Random thought

Watching the agility with which my 6-year-old cousin uses a digital camera made me wonder- do we reveal our professional paths in our childhood? My mom tells me I was a restless child who would only stay still if she gave me a magazine or something to browse through. And this is much before I learned to read. My younger sister on the other hand, preferred styling Barbie dolls over reading. She is a fashion designer. Another friend who loved to pull toys apart but only to put them back together is an engineer.


So I wonder if my adorable, youngest cousin and her creative photography (she has clicked her father's nostrils while he was asleep among other thing:)- I wonder if this is just a childish fascination with a camera or something more?


Here's a pic of her in action..

Myth or Fact?

I had an interesting conversation with a guy friend a couple of days back; he claimed that no man is satisfied with just one woman.

Is that true??

Word Play

Since I injured my right hand yesterday (blame it on a light door and a strong gust of wind) I've been trying to type with my left hand, and slowly getting better and faster at it. Tedious though. Note to self: become ambidextrous as soon as right hand is back in action.

I've also been using more shortforms than I usually do, in emails and while scrapping, although I try and avoid them usually. But I refuse to use some of this new-fangled language that the internet has given rise too. Some pet peeves:

* It's Could, not cud. Cud reminds me of a cow.

* Would, not wud. Please, lets not lose ourselves in the woods.

* And- not nd. It won't hurt that much to type an additional vowel.

* That- sigh, tat just sucks.

* Girl- I'll never be your gurl if you can't spell straight.

* Friends- frenz is not cool, it's not hip.

* With, what- wit, wat...please, please don't drop your "h's"

* The- d. Imagine "The End" as "D End"

Teasing Eve

I saw this website on Surabhi's blog and was so impressed with it that I had to post it here.

http://blanknoiseproject.blogspot.com/

I think its remarkable that women are standing up for themselves and refusing to allow some stranger call them`mirchi' (hot!) on the street. Every woman has been eve-teased at some point. Maybe its just me but I feel that it happened more in India than in the US. But irrespective of where it happened I felt dirty, as if in some way it was my fault, even if I was conservatively clad.

To be appreciated as an attractive woman is one thing, to be viewed as a sex object, another. Most of these conflicts boil down to respect: eve-teasing, abuse and allied issues have a lot to do with how we view women and their place in society. And any real change can only come about if we treat women with the respect we would want our mothers and sisters to be treated with.

Thanks S, for sharing this website. One of the most potent lines of the Blank Noise Project is that `There is no asking for it.'
True.

Too drunk to marry?

I've often thought that a lot of marriages are about timing. Here's a story that affirmed this belief:

Villagers at a wedding in eastern India decided the groom had arrived too drunk to get married, and so the bride married the groom's more sober brother instead, police said Monday.
"The groom was drunk and had reportedly misbehaved with guests when the bride's family and local villagers chased him away," Madho Singh, a senior police officer told Reuters after Sunday's marriage in a village in Bihar state's Arwal district.
The younger brother readily agreed to take the groom's place beside the teenage bride at her family's invitation, witnesses said.
"The groom apologized for his behavior, but has been crying that word will spread and he will never get a bride again," Singh said by phone.

-Reuters

I don't know how much of a choice this young bride had when it selecting a husband but I wonder how she felt about the spur of the moment replacement. Was she secretly turned off by the way her soon-to-be-husband was behaving and relieved to marry his sober (and younger- after all, she is in her teens) brother? Did they even ask her what she wanted?