On Feline Feminism

I am addicted to FM. My job involves so much of intercity travel that it's the only thing that stops me from going insane at the clutter inside local trains, in traffic jams, in BEST buses. RJs are the only problem with FM, or at least, they used to be the only problem. There's the Akashwani requests from "Sheelanagar se Tinku, Rajesh, Pravin, Menaka, Manju, Arya, Upen, Gaurav" for some godforsaken song from a Manoj Kumar movie which was not about patriotism and so no one is aware of it - no one outside of Sheelanagar, that is.

For a couple of hours day you cna hear the AIR 107 FM RJs with the convent accents taking requests for English music from the Bandra Reclamation Catholic Brigade. Here, both listeners and RJs have the worst taste in music: "The next track here is a romantic track, a lovely track This is requested by Anthony for his girlfriend Melinda, and I dedicate it to Xavier as well, and to Bibiana who love this song as much as I love playing it... here's Michael Bolton's 'Can I touch you there' ..."

And then there are the Hinglish RJs - the Jaggu and Tarana and other people whose names I cannot recollect despite them repeating them over and over again. I like Jaggu and Tarana with their spunky spoofing of random issues. Radio Stations also love their little skits. 'Chai with Charan' was fun, at times, but most others are just too goddamn painful for words. But if I ever get into an accident while crossing the road, there's a 78% chance that it was because I was too busy laughing aloud to 'Phone ring toh Ghanta Singh'.

But everything, no matter how bad, is all welcome entertainment compared to the new entrant on the FM scene - 104.8FM.

Look, I'm all for women's empowerment. I consider myself a feminist lawyer and I'm proud of it. I stand up for women, be they my friends who have just broken up with trash men or clients married to trash men. I would like to find a way to help them help themselves. Don't we all?

However, a radio station was never a plausible idea, to me, for some reason I didn't think that a women's only Radio Station would lead to the upliftment of women and the solution to all their problems.

Guess what? It still isn't!

Let us begin with the Radio Station's theme song:

A woman begins screaming, because calling that noise 'singing' would be a crime...

"THODI MEETI

THODI CATTY

India ka first Women's only Radio Station"

Louder and shriller, now:

"THODI MEEEEEETI

THODI CATTTEEYEEE

104.8 EFF EEMMM

MEEEOWWWW!"

Oww indeed. And if you are used to hearing the radio at full volume, and if you're lucky, you might be rendered partially deaf, as apparently there are no regulations on things like this. If not, like I was, you'll have to bear the content.

The channel has little self-ads in which they talk about how women are different, they have different roles, and how the station is "there for them" yadayadayada. So they have more of a focus on "content" than on music, naturally. With wonderful pathbreaking shows like "tu tu meow meow", which is a male female debate show, and "meow matinee" in which they discuss things that affect you, and "meri meow" which is all about solving your problems, Meow FM proposes to be the best thing that ever happened to women!

I don't care how many women with scratch marks on their faces are blowing kisses on every BEST bus in Mumbai not already advertising for the Firangi Channel, the producers and content supervisors are probably men. Why do I say that? Let me see...

1. Meow matinee, a few days ago, proposed to discuss one the most important issues in a woman's life. Guess what it was? Breast Cancer? The Human Papilloma Virus? Dowry? Stridhan as a woman's exclusive property?

Get real guys. Figure out the real issue:

Kitty Parties!

2. One of their USPs is 'advice to women' and encouragement to call in with issues and problems, and of course women need their own radio station for this, after all, all women are messed up and need help. And there are too many radio stations with Agony Aunt shows in which the RJs blatanly hang up on women.

3. Excuse the sarcasm. Fine, I can understand that a lot of women have no one to talk to and no one to understand them, but if that's what you are looking to combat, why can't we get a few sensible people to render advice? For instance:

"Mera boyfriend hai, we have been going out for past 3 years. Now he is saying that he doesn't want to get married to me, because he wants to make carrier. My parents want me to get married but I have taken an oath that I will not get married without him."

So what's a solution that a woman needs to hear from a radio station devoted to her needs? Maybe a dose of a little "he's just not that into you"? Maybe a little dose of reality? Maybe a little 'would you like to move on now or when you are 35 and when he is conveniently married to someone else?'.

No no no, now, that's not what a meeti and catty friend would do, instead, the girl is advised:

"Have you told him about this oath of yours?"

"No..."

"You should tell him. He needs time. He needs to know your feelings..."

Again, people do not realize that it is this very approach that screws plenty of desirable, intelligent, popular, witty and smart women all over the city. So now, more desirable, intelligent, popular, witty and smart women will join the screwed over brigade. Come along sisters, the more the merrier.

And lastly, its ironic that a Radio Station which seeks to make a place for women on FM names the station after one of the most painful stereotypes attributed to women. I suppose we should all be thankful that they chose the feline over the female canine, should we not?

The Fall of the Diva

After a weekend of pure unadulterated fun (absinthe, cold chocolate vodka shots, passing out for the first time since college, southie grub at Woodlands, a live karaoke by the most stunning singer and insider information on bollywood), I was finally living the life I always wanted to live in Mumbai. To me, the ultimate city life was Sex in the City with a 130 IQ. I may not be able to buy $400 Jimmy Choo shoes, but Rs. 400 at Metro isn't a bad deal either. After 1 1/2 years of the working life, I finally had the 'Bombay' checklist down:

1. Getting anything done in 3 phone calls flat.

2. Alcohol Home Delivery

3. The best of friends who are game for anything

4. Attending Page 3 dos without actually getting on page 3.

5. Knowing people in the glamour world who I can afford to be seen with in public.

6. Hosting the best parties without people puking all over my floor.

7. Being able to comment on what's "hot" and what's "not" without looking like an idiot.

And so, though it was a Monday Morning, I strode out to the not so glamorous suburban Metropolitan Magistrate's Court, in full Diva mode.

What's with the Diva infatuation? A 'Diva' was being the woman who everyone wanted to hang out with, because she was so cool, so out of the ordinary, she had it all, or something close to that. I strode into the Court premises in my cool work heels and my Victoria Beckham

gigantic sunglasses, gave everyone around me a Diva nod. The Diva-ness worked, because the Judge informed me that he was all set to acquit my Clients on the next date. I smiled graciously, did the little bow/curtsy that we lawyers do, and picked up my files and sashayed out of the Courtroom.

Apparently I should have quit while I was ahead.

As I was travelling back, suddenly, the air around me became cloudy. The Diva didn't see this coming. Before I could react, my body did. My eyes began to water and my nose began to run with the cold that I was convinced that the Absinthe had cured. I tried to close the window but failed. The smog penetrated even the sunglasses. I held a tissue to my mouth in a desperate attempt to filter the air my lungs were desperate to take in. As the dust subsided, I removed the tissue, and nearly gagged again - the tissue had turned brown. Repulsed, I did the only thing a Diva could do in the circumstances.

I spit.

Well yes, I know - it was disgusting and totally uncalled for. In my defence however, I would like to state that nothing was harmed except my pride and the LBS Road. I sat back in my seat and thanked the BMC for only having dug up 1 km of road for me to suffocate in.

Suddenly, I felt queasy. I was getting stomach pangs, not the hungry kind, and a terrible taste in my mouth, even worse than the chalk powder taste I was getting in the smog attack. I thought I was going to hurl, real soon, that too. My head hurt, my whole body hurt, I felt like I was running temperature - it was the stuff nightmares were made of. However, as I was still in Central Railway Territory, I decided to wait till I was taken to civilization. I closed my eyes and tried to think of that wonderful singer of last night and her arabian melodies.

By the time I got to familiar territory, I decided that I needed a sugar high, and so I went to Cream Centre, which was the first decent eatery I saw. I was a Diva, after all, and Cream Centre was arguable even semi-classy with its South Mumbai roots. Ask Napean Sea Road Gujju kids. I stride in as best as I can, and am surrounded by three waiters.

"Table for one", in my best Diva voice, hoping my face didn't look three shades darker with the dust.

I am scanning the menu for a drink, and I unconsciously sip the water poured in my glass. it's hard to describe what that water felt like, but suddenly, I was relieved. My insides, which till now felt like they were being removed by a slotted spoon, cooled down, my mouth tasted sweet, my head stopped hurting - everything suddenly went back to normal. Better than normal, actually. I greedily gulped down the glass and in a very un-diva like manner demanded another one, to which similar treatment was meted out. And then I realized that though the roadside construction was the catalyst, this body condition of mine was on account of something else.

That Goddamn Absinthe!

Having hence recovered, I also recovered an appetite, and so, I ordered a pizza. Yes, for the record, I write a food watch blog and I like the pizzas at Cream Centre. They are thin, crisp and there's nothing wrong with them. You can stop snickering now. Also, I had had a major pizza craving for some time.

As I tried to find the 12 differences in my table mat as I waited for the food to arrive, I could feel a pair of eyes on me. A guy was sitting at the next table, in front of me, and he was looking in no particular direction, which meant that every now and then, he was looking at me.

And then arrived my pizza.

I bit into the slice, and as I moved to pull back and chew, I realized that the entire pizza topping was following the little nibble I was trying to sneak away.

Pizza ranks second in my worst-first-date-dinner-ideas, the first being a burger. There is no neat way of eating a burger that's worth eating. I'm not talking about the anorexic 20 buck McDonalds trash. I mean a Hard Rock Cafe Burger, or even a Big Mac. Just no clean way. The sauce drips out from the other side of the burger, followed by the lettuce, and invariably, one of the slices of bread will finish before the other, and so you will have to hold the juicy soaked vegetable/meat patty in your hands and eat it. You could eat it neatly by taking small bites and then evaluating the damage caused to the burger and repositioning the 'participants', including elimination of the weak links, but in that case you'll go down in dating history as "the guy/girl who went out on a date with me and never, not even once, looked up from that goddamn burger".
Ditto with Pizza. Some people eliminate the messiness by eating their pizza with a knife and fork. If it was meant to be eaten with a knife and fork, then the concept of pizza slices would not exist. As a child in the US, I walked into a Pizza Hut once with my parents and was aghast to see, contrary to my popular cultural notion of pizza eating developed from our highly gregarious neighbourhood Italians who ran a pizzeria (pronounced pitzah-reeya), someone eating a pizza (pronounced peetza) with a knife and a fork. That person was also wearing a hell of a lot of cloth on his head and had a big beard.
"Dad," I hissed. "That guy is eating pizza with a knife and a fork."
"He's a sardar, sweetie. Don't worry about him."
That was also my first introduction to Indian regional stereotypes.
What I'm trying to say is, though I fancied myself to be a Diva, I just could not get myself to pick up a knife and fork.

Instead, I bit further into it, taking the slice on. I held the slice right in front of me, chewed a little, bit more into the crust to support the cheese, olives, mushrooms, onion, tomato and babycorn (unfortunately for me, they were really generous with the toppings) that was already hanging from my teeth. I was using one hand to hold up my slice, but in the end, with the cheese threatening to cover my nose, I had to use my left hand to severe the fevicol consistency like cheese from my bite. I put the truant slice down, picked up the napkin and wiped my mouth (and my nose) with it.

My bored neighbour was watching me through this, in case I forgot to mention, and all of a sudden a teeny bopper hopped in and joined him with profuse yet fake apologies about some extra lecture. I sighed in relief with the thought that she would sit opposite him and so they would have eyes only for each other and so I could munch my pizza in peace.

I had forgotten how lovey dovey couples prefer sitting on the same side of the table.

Good Grief.

I sipped my iced tea and the girl and I, our eyes met.

She gave me the sympathy look. Not the "I know eating pizza is messy, but hang in there" look, but the "you're eating ALONE?" look. Then she whispered something into her date's ear and she giggled.

Wait a second. This was some shit. I wasn't going to sit here and ruin my meal and my thankfully recovered appetite because some ugly people on the next table are staring at me because they have nothing else better to look at. That's not what a Diva does. A Diva does, ladies and gentlemen, whatever the fuck she wants, and that is true style.

I chomped down the rest of my pizza, wiped my mouth, paid the bill and finished off my gigantic and refreshing iced tea. Just before leaving, I drew in the straw of my iced tea one more time just so I could make the obnoxious sucking sound that a straw makes when your drink is over that I haven't gotten enough of ever since my mother told me to "STOP IT" when I was 4.

The Diva may have fallen, but at least she did it in style.

PS: The title of the blog is misleading to the few people who decided that we would all collectively blog on a Model turned Actress who has married into a filmi family after having first been "kept" by a Politician who turned her over to his thespian friend who married her off to his homosexual son. We wanted to do this because we tried to google the story but came up empty handed. Anyway. This blog is not about that. Just so you know.

The Perfect Fit

The other day I helped myself to a shopping spree at the Shopper's Stop sale, during my Court lunch break. This isn't as glamorous a post as you think it is. For starters, I was shopping for work clothes. Which can be fun. But not for me. You see, my life is, and I kid you not, black and white. And maybe grey, and off white. Beige. Brown, but not too much of it. The Bar Council of India refuses to "move with the times" and allow for Indian lawyers to appear in Court in Formal Clothes, and not the black-and-white rule that we have been following for centuries. Harsh, but then again, looking at the way most Mumbai lawyers dress even with the dress code, I shudder to think what I could be subject to if the rules were relaxed. If you don't believe me, you haven't seen the infamous Zebra Crossing trousers, highly popular amongst the men in trial litigation, and on certain occasions, my Boss also strides in with them. I'd have burnt them, but I would rather see the stripes that get my Boss to take his pants off.

Now Shoppers Stop has its "Sale" merchandise arranged in several piles of clothes marked "XS", "S", "M", "L", "XL" etc. I gleefully moved towards the "Small" pile, gleeful because I discovered that that was where I belong just a few weeks ago, at Westside. After subjecting myself to various shapeless Medium sized Kurtas, I found one which was just right - and dare say I - flattering. As I slipped out of the kurta (as opposed to squeezing out of the kurta) I noticed what was different - it was a "small". Yay!

After much digging I found one smart looking beige one, and one in black, with interesting work in front, including a metallic attachment which resembled a small photo frame. At first I thought I was playing with fire, but when I put it on, I wore my band (the freakish white collar that lawyers wear for no explicable reason) I found that it served as an efficient cover up. However, the sleeves were baggy, the waist was of no consequence and it looked a little like a sack. As regards the beige one, while it was a little too snug around my hips, the lower back portion of the kurta puffed up, there was easily enough space in there for a Nano. Which brought me to the conclusion: I needed a size larger for the beige, and a size smaller for the black. One woman, two sizes.

I was a circus freak.

I pulled my own clothes on, shoved past waifish women trying on clothes and asking their mothers, who are bearing the burden of middle age and the accompanying bulges, whether they looked fat in them. As I returned to the pile, I found an XS (gasp!) in the black, but was not so lucky with the beige. Harrowed, I returned back into the room, threw on the XS and cringed at the lack of adjustment to my lower body (but admired the fit of the shoulders and sleeves). I put the beige on again, for a second look. Maybe I would have lost the weight I had on 10 minutes ago and this would fit just fine!

As expected, it was as ill fitting as ever. I decided to take a second opinion from the one person who would tell me the truth and not feed me some candy floss just so I could feel good about myself and buy it.

I opened the door and stood in front of the scowling trial room attendant, who looked grossly underfed.

"What's wrong with this?"

She looked me up and down, and turned me around. "It fits well up here... but..."

Well, at least she didn't have an issue identifying the problem.

"Aye raju, is mein bada size dekho! Large!"

"This is a SMALL" I growled.

She looked at me disbelievingly.

This could not be happening. I was a Large now? This was one promotion I certainly wasn't looking forward to. Women around looked at me, in my ill fitting kurta with the back that made me look like a confused kangaroo, I could hear their not-so-sympathetic-tut-tutting. But I wasn't going down without a fight.

"Aur size nahin hai ma'am", scowlface informed me.

"Look. It fits till here. Why can you just get the alterations guy to open it up from the side till the point at which it fits?" In actuality, this would result in the beige kurta becoming party wear, but this was a prestige issue, and besides, it was 40% off.

She exhaled slowly, and realizing that she was way out of her league, she called the alterations guy.

The AG was short, with a measuring tape draped around his shoulders and a pencil behind his ear. He was scruffy, bald, and wore nothing that looked designer even by a longshot. He walked in looking completely bored and nothing seemed to catch his interest, not even the semi naked women or my ill fitted disaster story.

He took one look at me and said the words I least expected from him:

"This has to be tighter."

So saying, he bunched up my 'backpack' and furrowed his brow.

"Not tighter," I explained. "It's already tight. Here." I placed my hands on my hips for emphasis.

"That I'll open." he yawned. He scribbled some notes on a pad and yawned again.

I suddenly had a brainwave.

"Wait right here"

For the next ten minutes, I modelled Black XS and Black S in front of him, explaining how I loved how XS fit my frame, but the fit of S was so much more comfortable, but even then, it looked like a sack. Or some such gibberish. He watched my little parade nonchalantly, made me wear the Small, again furiously scribbled, and that was that. I paid, and was told to come back in 1 hour.

After window shopping and a Bembo's burger (don't even ask) I walked back in, and claimed my clothes. I was too scared to even try them on. I went home, in the midst of Raj Thakarey's arrest, and while Mumbai speculated on whether he was going to be remanded to Judicial or Police Custody, I tried on my Kurtas.

And, by Jove, it was, a perfect fit.

In the midst of the mad scribbling I asked the AG if this was normal, having to all but restich garments completely.

"Size ka kuch nahin hota hai" he cooly replied. "Har aadmi ko suit karta hai, waise banana padta hai."

Life may not throw up situations in which you fit very well, but at least there are some places where you can achieve a perfect fit. :)