Fairly unfair

Your husband is enamoured by you if you look fairer, you feel more confident when you are fairer, you walk the ramp more gracefully when you are fairer, you even perform better on a singing or even a cycling competition when you are fairer, your father's (who is, by the way, a make up artist) humiliation in the hands of a pompous actress disappears when you look fairer! And hello, since you are a "modern" woman, you accept fairness only when they come with a proof and esp when the ingredients are "ayurvedic"!!!

Well..I think you got a drift by now as to what I am talking about..in case you are not an avid TV watcher, I am talking about the numerous commercials on fairness creams which keep coming every two minutes these days on TV!

Now, I have nothing against the fairness cream manufacturers or the TV commercials that proclaim their wonders. But TV commercials only project the general psyche of the society which helps find a market for products. And their lies my concern. In this age of modernization where we claim of moving forward, why this backward pull of celebrating our skin colour (or the lack of it!).

Yes, I understand that women (and men too) always want to look beautiful. Beauty is something which is coveted by the poets, the philosophers, the rich, the poor...you get the drift. From the fairy tales to the job interviews I am told that, beauty is celebrated with much fervour always. But beauty cannot be synonymous to fairness! It cannot be something as superficial as your skin colour! Then why is this eternal quest for fairer skin? Is it some kind of a heritage of the British Raj that we, Indians admire the lack of melanin (the pigment that is responsible for dark skin) in the skin so much! Melanin is actually a protective pigment which protects us from skin cancer, in case you didn't know! Then why such angst against melanin! From the time the kids start playing with dolls with with fair skin and blue eyes, this fascination with fair skin continues to grow. I am told (mostly by the TV commercials and some serials again) that even today, girls with darker skin colour neither find suitable jobs nor grooms! It is really funny that on one hand, we abhor racism and on the other, we still judge people by their skin colour!

Don't get me wrong, I am not against looking your best. Quite on the contrary, I believe that yes, you should look after yourself, look well and feel well about yourself too. But this mass hypnotizing on trying to achieve fairer skin, which culminates women measuring their skin tone with a "shade-o-meter" is down right derogatory to my mind! I wonder what impact these ads might be having on young girls! I hope this generation teenagers are smarter to shun the superficiality and accept the substance in their life! I hope that all this mass hypnotizing on the eternal quest to achieve a few shade lighter skin colour does not lead to a poor self image, I hope they realize instead of fighting the melanin of skin, it is a better idea to try to achieve a healthier skin, a healthier life and a healthier mindset which ultimately will lead you to beauty-both inside and outside!

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Becoming a doctor

Yesterday was doctor's day. Like so many other days that we celebrate these days, we have a doctor's day too. Many people came and wished me and suddenly I was filled with so many mixed and confused feelings that they are now paving their way to this blog post! ;-)

Yes I am a doctor. I have slogged almost 5 gruelling years in being successful to write the "Dr' in front of my name. And let me be frank, it was such an amazing feeling that time to write that prefix in front of my name, it made all the madness of those five years seem absolutely sane! Hmmn, now you are wondering why I am calling this five years of medical training as a madness! If it was such a madness,why did I even think of a further madness of three years in achieving a post graduate degree! Well, let me explain.

What will you call the experience of trying to keep awake the whole night with intermittent intake of raw coffee powder in order to understand some weird biochemical pathway of how cholesterol is formed in the body step by step? Or may be trying to learn by heart words like Cyclopentanoperhydrophenanthrene and trying to even remember what this weird sounding name looks like (for the uninitiated, it is the structure of a steroid!). Or how about spending a whole evening in the spring, that too when you are only 19 years old, trying to understand something called tricotilomania! Well, I call them madness, esp when the experience continues for whole 5 YEARS!

I tell you what, actually what is even more maddening is that after spending so much of time and energy in learning many inane pieces of information (and some useful ones), when you think you are the walking talking knowledge bank on this earth and land up the hospital wards for performing your duty as a doctor, you are completely taken aback at the utter disillusionment that awaits you. For one, many a times you are being called as a "sister" (of course you have to belong to the same privileged sex as me), in the medicine OPD the medical representatives don't even pay attention to you, in the hospital wards you are only being asked to make i.v channels and take blood samples and do catheterization by your seniors, in the surgery OT, you just get to pass on the scalpel and worse still, in the orthopedic OPD, you try your best to keep holding someones heavy legs, which seems to betray you at every moment!

So, somewhere people like me, esp the first generation doctors, who thought, the day we pass out from the medical school, everybody will start treating us with awe and wonder, we will become rich and famous soon, started a process of disillusionment which seemed to deepen by the day! We felt small and let down when we saw our school mates, who got in to engineering, started to earn hefty packets soon after graduation while we were searching for redemption in a successful lumbar puncture or may be by taking out blood samples of 100 patients in a day. And on top that, the only hope to get out of this routine was to qualify for a post graduate exam for which you are supposed to outperform thousands of equally brilliant doctors for one seat! Isn't it all sheer madness!

OK, so is it all about a mad bleak picture for which I started to write this blog? Not at all. Contrary to whatever you might have thought after reading till this, I am very happy to be a doctor. Yes, it is true that I don't actively see patients everyday as my chosen field of work does not so demand, but I have come a long way from a very scary winter night some fifteen years back,when I was scared when my father was having an asthma attack and I could not fathom what to do, or a day when I used to be scared if somebody in my home fell ill. I am scared no more. I know how to reach out to many in pain, in illness. My friends and colleagues who actively work in the clinics, most of them somehow or the other feel redeemed (apart from the monetory redemption ;-) ) at the end of a hard day's work. For me, I work in a domain which allows me to help the process of new drug development in a minuscule way and I know every medicine is a hope for somebody somewhere, someday.

Yes, I love my profession. Today, all the madness of five years and beyond of my medical education makes absolute sense to me. I have no regrets and I am proud to be a doctor. One of my colleagues passed me a beautiful quote yesterday and I am copying the same here:

"For Years we pore over black and white,

The pages may blur but not our sight.

For we have a vision of the serpents and the wand,

The sign of healing under which we bond.

so here's to all who sail the same boat,

united in our goal by the same white coat"

Cheers to being a doctor!

Social and Unsocial networking!

I have often wondered if all the buzz about social networking sites mean that we are really becoming more social! Are we sort of bonding more with one another! May be across the boundaries of cities/countries/religion/age! Is it kind of the way John Lennon says "Imagine there is no country/it's not hard to do. Nothing to kill or die for/and no religion too/Imagine all the people/living life in peace".

How I wish that was true. But well, I don't think so. I think somehow somewhere, "social networking" has the potential to make us more unsocial! For many of us, who do not like to face reality and like to live in a virtual world, these places give a perfect hide out! Its a make believe situation, a place where you can fool yourself! For example, you have a lot of friends in your list, but how many of them are really your friends! How many of them will turn up in the middle of the night if you call them in the middle of a crisis. With how many of them you will even want to share your tears! Not many, I guess. So what is the point! "Society"/"friends" are supposed to be a kind of support system isn't it?

In this age of consumerism, thanks to our highly fashionable hi-tech cell phones or the laptops and palm tops etc it seems that "we are connected to our friends all the time". But I fear in the midst of all this, we are actually losing the connection with the real people. The real 'friends' you know, the people who matter! People like your mom, dad or may be your husband or wife or may be your siblings/cousins or may be even your neighbours! Well, they wont post a comment on your latest snazzy snap or wont even "poke/scrap" you but aren't they the ones who are supposed to matter!

I have even seen young couples who after coming back from a hard day's work from office, instead of talking to each other, spend the rest of the evening in social networking sites! It relaxes them! Call me old fashioned, but aren't they wasting precious time which they could have used to bond with each other- in a meaningful way perhaps! After all, Life is finite. Kya pata kal ho na ho!

I have heard often times that keeping "relation with relatives" is really challenging. They tend to judge you, not care for you, are prone to jealousy etc etc. Which unfortunately is all true! But well, that is how we human beings are! Our virtual friends if happen to become "real" somehow will also show exactly the same colours. It is difficult to generalize. There are good people and there are bad people- whether they are virtual or real! It is your luck I guess as to whom you come across. But unless you are ready to invest your time, take a bit of risk and come out of your insecurities how will you ever find out!


Don't get me wrong, I am not at all against of any of the social networking sites. I myself have found many of my old friends through them, which otherwise would have been impossible. The social networking in the form of my blog helps me share my thoughts with many people (people who matter though:-)) I also quite admire the fact that you can actually come across so many people who perhaps share the same interest and that gives a platform to share your thoughts with them. It is amazing how it can help you when you feel lonely too! But I am also certain that like everything else, if we do not know how to use it, it will actually make us more unsocial, more isolated and perhaps sometimes even lonelier!
What do you think!

Women and their day!

Yes you are right. I am talking about Women's day! Well, you see International women's day came and went; not that it altered anything in my life, but the day, the associated events did give rise to enough thoughts in my mind to feel compelled to come back to my blog :)

My friends (and foes) often call me a 'feminist'; sometimes as a rebuke, sometimes as a criticism and rarely as a compliment. Earlier, I used to oppose vehemently to this, as generally I am opposed to this idea of getting tagged with any particular "ism", but these days I let it be. I know whatever I say or do wont really change their thoughts or their interpretation(as if anybody is interested to interpret) of my thoughts. So I am sure nobody will be surprised by my blog topic! :-)

Well coming to the point, I am hugely averse to the idea of "women's day". It makes me feel I belong to a "endangered species" to say the least. I mean, if we are almost(if not completely) same as our men folk, then why we need to celebrate specially my gender? Well, they don’t have a 'men's day" for that matter and they don’t seem to mind that very much either! Or is it some way of rubbing it in that the rest 364 days are actually men's days? The answer eludes me, but if you get the answer, do share!

Now my critics tell me that we also celebrate mother's day, father's day and so on and so forth, then what is wrong in a woman's day. But is celebrating a relationship, an emotion same as celebrating one's gender? I leave the question open ended here. There is also another argument that this day signifies the struggles of the 'less privileged' women! I thought even less privileged men face the similar struggles! Then a "less privileged day" would make better sense, wont it?



May be its only fair to give a chance to the companies selling women's products to get a fair chance to push-off their products in the garb of "women's day special sale", but then why pretend of other altruistic philosophies of "celebration for women's economic, political and social achievements"! well..I did not know that achievements can be so generic! Or is it so rare to get a woman achevier that it is something out of the world!

Well, whatever the reason behind it, we do celebrate the International Women's Day. And how we do it! For those of us who work, we were pink sarees (or some other colour for that matter) on that day,(dress up exactly the way men want us to be- the typical baby doll!), cut a cake, play games during office hours and in general make a fool of ourselves? Why? What are we celebrating like this? the generaic status of belonging to the female sex? Reportedly some of the companies even have "fashion shows" and " best dressed woman" contest on that day? Are these activities linked to economic, political and social achievements in any way??? Escapes my sense of logic but yes let me agree that I am may be bit "illogical".

The very fact that we have a woman's day, where I am made to sit through completely unimportant people giving incoherent,irrelevant and chauvinistic speech is a reminder for me that yes, may be still today we are kind of endangered, may be we are not really human, but belong to a separate species! How I dread the woman's day or may be the corporate way of celebrating woman's day every year, which atleast for me brings back the similar routine lunacy almost everytime!

My School : time to say thank you

Its kind of a cliche to write about your school days but none the less I am going to do just the same right now. I think its long overdue. After all it is my e-diary right!!:)


If I tell you that those were the best days of my life, you might say oh come on..that's true for all or most of us..spare us the predictable...well, yes predictable but true and guess what I realized it much later in my life.


During my early years of schooling for some strange (or perhaps not so strange!) reasons I used to be very shy of saying out loud which school I was in. Well you see it was not the most fashionable one in town. It was Bengali medium and to my young mind that was one of the biggest drawbacks that I could ever have had at that time. I was not considered smart as I barely conversed in English, the most important trademark of smart people!!!I nurtured a secret grudge against my parents for getting me admitted there in the first place. For a long time, I always wanted to hide behind others in social gatherings, in my dance school and so on and so forth.


And then something changed. Of course my ever supporting, loving and never demanding family was the reason why I could ever see beyond the mundane but there was something in my school that gave me the power to dream on and make the dreams a reality most of the times.


My School became a platform which made me love myself. The happiness of doing well in exams, the sheer excitement of a school debate or being the 'class monitor' for the first time gave me so much confidence, gave me so much positive energy that I could ignore anything negative that was happening around me. My life was filled with small dreams and aspirations. Dream of speaking in English as well as my "smart" friends, dream of making a mark for my self, dream of becoming an individual with straight spine.


So many things have touched me so deeply during my school days that even today I become completely engulfed by the emotions when I look back. This blogpost will become a book if I try to list out what I learned from my school but I think it suffices to say that the learnings went beyond the pages of the books. Some of my teachers (I dont want to name them here) taught me the very meaning of self esteem, they taught me the power of belief in myself and yes they believed in me.


Well it was no Utopia. Its like any other school. There were good teachers who nurtured your talents and there were the bad ones who judged you just by your marks. There were phases when I had many good friends to time when I had no friends! There were people who tried to pull you down especially at the time when you wanted to soar high. But somehow today I can say with pride that the positive energy that I gathered from there far outweighed the negative ones and I can find no better platform to say thank you to my school. Thanks Kamala Girls High School for believing in me. Thanks for giving me wings to fly.

Kolkata:my city of joy

I have always had a very special relationship with Kolkata. This is ofcourse my birthplace and the city where I grew up in and this is also the city from which I have stayed away on and off for some fifteen years now.

Recently I was in Kolkata during the Durga Puja and with a very hungry mind I was capturing whatever was making an impact on my mind. Would be happy to share some of those with my readers.These are some of the moments in which sometimes I laughed at my city, sometimes I sneered at her, sometimes was completely taken aback..sometimes felt connected and at home and sometimes sadly let down. These are merely my observations, I am in no way making a statement on any issues.


My bewilderment with the city started as soon as I reached Dumdum airport from Bangalore, where we were caught off guard when we saw atleast 200 people waiting in the queue for prepaid taxi...well its not really unexpected to see a huge crowd coming to kolkata during the Durga Puja but what shook me was the fact that to deal with this huge crowd there was only one person sitting at one of the taxi booths who could not care any less about the long queue in front of him, which multiplied by the minute due to his extreme slow pace and unique reluctance to make the bill!

Well, quite predictably, we left the queue and came out of the airport to search for any other means of transportation to reach home and we did get a taxi whose driver obliged to take us to our destination but on two conditions..one, he will take other passengers too and two we have to pay double the amount we normally would have paid for the distance. As it was almost 11 at night and we were hungry, sleepy and hopeless we did agree to his terms and hopped in to the taxi thankful that atleast we will reach home the same night, the chances of which were appearing very thin at the pre paid taxi queue.

So far so good...once we got in to the taxi, more surprise were waiting for us, because though I am calling it a taxi it qualifies to be called a "relic of ancient civilization". The black and yellow ambasssador looked atleast 50 years old with a befitting maintainance. I was really thankful to Ma Durga (and to the taxi driver!) that we reached in one piece because all the time we had a feeling that the different parts of the cab are going to be disjointed any moment!!

Once home, things definitely took a turn for the better inspite of the bad heat and humidity of September in Kolkata. The family reunion, the sumptuous meals, the magic of Durga Puja all around us made up for any travel woes that we had.
We had a lovely time visiting some of the puja pandals..so many themes, so much of effort to organize the Puja in a different way, in a special way was really mind boggling. Though I admired almost all the puja pandals that I came across, one really brought a smile on my face. It had the theme of "Darjeeling Ghoom Station"...well in the sweltering heat and humidity I am sure this is called true "wishful thinking"!! :)

My next surprise was waiting in the Oshtomi night (the 3rd day of the Puja..for the uninitiated) when at mid night we had to get up from sleep with a start because the chants of the puja were happening on loud speaker!! At the risk of sounding "unsocial", I had to grumble and crib about the insensitivity of the Puja organizers..I mean devotion would not have been less if the chants were performed off the loud speaker!!

More surprises were waiting for me the next day which was actually the last day of the Durga Puja and yes everybody, including the "unsocial" me was feeling a bit sad. To beat the sadness everybody seemed to extract the last bit of fun and frolic at the Puja pandals. There was this competetion and that, there were songs, dances and drama being presented by even the most 'untalented' of the residents. When it was about midnight and time came to wrap up the show or atleast turn off the microphone I was completely flabbergasted to note that one song was played back to back for three times amidst much cheerings and screamings from all the dadas and boudis, kakas and kakis and ofcourse the kochikachas...and guess what song that was ..It was "Brazil" by Venga boys!!!!!!!!!! Really if the Venga boys only knew!!! Is this called "International Integration" or may be globalization!!

Well I wont bore you much more with my observations and quickly wrap it up by one very startling observation again at the Dumdum airport, this time while we were going back from kolkata. The formal greetings from the crew of the airlines (of either a good morning or have a pleasnt flight or any such regular remarks which we are so wholly accustomed to and take totally for granted!) were conspicuous by their absence! Nobody greeted anybody, there was no formal courtesies exchanged, either at the airport or during the boarding process! Unless ofcourse you are white skinned as one white skinned girl (sorry If I am sounding uncouth, but I do not know her place of origin!) did get wished by a crew member while boarding! Though I think that was because that gave the guy some strange happiness (read kick) to be able to speak to her. What a poor show of hospitality I must say....You might say why I am blaming the city because of this! I should have blamed the airlines instead. But funnily the same airlines crew gave a much professional behaviour when we had taken the flight from Bangalore!

After reading till this some of you must be thinking that I am one of those critics who always crib about Kolkata, always act cynical and like to look down upon my city...well you are wrong.

This is the city where my heart is and perhaps always will be . This is the city that comes in my dreams..this is the city for which I vehemently argue with my non-bong friends when they point out faults with my city..this is the city I boast about when it comes to cultural enrichment....

But this time I was a bit scared..scared to think that are we really lagging behind most other metros!not only in facilities and infrastructrure but also in our attitude to change for the better! Though we are adopting Venga Boys music in our very traditional festivities but we are unable adopt the courtesy, the strive for efficiency of the West in our life..are we pretenting to be laid back in most essential facets of a city which takes it ahead?

Thus my prayers to Ma Durga this time were for Kolkata, my dear city. I pray that may Kolkata be able to preserve the rich cultural tradition that we have and yet adopt the modernity of this age and time. Modernity not only in the choice of clothes and music and such superficility but modernity in a much deeper and meaningful way so that it can truely be called the "city of joy" as it once was and still is in all proud kolkatan's mind.

The damsel in distress syndrome

Yesterday while I was going back from office, my eyes fell upon few college girls trying to cross a very busy road.Well, crossing a busy road in the midst of busy traffic can always be challenging..nothing extraordinary in this observation till now..what was extraordinary was that they were somehow struggling more than that was normal for their age...holding hands..pushing each other..smiling shyly..Somehow there was an air of "damsel in distress" all around them. It made me wonder that were all of them really inept in crossing roads or is it a social conditioning that we, women are still in that "damsel in distress" mode..waiting for our knight in shining armour to come and rescue us from a tight spot!
This might be a stray incident but I have noticed this time and again. Some women find it difficlut to change the tube light at their home or some find it extremely trying to plan or even to think of their investments and so on and so forth . I mean these things dont really need physical strength right?
I agree that there is a sweet charm when you are taken care of but should that become a compulsion? Its not the girls or women to blame. Somewhere isnt it a social conditioning that makes us feel glorified in small ineptitudes and inefficiencies?