Of Birds and Bees... well, literally!

It was my mum’s idea! My daughter's first birthday was, well, not exactly around the corner… there were whole three months left to it. And yet, our daily hone bills were soaring sky high with every passing day over the same discussion in a constant loop – as to, what they’d give her for a gift!

-         Dress?

-         Well, then give me a wardrobe too!

-         Toys?

-         Do you have any idea how many of those are still unwrapped?

-         Something in gold?

-         Eww… Don't even think of that, not for me and my daughter (*roar*)

-         Then?

-         Well, let me think some more…

A warrior who never killed a fly!

White locks of hair pulled into a tiny bun, often covered with a pallu that is but a vague white extension of the once white but now faded 5 metres stretch of cotton, perhaps with a hole here and there over its entire stretch but carefully tugged inside to not be spotted – that is how Dida has looked ever since I can remember. Dida - the common grandmother – in our small but complete world of the neighbourhood, the place we were born and grown up at.

Dhopash's Diaper Days...

*This post is a part of the Pampers #SoftestForBabySkin activity at BlogAdda*


Casually, I was looking up the “Photo” and "Video" folders on my laptop, which is when I stopped upon these. Memories came rushing…

"What is Durga Puja?" - they had asked!

This article has also been published at The Speaking Tree, Youthkiawaaz, WhatsupIndia, Gurgaon Moms and Women's Web!!


Now, strange things happen at times at most habitual moments. Like when they asked you to tell them "something about yourself" at your first job interview, and you looked blank. You did not know, until then, how difficult it could be to be asked to summarise your own self, in precise words and well-formed sentences, conclusively and sufficiently! You do not know where to start, what to carefully keep aside, what is just yours and not for the world to know, and what preciseness of the reply would fit the bill right, that is, to leave your audience engaged and pleased and to still be honest and at it. When confronted with casual curiosity, or even courtesy-calls, on something so damn close to you that you've grown up to belong to it or to be it yourself, it really gets bad. I know I am getting too gibberish for you to keep on reading this piece, especially in a season where you've so much to otherwise, and I duly apologise. Give me a chance to defend.

I'm just back from a very sudden going-total-blank-at-a-most-obvious-question situation at a non-Bong gathering. They casually, only slightly curiously, had just asked me one simple well-meaning question:

"What is Durga Puja?"

Girls Are Not Any Superior To Boys!!

This article has also been published in Women's Web and a magazine.

Girls are not any superior to boys. Please, it’s important to emphasise and re-emphasise this.

Those regular status messages and those frequent Whats-app forwards that paint the town pink – that tearful letter from a father to his married daughter, that list of things woman leaves behind in marriage, surname, home and freedom to not cook food, to why is mother the next best creation, or wait, the best! No, don’t buy them. Don’t buy them at all!

The Bun in the Oven!!

This has also been published in World of Moms!


I often wonder - now that after four years plus of eventful parenting it all looks like a past as distant as if the rest of my life was not coherent but a past life – as to how did I, we, at all go about it? How did we come at it, at making her? At making our daughter - a blossoming fairytale that she is unfurling every day to be?

How a Crisis "Transfers" into Happiness - with #TATASkyTransfer

* This post is written as a part of  #TATASkyTransfer contest.

It was a state of national level crisis at my den. Yes, you heard me right - National Level Crisis! 

Well, we had to, had to go! Because – as Mom claims - it was a matter of sentiments, a matter of family tradition, a matter of… whatever! And so, we’d have to go – to this great grand big fat ceremonious annual family get-together!