Nivedita Das Narayan

Said my 7-year old to me this morning! We've had this pristine ritual. A ritual we more or less formalized—of a big crush hug from him to me and me to him, right after shower, him cuddled in his bath towel, dewy and warm, smelling like the little baby that I cuddled first time 7-years back. This ritual, right before I help him into his school uniform, has been a mainstay of the short 30 minutes before he hops on to the school bus, off for 8 hours in the day. The last couple of months we'd kind of detracted from this unsaid contract.  And today, in a moment of the old, in a moment devoid of any imagined mishaps and misses, in a moment of just being with him, it all came back. He hugged me, the boy-child, allowing the child in him to say as he felt. A more recent understanding of the ‘thousand with the three zeroes’ versus ‘the hundred with the two’. It was a visible split-second choice he made of the number highest in his understanding, of saying how he acutely...

A gentle share with you my friends, some of you who have been fairly impression-ed by Ms. Nooyi's now hugely debated, shared and tweeted interview. I wrote this more than ten days back  (covered in the thick of Parisian indulgences) and delayed posting it lest it be deemed expressed under heavy influences, not to forget the reactionary expression-urge felt almost immediately after reading the interview and (soon after) this blogpost ( http://yummyami.blogspot.sg/2014/07/this-isnt-usual-post.html )  that inspired me to agree and shake me out of my laziness. Since then many more discordant voices have appeared that tend to question, even de-pedestalise Ms. Nooyi's self indulgent version of the 'can't have it all' syndrome. And today when I post this, this perspective is perhaps the only one that takes into account the 'Man's'  position (if he had any) in this conundrum of chest-beating and back-thumping to burp up and spread the slogan of  ' ca...

Oh, so I was a phone-widow for a week! Why, is that melodrama? Really?! Drama all right and there's nothing mellow in not having recourse to messaging ( WhatsApp , Viber included) anyone  and no access to mail and FB on the move! Needless to say, I also did not have access to my entire contact list on my phone including Narayan's! (Although he is denying he had a terrific week free of a snoop-gating wife's numerous quests & queries all aimed towards 'What Time' does he get home?) And you know what that means, right?! it means being practically cut off, marooned, life hijacked, feeling prehistoric & retired to the desktop or the landline for the most important talking needs of the day! There's something else it meant - It meant no mindless, all day long, anytime, anywhere surfing, sniping, spying, parking, poking, emoting, checking and all that suff that can be categorically bracketed under JLT. Yes, and that is what I realised as the week progresse...