Airport manners

What makes people think they own a public space? ! We’re sitting at the airport now. . Catching up on sleep inbetween flights. .one of which is long haul.

And this mega family of ten plus members lands at the pepsi Booth. . Kids screaming and whining and fussing about what drinks they want. We give them looks. . They don’t bother. .. we request them to quieten down. .they don’t care a damn. And when the screaming and shouting doesn’t stop I am able to hold it no longer. I get up and ask them. ..’can’t you see people are sleeping. . We all have flights to catch. .is this the way to behave in a public space? ?’

No. .I wasn’t expecting an apology for the nuisance. .. but I thought they would Atleast try to be a little quiet after that.

Surprise! !!! The mother. .I guess. .a hefty woman in her thirties. .just yells back saying they are kids and are adamant and they can’t do anything about it. And shouts to her husband that they will do what they want and I should leave if I want to.

Thankfully the airport staff arrived within minutes and told them they should get ready to board their flight.

I don’t know what would have happened if they had stayed.

Now. ..
1. If you can’t manage kids then don’t have them. If you have had them then you bloody well tell them off when they are behaving like a bunch of country brutes.

2. The moment you step outside the four walls of your home.. you do realise it is not your private space anymore and that you are expected to have some common sense and be considerate towards others.

3. When you are clearly in the wrong. .. the least you can do is apologise. Your Kids are watching you. By acting like a complete Bi*** the only thing you are doing is teaching them that it is Ok to be inconsiderate and get away with it.

4. For heavens sake try a Bullock cart instead of a plane the next time. You and your damn kids can scream with all your might. . Chances are that the noise will just dissolve on the road and not cause a pain in the wrong place! !! My sympathies towards the poor animals Ofcourse!!

5. Lastly. ..If your lovely family gets thrown off the plane for being a public nuisance. … don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Phew. .. it took this to break my blog hiatus 🙂

Sunshine breakfast

 

(Strictly for kids 🙂 … er.. and for a few greedy adults like me 😉 )

Just broke a croissant into bite sized portions and decorated around a crisp cheese omelette. Needless to say it got polished off in no time at all!!

(Crisp cheese omelette: Just make a normal omelette, cook on both sides, then layer a slice of cheese – I use gouda – and cook on high flame, on the cheesy side, so it turns nice and crisp!!)

Chup, bad girl

******

‘Bad uncle...’ the child whispers, shifting uneasily.

Mother glances at Neighbour – kind and respectable. No, he wouldn’t!!

She nudges her 6-year old irritably, ‘Chup*… Bad girl!‘

******

(An attempt to tell a story in Haiku form)

Innumerable cases of child abuse are not stopped simply because we do not believe our children enough. We brush their fears aside, thinking they are baseless. They aren’t. They never are. If a child feels that there is ‘something wrong’ or ‘something bad’ – a touch, a comment, or even a look…  that just makes him/her feel uncomfortable, but is unable to express it, it is our damn duty to take up the matter seriously and investigate, and protect our children.

This post has been written for the Child Sexual abuse awareness month theme run by the Chennai Bloggers Club.

* ‘chup’ – ‘quiet’ or ‘shut up’

Snip snip…

(Photo of a baby girl at her ‘mundan’ ceremony). This was a prompt on a lovely Facebook group that I am fortunate to be a part of. This is what I came up with (an attempt at Haiku).

‘Snip..snip.. Curly locks fall gently to the ground.
Baby girl, you have no choice!
The first of many sacrifices.’

Eggcelent snack

Stumbled upon this lovely recipe on a Facebook group page. Utterly simple. Crack an egg into a little cup that is oven proof. .don’t let the yolk break. sprinkle a cup of fresh chopped spinach. Add a pinch of salt, dried herbs, pepper powder and drizzle with half a teaspoon of olive oil. Bake in a preheated oven for about ten minutes. Amazingly healthy. . Smell-free and yummy too. Please try! !

Meaningfully Mindless

You are tired after a long day.. whether you work from an office or from home, whether you do a lot, or nothing. The daily grind does suck the life out of you! Tune into a ‘meaningful’ news channel, and all you get to see is scams, scandals and unimaginably horrendous crimes that make you lose faith! This is where ‘mindless’ television serials step in, to rescue us.

Tune into ANY Indian entertainment channel.. Star, Sony, Colours..etc. there are all the SAME!

The same glamorous bungalows, where nobody seems to have a 9-5 job like the rest of us mere mortals do, the same women dressed in all their finery, wondering who is plotting against who!

Watching the same shocked expression on every family member (in slow motion) can actually be quite therapeutic. Because it is in these moments, that I do not have to think! I get to ignore (albeit temporarily), the bills lying on the table, the books yearning to be read and the empty dishes that will soon have a dry crust!

How much effort can it take to watch a ‘mother in law’ dressed in finery, authoritatively telling her meek son and pretty daughter-in-law with long flowing hair (who by the way, is also decked in jewellery like she is a walking banner advertisement for a jewellery store!) what to do. How much do you really exert your senses to watch another grandiose creature ‘plotting’ to kill her own sister or sister-in-law for some vague reason that nobody remembers?! See, that is where Indian soaps can help us unwind. Watch it in zombie mode, and you will eventually realise that your office related stress is perhaps preferred 😉

So what is wrong with Indian television? (asked HT, and loads of us bloggers replied). Here’s what:

1. ‘Super-women’: Almost all our programmes are women-centric. ‘Now what’s wrong with that??!’ The problem is, every protagonist is not just an average woman but a super-woman! Quiet, ‘docile’, woman of ‘inner strength’ (how do you even measure that???!!), dons a pallu and covers her head in the presence of elders, addresses her husband with a ‘ji’ suffix! Whatever happened to women who need not be perfect, and who need not be on a pedestal??! How about a normal women, perfect with all her imperfections?!
2. Sense and sensibility: I know I said Indian television is therapeutic. Even in that ‘paradise’ however, we do need some semblance of sense and sensibility. Will it harm us too much, if we made more programmes like ‘Satyameva Jayate’ or ‘Laakhon mein ek’?!
3. REAL problems: In the same vein, I wonder why every second story depicts the ‘trials and tribulations’ of a new bride in a joint family, or a girl who is unable to find a ‘suitor’ at all?! What about REAL problems like eve-teasing on the roads, gruesome rape in a moving bus, the ability to balance a good career with family-life? Will we ever get to watch a programme made about people like you and me?!
4. Mush overdose: Ok, I’ll confess. I like M&Bs. I think they score much better than the over-rated ‘fifty-shades-series’. But the mush in our serials is a serious over-dose! Imagine copying some of romantic scenes – the gazing in eyes –soft background score – caresses in ‘slow motion’. Euuuggghh…gaze into my eyes for 2 minutes and I’ll wonder if you’ve lost it!!!
5. Ancestral property: I have seen just one bungalow in my entire life. And even that was minuscule in comparison to the HUGE houses that feature on television! Can we get more real, please?
6. Mini-Bollywood scenes: Forget the trauma of watching an overweight Ram Kapur romancing ‘oh so perfect’ Parvati bhabhi! What’s with soaps aping Bollywood romance? Show some creativity, folks!
7. Hair: Yes, you read it right. Hair. I really do not get the point about every female protagonist having long, luscious, shiny black hair. How do they go about their daily life? Cooking? Cleaning? Just .. living?!! You want to make a woman-centric programme? Go ahead, do it. But please, show someone with normal dry/limp/frizzy hair! I promise you, it will not affect your TRPs!
8. Where are the children? : Nobody is ever prepared for parenthood. When it strikes, it sucks you into an endless cycle of nappies, runny noses, bruises! Where have all the children disappeared from our television serials? The few kids that are infact around, only do a cameo! (But hey, to be fair, I guess being a parent myself, if I had to watch one more crying baby on TV, I might just suffer a breakdown!! Okay, I’ll leave the kids out!)
9. Regressive dressing: One look at the attire of the artists, and you know exactly what is wrong. Heavy silks, light chiffons, matching heavy jewellery – makes me wonder if we are indeed living in the 21^st century or some medieval era?!
10. Recession, really? One unique feature in every soap that never ceases to amaze me is: None of the actors EVER has a 9-5 job. What is the scene? Recession or Ancestral wealth?!

So yeah, our soaps are absolutely mindless. However, since they do help the ‘unwinding’ process, it would be nice to infuse a teeny weeny bit of sense into these programs,. That would just ease our way back into the ‘real’ world the next morning!

Peeping Tom

Lost and found?

A healthy quick fix

This actually doesn’t take much time at all. Simply pile on sliced peppers, tomato, olives, waffles or any left over nuggets or tikkis on a bed of fresh iceberg lettuce leaves (on a tortilla wrap) and add a dash of mayo and ketchup 😉 Voila! ! A yummy, filling and healthy wrap is on your table! !!

Parathalicious

Carrot-potato parathas 🙂

You know how to make these, don’t you?

Boil and mash potatoes and carrots, add chopped coriander, salt, a pinch of turmeric powder, amchur powder, fresh ginger or ginger powder and make into balls. Put each ball in the centre of a little rolled-out dough, fold in, and roll it out into a paratha. Cook on both sides.