BEING A GIRL

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Sleeping in my mother's womb,
I dream about empty rooms,
I hear happy voices from outside,
as I kick the surrounding walls wide.

Nine months hence, I finally come out,
and I get the love of everyone without any doubt,
Lined with kohl, my eyes see pink,
as that is the colour of a baby girl as everyone winks.

Some of them say that I bring good luck,
But many of my fellow mates get treated like muck,
They get killed for no reason at all,
because being a girl makes the parents' life stall.

As I grow up, I fight the war of sexes,
I battle each and every prejudice with my verbal axes,
So what if I am a girl or a woman?
We are and have never been less than men.

I speak my mind wherever I go,
to those sexist remarks; I always say no,
I am not borne for a man's pleasure,
Nor I am the object of some one's leisure.

"Speak in whispers and laugh slowly", they say,
But I yearn to live life my own way,
At least, I have the power to aim for skies,
What about my fellow mates who are eager to fly?
My wings are still there but their's have been cut,
Our parochial society has stuck their lives in a rut.

But, I still believe a day will come,
when I will shine along with my chums,
We will fight for the respect we deserve,
until all those culprits are rightly served.

Nexus Diaries

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Dear  Nexus 5,

It feels silly to write about you. Instead of writing about people, I write about a phone whose shelf life is not more than two years. But I have given you way too much attention and you have paid it back by serving me well.

I bought you out of sheer need. Yes, need indeed. My previous phone's battery was misbehaving and sometimes I felt helpless. I wanted a high end phone with all possible features that it could have. I really wished for it and maybe the universe granted it.

You came and you blew my mind.

I instantly fell in love and that too with a phone.

I must admit that I had to spend a hell lot on you and your fancy screen gaurds, silicone cases and hard cases - batman, avengers and joker themed ones. But I don't regret any of it now.

Enough on money. Your value is much more than the bucks spent on you. You made my life easier. The android updates first came to you and I loved the various versions of KitKat. The tracking of the couriers and the packages came on Google now and it was something new for me. You tracked my activities like a possessive boyfriend and gave me suggestions on my likes. Be it the cricket and the football match schedules or the study suggestions for GMAT, you gave me a pretty good story/search on every topic I could think of without any substantial effort. You made me lazy and sometimes I wished I didn't have you. The sound quality was superb and I entrusted in you my music collection which was at a whopping 4.5GB. Your energy levels were always stable - read battery and I was happy with 36 hours of continuous function without any charging. I loved playing Gun Zombie hell and Clash of the Clans on you. And even after this much gaming, your energy levels were stable. The HDR+ mode in the camera delighted me and yes, I did show it off to people who didn't have you ( bad me, tut, tut). My daily walking time was recorded and i was given congratulations messages for completing an hour of walking a day. All my google accounts were clubbed and I became happier for the easiness in managing all my accounts.

"I am crazy, stupid and happy." Indeed I became a gone girl.

And then Lollipop came.

You became an altogether different phone. Though I totally loved the multiple user profiles in a single phone due to this new update, I  slowly fell out of love with you. Majority of the apps were misbehaving and to top it all, my customized ringtones became obsolete and I couldn't hear my phone ringing for a day or two. You refuse to get on the silent mode and the lowest possible volume was accompanied with the default vibratory mode. The flash stopped working with the camera and the good pictures only came in ample lighting. And the best part - battery. Your battery became way too mischievous - asking for chargers twice a day.   

still I held onto you. I gave you time. I wished that the new updates will straighten you up. But you refused to be parted with the charger for more than a day. And the flash continued to disappoint me.

And one fine morning, you fell from the safety of my hands to the cruel concrete and asphalt road where your screen got broken. Heartbroken I was. Yet the touchscreen was working fine with least time lag. I got the damaged screen replaced instead of buying a new phone.

Marshmallow, from which I had least expectation, revived you to an extent. The Do not disturb feature is amazing and is responsible for giving me sleep filled dozes and naps. The touch lag which came because of Lollipop vanished and you feel as good as a new phone.

But ohhhh dear, the poor battery.

You are nearly two years old and your battery requires charging every four hours. I have to be extra vigilant while traveling because you might get switched off any time and I don't want to feel helpless again. During the marshmallow update, you got stuck in the process and I had to perform a factory data reset which removed all my non backed up data(including the 4.5GB of music).

My whole day is spent in taking care of you. And I am tired of it. I can not keep caring for you like a new born baby. I have loved you and stood with you through all the android updates as well as the damages. But now I am exhausted.

I want to move on. I want to let go of you. I will tell your stories to my children and grandchildren (if I have them) and to whomsoever I meet. I will tell them that I had Nexus 5 which made me more tech savvy. I will tell them how you accompanied me on my journey on Zomato from a #1 to a #10 super foodie. I will them that how you gave excellent photos during my trip to Andaman, Dhaujh and Lucknow. I will buy a new phone with a better battery and a camera with flash.
You filled my lonely days and sleepless nights. 

I will miss you.

So stupid of me to write about you - a phone, a non conscious being.

"Stupid is, as stupid does." Gilderoy Lockhart says well in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

Till then, bye for forever

Yours truly,

Your first owner,

Shreya

Bohemé, Vasant Vihar

Share So at my third Zomato Meetup, I get the opportunity to visit the Bohemé at D block, Vasant Vihar. It is supposed to be a Pajama party going with the relaxed environment on Sundays.

First of all, it is pretty difficult to find this restaurant because the board for this one at the ground floor doesn't look very prominent and can be easily missed. The moment you enter it, you'll get a very chilled out vibe coming from this place. The couches, the wooden interiors and the soothing colours will give you a holiday sort of feeling.

Now coming to our main point - food. We had a fixed menu for this meetup. We were served complimentary breads with garlic sauce, gouda cheese dip and the beetroot dip alongwith the rose lemon mocktail. The rose lemon mocktail was sweet with very small hints of sourness from lemon. It was refreshing to taste. The breads were in pretty interesting shaoes and the garlic sauce was the best.

We have had Kerala Pepper Chicken, Zesty Prawns, Lettuce Parcels and Crostini Platter. The Kerala Pepper Chicken was fried in coconut oil along with the curry leaves which gave it an authentic Kerala kind of flavour. It was way too tangy for a North Indian’s palette but somehow I liked it. The chicken were juicy too. They had also used white pepper in it. But it could have been a bit less tangy. The Zesty Prawns were cooked in Thai spices as the menu specified and they were a delight to eat. They were sweet as well as a bit sour and cooked well. The Prawns were very small but way too good. In the Lettuce Parcels, I got to taste the Chicken and the Cous Cous ones. The parties were wrapped in Lettuce leaves and were sandwiched between cucumber and tomato slices topped with cheese dips and sauces. They came along with the beetroot sauce and the pesto sauce. The chicken Patty was burned in our case though it was a bit soft and juicy. I didn't like the Cous Cous patty at all. In the Crostini Platter, the chicken and sweetcorn one was good with the minced chicken being more prominent. The chicken was spiced well with black pepper. The bread on which it was burned and that's why I would give it an average rating. The tomato salsa and the caramelized onions with cheese was okay - not very flavourful for me.

In the main course, we had the Fisherman's dream, the Vegetable Nut Roast, the Pesto Mustard Fish, the Veg Kokum curry with Malabar Parotta and the Florentina Pizza. The Fisherman's dream was a small piece of fish wrapped in banana leaf and had a saltless gravy on it. It was served with steamed rice and Kerala Masala curry. It was very bad - sans spices. The Kerala masala curry had no masala at all. The Vegetable Nut Roast was actually a crispy Patty of roasted nuts with pumpkin and water chestnuts on a bed of mashed potatoes. The sauce served with had flavour of curry leaves. The Patty was crispy and the water chestnuts in it gave it a good taste. The mashed potatoes were pretty fine and good to eat. A mediocre dish I would say. The pesto Mustard Fish was okay with a very small piece of basa which wasn't cooked or grilled very well served with Cous Cous. This dish again had the flavour of curry leaves. The Mustard sauce was good though. The Veg Kokum curry served with Malabar Parotta was excellent. The Kokum curry was fine, had hints of sourness alongwith sweetness and had good amount of potatoes and beans. The Malabar Parotta was soft and chewy and well cooked. The Florentina Pizza was the best - thin crusted topped with chicken, green olives, spinach and sun dried tomatoes. The cheese was ohhh-so-melt-in-the-mouth and delectable to eat. We reordered it quite a few times.

In the desserts, we have had the Coconut Puff with Vanilla ice cream and their home made ice cream served with Flac seeds and fresh fruits. Their home made ice cream was way too hard - a difficult task to cut it and then eat. But the Coconut Puff with the Vanilla ice cream made our day. The Coconut Puff was subtle in taste and very soft to eat. It went well with the Vanilla flavour.

A special note on the service - very poor. They had only two to three servers serving us and they were overburdened with trying to serve around 40 people. We had to ask them multiple times for the courses, water and the cutlery. The dishes were taking a lot of time to come out of the kitchen counter and some of us didn't even get to taste a few items on the menu properly. For e.g. the lamb Lettuce Parcels were only served once.  Many of the dishes we asked for were finished in just one or two servings. And their serving size was very small considering there were around 10 people at each table. Our fellow foodie Neelaakshi was actually standing at the kitchen counter to get the courses for our table. A big thank you to her!

We also got to witness a live performance. And I really enjoyed this part of the Meetup apart from interacting with the fellow foodies.

Bikanerwala, Chanakyapuri, Delhi

 Yesterday, my family decided to try this outlet of Bikanerwala. Our main objective of going to Bikanerwala specifically, was to try their White sauce pasta which is very tasty and we had this one at the Sector 29 outlet. But we were disappointed to find out that they do not serve the pastas here.
This outlet spans two floors and has seating on first floor which can seat around 30 people. The ground floor is reserved for the sweets, chaat and beverages counters. The food gets served on the first floor.
We decided to order naan, roti, Paneer special, Dal Makhani and sweet corn soup. They did not have Paneer special so we had to order Shaahi Paneer instead. The order took 10 minutes to arrive which is pretty normal at such outlets.
The roti and naan were well cooked and they had not used butter on the naan as we had asked. The Dal Makhani was way too yummy and the texture of the Dal was thick but not too thick. The Shaahi Paneer was very bad - the colour of the gravy hardly resembled the usual pink, it was dark orange and the taste was very sweet. The gravy was thick and there was a prominent flavour of cinnamon and kastoori methi. The Paneer was very soft and good to taste, though. The sweet corn soup came simmering hot and the quantity was good considering the price. The consistency of the soup was medium thick and it was well seasoned. The vegetables - sweet corn, carrots and beans were present in a large quantity but the sweet corn should have been boiled for a longer time. This soup could have been better.
They have common washrooms and a si gle one only so they need to improve in this area as well.
This place is definitely worth trying but you should know which dishes to chose.

O WOMANIYA

Feminism - the buzzword we hear every day and wonder what kind of shit that is! Yes, believe me, majority of us think that it is an aggressive stand taken by so called modern-assertive-liberal women. Well, let us not go into the history and details and definitions of feminism because it is a wide area and I would not like to waste your and my time on the theoretical stuff.

I will write here my views and the views I have assimilated from the women I know. I will write what I feel and the readers have every right to disagree with me because some of my view points will be quite aggresive.

The most common understanding of feminism is - women fighting for their rights. Wrong. Another understanding - women want to be successful than men. Wrong. Another one and very common - women eager to treat men the way they have been treated for centuries. Wrong. Another one - women protesting against the inhumanities and inequalities meted out to them. Not entirely wrong but not entirely correct. Well, that is the beauty of this word.

Feminism is believing that men and women are equal. It is believing that what a man does, a woman should do and what a woman does, a man should do. It is believing that men and women are both strong and smart enough to handle their lives single handedly. And yeah, I forgot "equal pay for equal work."

"To call woman the weaker sex is a libel; it is man's injustice to woman."
    - Mahatma Gandhi

Injustice by men only? We have been called the weaker sex by women as well as men. We have been bred to believe that we are weak and we always need a man to support or help us. We have been made to believe that "ladies and girls should not do this because it is unlady like, it is not womanly." We have spent our lives being dependent on men. I am not saying it is wrong but aren't we capable enough to do those things ourselves. Some of the common examples are :

1. "I wanna buy a new phone/hard disk/computer, could you just tell me, which one should I buy?" - As if we can not a search for phone specifications and then find out!

2. "Can you tell me which car should I buy, I really don't understand the mileage and whatever.." - We are educated enough to understand the basics! No one is asking us to be a mechanical engineer.

3. "I am not carrying my purse because it is too heavy, please pay the bill, ooohhh pleasssseee..." - My my, that sweetness is actually killing our self respect.

Enough examples, I guess. And angers are stirring as it is widely held notion that this is man's chivalry for women and blah blah. To hell with chivalry! Women expect men to honour them and treat them like queens and it is a convention they should follow. Men must pay the bills on an outing, they should take out the chair in a restaurant and they should open the door of the car - phew! Why can not women pay when they are earning? Why can not women take out the chairs and open the doors of car because it is them who are going to sit. Your man/male friend/brother/father is not your servant.

"I want a man who can handle me." Why? Aren't we capable enough to handle yourself?

"I want a man who protects me." Why? Can't we protect yourself? Can't we stand for ourselves?

We are dependent on men more than they are dependent on us. And that is the reason of our weakness. Period.

" Look at her, what kind of clothes she is wearing?"
A male friend of mine once said that the reason women are not empowered is because they spend their majority of time not using their brains. It felt offensive but now I think of it, the guy was right. We are always bitching, we are always competing with each other, we are always interested in what is happening in others' lives. Many of us are least interested in growing and making ourselves strong. We sniff when there is some intellectual discussion happening.

Women will be emancipated when we stop competing and start supporting each other.

The very common thing which angers all of us is abuse. "Ladki ko gaal nahi dene ka....ladki ka insult nahi karne ka.."

So we get hurt when we are verbally abused. We get hurt when fun is made of us in a weird way. We think that it is our "izzat" which needs to be protected. (I am just talking about verbal abuse and talks here) Why? Do men don't have some amount of respect or "izzat"? Men also feel bad when they are abused (personally or publicly) but they never take it too harshly. Then why we create such brouhaha over abuse and fun?
"Agar ladki ki izzat hai to ladke ki bhi hai." Period.

The very reason of our weakness is that we think we are weak. We think our voices won't be heard. Believe me, we are capable enough to do anything that we want. We don't always have to fight with men to feel equal. Equality comes by believing that men are as important as women. In the name of feminism, we are actually making a case for reservations and quotas. Aren't we capable enough to get to the top? If someone is stopping us just because we are women, then ladies, handle it, fight it. Rome was not built in a day. Change won't come unless you bring change in yourself by making yourself stronger and capable. Explore the world and learn as much as you can. Empowerment comes from knowledge and experiences. Stand up for other women as well as men who are getting unequal treatment.

Enough said.

But as Emma Watson recently said, "Men also get the unequal treatment that women do." Sparkling indeed!

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Pigeon Chronicles

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Yes I'll talk about pigeons, the very common pigeons you see every day on your window sills, on the trees and every where. And you wonder what these hideous creatures are there for. They'll find a place in or near your house and keep making nests and giving eggs. They are a headache for the urban household dwellers.

But these creatures taught me a very important lesson a few days back when I was at home.

Day 1: Two pigeons-a couple were hanging out at my window sill and probably enjoying their new found love for each other. What a treat to watch them together!

Day 2 -day 4: The koochy kooing goes on. The wild flapping of wings can even wake a dead person! Well let us not go into the details.

Day 5-day 7: There are twigs and some dead leaves on my window sill. The love birds are making nest now. And this is some problem because when I close the windows, their nest will get destroyed and eventually their eggs.
So, with a heavy heart, I decide to shove away the twigs. And they do have weird angry expressions on their faces.

Lesson: It is normal to get angry when things do not work out your way. When you are trying to do every bit you can but someone destroys all your hard work. Patience is the key here.

Day 8: I finally put a cardboard in slanted position at the sill so that their twigs won't stay stable. But this didn't deter them. They kept on exploring the whole area and eventually, they were able to shift the card board a bit so that a cosy nesting place was available to them.

Lesson: We have to find new ways to get what we want in life. We'll always find a way. Nothing is stronger than a man's will power and in this case, a mere couple of pigeons.

Day 9: Frustrated with the chaos they are making every day, I re-adjust the position of card board. I also keep a pot there so they are not able to build their long pending nest. The next thing I know, they start assembling the twigs on the pot. I again throw these twigs away. They again find another solution when I am asleep. More twigs follow on the pot.

Lesson: Try, try and try till you succeed. Let nothing defeat you!

Day 10: My repressive measures are increasing moment by moment. I have to evolve new strategies to demolish their would be home. So they keep on doing their assembling work as usual. And today, they seem more desperate.
When I wake up from my afternoon nap, my sister tells me that she has removed all the twigs. When I go to my window sill, I am pretty surprised to find it desolate and the pigeons standing on the window top. There is a deathly silence. After a few seconds, I finally find the reason - an egg, a crack adorning it's top. The pigeons keep staring at the egg the whole evening. Unlike the other days, they don't fly away. They remain there, staring at the eggs, with dismay. Their moroseness also affects me. They not only tried my window sill, but the one at my parents' room. And the purpose for which they were doing it, was no more.
They were at the window top all the night. They slept there staring at the egg. Their faces showed the sadness of losing someone, some one close and some one very loved.

Lesson: In life, we do lose a lot of people in our life whom we love and cherish like no one else. They can be our parents, our friends and the love of our lives. Everyone will leave us eventually. And it is okay to feel distraught and feel dejected. At this time, we should feel the pain and let it bleed us. We should accept ourselves and this pain.

Day 11: I didn't expect the usual flapping of wings  and the twigs. But the pigeons were as excited as the first day and they kept on finding new ways to make their humble abode. Their sadness had gone.

Lesson: Eventually we have to move on over the things we lost. We'll get new opportunities and new people in our lives again and again. We just have to keep exploring and keep learning. Nothing is stronger than will power and perseverance. Never let the flame burning inside you to get diminished.
A friend of mine once taught me that life eventually goes on. And it does.

I never knew these simple creatures could teach me so much! When they can face all hardships and still emerge victorious, then why can not we, as humans?
Never back down!

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