deviousways

Well, that was my original title for this piece that was published in The Hindu Sunday Magazine in December 2014 :) What does it take to embrace your grey hair in an age when selfies reign supreme, where brunch is often a botox break and dress size is as much a status symbol as an Hermès Birkin? A growing tribe of women--in their 30s, 40s and 50s, all confident and yes, succesful at what they do, show you can scoff at this collective obsession with superficiality. And make going grey, a matter of pride. Binaifer Bharucha (36) in fact, recently proved greys can be downright glamorous too. The freelance photographer from Mumbai is one of five women appearing in the April 2014 issue of Elle India fashion magazine in a photo feature celebrating grey hair. Bharucha started greying in school.  “Now it is a part of my personality. I have short hair, so it looks pretty funky and individualistic. Total strangers often ask why I look young and still have so much grey hair,” she laughed. R...

How to forgive, forget and, live a freer life What does it take to let go of prejudices, pressures or personal loss? How do you break free of bitterness for better things? And would you rather risk all, or rest on your laurels? Well if you haven't yet, start now, because forgiving those who hurt you and freeing yourself from fears or flawed feelings, can leave you healthier, happier. What you need to do is learn how to forgive, move on and grow on. But first, how do you learn to forgive? Dr Fred Luskin, a Senior Consultant in Health Promotion at Stanford University and a Professor at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, is the go-to man for that. Dr Luskin is globally acclaimed for his work as the Director of the Stanford Forgiveness Projects--an ongoing series of workshops and research projects that investigate the effectiveness of his forgiveness methods on a variety of populations. According to Dr Luskin, very few people actually choose to forgive when people hurt them...

Last night, big man and I stayed up till 3 am to watch the Argentina-Netherlands football match. And before we slept, he and I had a brief conversation. "Let him bunk school," said he. "No, I don't want him to miss school, when he is perfectly well and able," insisted me. Naturally, I woke up to regret that. Got out of bed fuzzy, woolly-headed and utterly disoriented. But also filled with what-a-worthy-mom-am-I pride. I'd had barely three hours of sleep, after all. And there I was doing my best to ensure that my child went to school well-fed, healthy and on time. What an amazing parent I was being, I told myself. Then sitting in the loo, trying to shake the cloudiness from my head, I hear a tinny voice reciting numbers. It's Ayush, our security man Naveen Bahadur's four-year-old. Naveen, his wife Nirmala, Ayush and their new baby boy live in a room in our building basement. And since our flat is a ground floor one, we hear practically everythin...

Godliness... ... not next to cleanliness There's a road very close to my home, which thousands of commuters use every day. As roads go by it is nothing special, not extra wide or four-laned or nicely tarred, even. It's just a linking road, a few hundred metres in length. A redeveloped slum dominates one end of it; at the other, are some indistinguishable homes, a few small businesses and the local Bescom office. Pedestrians invariably have a tough time navigating this road, especially the part that goes past the slum. For there is always traffic whizzing past, children playing about, running helter skelter unmindful of the vehicles rushing past, and worse, you cannot help but gag at the amount of garbage strewn on the road. In short, it is very much like many other roads across Bengaluru. At the same time, this road is the perfect example of how piety scores over both poverty and priorities. There are three shrines on this short stretch of tarmac (there's a ...

A sign I found on a private property on Spencer Road The sign says it all: A bungalow in the Cantonment area in Bengaluru The quaint names, the tree-lined streets, the quiet roads and most important, the bungalows make the Cantonment area, a sure-shot target for real estate 'developers'. My husband and I moved here ten years ago because of this old world charm--we loved the serene areas in and around Cooke Town, the streets adjoining Mosque Road, the hidden gems around Richards Park. But now standalone homes, of every size, from stately bungalows to matchbox-shaped houses, are morphing into apartment buildings. And the end result is a sandwiched existence. Take Davis Road for instance, where I live. Our building is a co-development project, a pact between the original owner and a builder (thankfully, the original structure was not a bungalow). Over the years, more co-development apartments have sprung up around us. In fact, now the buildings are so cl...