Feline Musings

A confusing scenario; a messy state of affairs – women are supposed to be well-bred, educated and enlightened but at the same time their individual choices and career preferences have to be compromised in the face of pushy social norms. While men have always required women to work side-by-side with them – be it in farmlands, or orchards, or managing entire households and the finances while the men were at war or away on voyage – it is the modern trend of equal financial contributors that has added to the role of the women. In most families today, the burden of loans, lifestyle and spiraling expenses is forcing reliance on double-income and when this trend started more than a decade back, there emerged the concept of DINK – Double Income No Kids. But as women developed work-family life balance, social and familial demands on compliance to traditional child bearing and rearing roles were reasserted.

Many years ago I was a trainee in an event management company and was involved in a project promoting new upcoming artists, mostly singers and Indian fusion music bands. (During this time I had a privilege to meet and know band members from the now famous – Mrigya and Indian Ocean music bands). I used [...]

Sharing your time and space with someone is not an easy job, and after the first cup of coffee, you are supposed to take on the kitchen chores, single-handedly. Unless, you finally become hard-hearted enough to break the gender-mould and get the hubby to learn some basic chores. The first year is the best time when you can play on the newfound love, and find ways and means to train him to be handy around the kitchen, instead of reviving his romance with the television, after you both have had a long and hard day at work. Yes, you need to find little ways out of that lethargy, and also to make the hubby more useful, within the first year, else it may be too late to make him change! Remember, the love will cool down, the romance fizzle, but the chores that he learns in the first year will remain lifelong.

Apart from observing the drastic changes in girth as soon as girlfriend becomes wife, yesterday he had another revelation.

“Congratulations! I heard your income got doubled.” A friend enthusiastically shook my hand. I gave him a wry look. I thought he was rubbing salt on my fresh wounds; the abrasion caused by my less than 5% annual pay hike!   The friend read my confusion, and clarified, “Congratulations on your marriage. Isn’t it the easiest way [...]

 Human beings have developed the concept of milestones – to keep track, to reminiscence, to celebrate, to mourn, to repair, to learn, to evolve, and mostly just for the heck of it. I have also decided to document the key milestones in the First Quarter of the First Nuptial Year of OUR life.   1.       After [...]

Marriage comes with its own set of “tackle-it-right-now” issues. From creatively planning the stuffing in the breakfast parathas to cruelly ignoring the heap of washed clothes begging to be ironed or stashed away; I am wrestling well with time-constraints and multiferous activities in my life. The one front that I could not tackle well for quite [...]