My father has been telling me this over and over the past couple of days " Remember when we were in Delhi last month you wanted to travel around the city all alone, thank heaven I did not let you". And all I tell him is just this " That girl was with a man she knew too, she was not alone" and that kind of shuts him up. He knows what I tell makes sense but then the hysteric fear does not stop him from thinking so. On an admitting note I am glad that I am back safe from that place. At the same time this reality is very unsettling, the very fact that being a twenty five year old female, an Indian one that too I was not comfortable walking on the streets of the national capital even before the incident. Such is the repute of our towns and cities. Who would call this freedom ? Back home here in my town it isn't any different. I still do sit at the edge of the auto seat in case I have to throw myself out if the situation demands, a guy friend still does ask me if I need a drop back home past seven pm even if I think it is not necessary and my mother still does call me up every four hours a day. The fear is but rational. However brave or independent we think of ourselves yes all you ladies out there, the pepper sprays do fail. For our action or inaction is all about our psyche which is inadequate if not so, only indifferent.

Where do we head for a solution? Talk about it? Hold protests? Demand new laws? Or just go shivering over it and pity the lady and curse the offenders? "Hang them, castrate them" are unanimous opinions, as impulsive as it should definitely get. How balanced and justified is our response though, even this punishment is far away from enough. The law takes its own long course, fast track or otherwise. But how do we assure ourselves that a woman can walk down the road without being eve teased, taunted, elbowed, pinched or as a matter of fact even visually raped ? Restricting freedom in the name of safety and protection is what we do ultimately, do we have a choice not to do so and work on something else? Yes we do.

Before this happens again and again, let us promise ourselves that boys and girls are treated equally at home right from the womb. Each individual shall be given the upbringing needed and deserved, taught to respect another human irrespective of their gender. Responsibilities and rights are not just lists memorized back at school in civics classes. The constitution should be lived by every word. Loopholes in the law are to be dealt with and not to be picked up to escape guilt. Changes are to be made when it is the most needed like right now. Most importantly we must remember that there is a wide spectrum of women in our country, from a flower vendor on the road, a college goer who travels by the local transport, a school girl dropped by the rickshaw wallah, a teacher in school, a mother back at home, a garment factory worker, a nurse in the hospital, a top grad executive, a politician in the parliament, an actress onscreen, an old lady walking in the park or a little girl in the cradle- each one of them deserves safety. Lest femininity soon will feel like a sin which would be our real crime and for that we cannot forgive ourselves.

- Rajgat at Delhi were The Father of Our Nation rests is surrounded by small walls were his preachings and beliefs are engraved, you can read them if you care to take a walk around the place. I found this in one such. 'Sanmathi' - good thinking is all what we need to act. Our karma is such that these thoughts are only on the walls, walls in Delhi, walls of the villages, walls around our mind -

-R

14 Hours - Book Review

       "Terror is when someone other than God decides when you are going to die"

When the attacks in Mumbai happened, the incident was what we were glued to on the television, read in the newspaper, discussed it everywhere possible and then forgot. But for the ones who had to face it one on one, I thought about it back then and read one such today. Thanks to Blogadda's Book Review.

The book was a quick read, but I only wished with every line that this never happened. Writing fiction is like giving wings to your imagination, but writing reality is like tying it all down. The latter is more tough especially with issues such as these. The details of the fateful day from an another perspective, a closer one in fact are portrayed in every page. What was for us people to see when it happened was just made more safe. To put it onto paper, such experience firstly commendable. The flow and choice of words, the descriptions and comparisons, the conceptions especially the ' No shift down South because I do not like South Indian food' well those are some flip flops you cannot ignore if you are the kinds who thinks there is more to India than north, south, east and west. You know what makes us easy targets? Our weak ideologies at all levels, from governance to law to daily living, not the lack of safety or strength.

"It is not about smile. It is about heartbeats" this was told to the author and his team when they were planning the strategy for evacuation. How much more right they could get, if every person has this thing in mind none of us will have to fear a stranger with a gun on our chest every time we walk on the road. It is one thing to have a bullet brush through your pant and have a big hole as one of the author's colleague says in the book, the other thing is to have a bullet hit straight on your forehead and have a big hole there. The hole is what matters, the bullet is just the same. Unfortunately some who know this use it for all their sins. 

 Usually when a book is readable, I wish the author comes up with something more. I seriously wish the contrary for this one for reasons we all know. Who would want to write about it in the first place, and who would want to read about it if not for the curiosity which gets more than concern? Before all that, who would want to face terror. Would you?

-R

P.S : This review is a part of the Book Review Programme at www.blogadda.com Participate now to get free books.

None For The Master, None For The Mane

Kiara sat beside him. He was sitting watching the sunset, his favorite pastime. This is what he usually did after a hard day. There was an unfazed calmness about him. On occasions such as this out of curiosity she thought does he even care a hoot about himself let alone about the thing on his face. She knew it was difficult to ask him as in why he had them there. It made him look different, look what he was in fact. It always grew like there was no tomorrow because of which getting close to him was like getting lost in the forest. He was unapproachable because of his composure firstly, and then there were these little prickly pears on his face. How she wished they were out, but then without it would he be what he is right now, well that was her worry.

Today therefore ask she did "Why do you have them?"

"Because I should" he replied. She had to agree.

"Can't you ever do without it?"she added.

"Why should I?" he asked back.

Men will be men she thought but Kiara being brought up by her mother did exactly what she would. She did not give up. Women will be women too. She stared at him, you know that kind of look, and said nothing more. He smiled, she did not. She walked away and sat at a distance. Well that was enough.

After a while when their ego clouds settled down, he came towards her and whispered "Kiara, what is your problem with my stubble, it makes me look like a king after all ?" He was an unkempt one at times, but nothing apart from strong and handsome. Kiara gave him a grump because she knew that, she turned and said "Dad do you know something more, it hurts to give you a good night kiss unlike when I give it to Mom, it really does but am kind of used to it so it is okay, really okay" and gave him a peck with her modest innocence. He shrugged and said " Oh if that's the case...none for the master, none for his mane, anything for his little girl who rules him more than he does his lane..I will do something about it" He wished he could.

Picture Courtesy

The father of a daughter is nothing but a high-class hostage. A father turns a stony face to his sons, berates them, shakes his antlers, paws the ground, snorts, runs them off into the underbrush, but when his daughter puts her arm over his shoulder and says, ‘Daddy, I need to ask you something,’ he is a pat of butter in a hot frying pan.”

-Garrison Keillor-

If you were try what Kiara did on the brother, the boyfriend, the husband or the friend, I guess this "I am really okay" is a not so okay plan. Mind you only the father. Only he will give you all the love that you need before you crave, even without he craving for it;-)




PS 1: What do you do when your blog has had more than 100000 page viewers :-)

PS 2: This post is a part of the 'Shave or Crave' movement in association with BlogAdda.com

The Fall

Bare and bereft

More than our land

We keep our conscience

With which we live

Fighting and fencing

The ground under our feet

Saving not a twig or leaf

We eye them all

Swallow and swill

In the name of need

For our deed of greed

On one last day

Under our own oblivion

Not slow but soon

Only the last tree

Shall stand tall

With all its green

In pride, in preen

While the last man

Amongst us shall fall
In life more than death

For what we all have been

-R-

PS 1: 300 is an awesome number is what I realized with this post :-)

PS 2:  This poem is a part of Write Over the Weekend, an initiative for Indian Bloggers by BlogAdda

The Window

A light does fall

Equally on all

Through the window

If kept open and clean

If held strong and safe

A love does call

Equally to all

Through this life

If kept happy and simple

If held nice and good

All we need to do

Is remember and value

for it comes from God

The light, the love

And everything else

-R-

The Traveller

“Ouagadougou” is not what you shout when a dog bites you, did you know it is some town you can visit in Africa. I came to know about this recently when another fact sank in. The world map is synonymous with geography, and monuments apparently with history. Subjects in high school and my favourites that too. Somehow it all stopped there. Science ate me up, if that is to be considered as a plausible excuse.  Most of you may have one.  Remember the old saying “Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it” in this case we ruin it. If it was just about graffiti and litter something could be done, it is the lack of knowing about such things that is more bothering and contributes to all the dilapidation that we create.

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We will throw all the money to have our treks or see all our historical architectures but will never try to know about or understand that there is more to nature or a heritage site after all. The skyscrapers and flyovers make our world. And expeditions elsewhere happen when there is this feeling” I need a break” Eight out of ten pack our bags from home with this in the head, more than for the love towards a place. To top it all conservation and preservation are some small dressings on our self inflicted wounds. Some do it but greater responsibility does not come only with awareness, if that was the case everyone would. 

All this I heard from an old man I met at the Qutub, while everyone was busy going awe and trying to fit the tall tower in one frame, he was in a corner sitting cross legged on a stone with hands under his chin observing us all. The sweet oddity in his posture and my interest in it led to our conversation. He told me much about the place that no guide would. I was glad that I did not walk away from this talkative stranger the moment he started it all off. For once I found someone who made some sense in a crowd.

Life goes on in a way that we eagerly are waiting for the twenty first of this month. Such is the quality of curiosity that fuels our ideologies. The end by the way followed the beginning long ago. ‘As slow as possible’ as John Cage’s piece is on. 2640 is when that music shall end or so it is said. We have enough kindness on us as a matter of fact, more than what we deserve. And still we say there are seven wonders in this world, there is more to it. If you can survive in them more than just see them I guess that is what will make the tourist in us a traveller.

-R.