un-understanding women

To the men of the world, can you please stop getting shocked everytime I…

..rave about superhero movies, and romcoms with equal fervor. I hate to be the one to break this to you, but all superhero movies are romantic at heart. ALL of them. And incidentally, the men in these movies have sculpted greek-god type bodies, dress so stylishly, are faithful to the women they love…What’s not to like?!

..check out GQ with more enthusiasm than Vogue. I’m happier looking at new gadgets that make me feel like I’m in the future already, and checking out eye candy. It is far more appealing than being told that all things stylish for women come in size zero and snow-white skin.

..get ready in less than 10 minutes. I take long when I feel like it, but I don’t need to take 2 hours to look good. There’s only so much patience even we have when it comes to ‘dressing up’.

..have colors other than pink in my wardrobe. Even if I don’t, who are you to comment, Mr. white-shirt-black-shirt-blue-tee-end-of-wardrobe?

..know stuff about my car other than its color. I can drive, and parallel park. And I don’t use the rear view mirror to fix my make-up. Women and cars are not always oil and water. Get over it.

..order a scotch on the rocks, and also don’t assume I only have cosmopolitans. I can enjoy a drink as much as you guys, and probably have a better estimate of my tolerance & capacity than you do – not all women are two-drink-teresas.

..enthusiastically follow a sport. Whether it’s soccer or formula 1 or cricket. Who says men have dibs on enjoying sports? A lot of women genuinely follow sporting events (and not just ogle at good lookers on field). It doesn’t make us any less girly.

..genuinely do not have issues if my boy has a boys’ night out. Clingy is for sandwich wraps. My space, your space and our space are different, and it’s healthy.

..play console games. And I don’t mean Mario or Angry Birds or any other kiddie stuff. First and third person shooter games are as stress busting for women as they are for men!

..tell you that I don’t like sales, or that I actually have enough shoes and/or bags.Ok I’ll admit, the only explanation for such statements is that women don’t always mean what they say.

Just stop getting shocked stupefied mystified surprised with things we do and or say! Stop trying to understand women in general and spend some time understanding the woman in front of you.

snipity snap

Ask a girl to get ready for an evening out, and 9 times out of 10 she will tell you, "Ok, give me some time I need to wash my hair." Take any make-over show on television, without the hair styling / cut, the before-after look will almost be before-before! But what I don't understand is why are people (ok, I mean women) ready to spend much time and effort on their wardrobe and accessories, , and yet so very reluctant to experiment with hair cuts.

My hair dresser would agree with me - much to her dismay. She loves cutting my hair because I get bored of my look every 12-18 months and make her do something different. The first time I went to her and said, 'go short' she literally jumped up and down in glee! Most of her clients are just not ready to try new looks. I got a new cut last week and came away looking like a completely different person. I love that feeling - waking up the day after a new cut, and almost not recognizing the person in the mirror!

In the spirit of adventure, and to help you answer the "when was the last time you did something for the first time" moments, try telling your hair-dresser to go wild! What's the worst that could happen..a few weeks of weird looks from folks? The need to change again soon? It's your own hair that grows and grows on its own. For all you know, you may end up looking better than you have in years, or younger or more fun.

Don't you get bored of looking in the mirror and seeing the same hair every day every week every week every month every year....

Waking up, in an iPhone world

Ok, so I recently upgraded my iPhone 4 with the latest software that Apple dished out. One of the cool new features of the iOS 6 is that I can chose a song from my phone memory as the alarm tone. Oh the joy! (Yes, I know. We iPhone users get ridiculous amounts of joy from features that other phones have had for decades, but that's alright.)

But much to my dismay, it isn't easy to chose a song to wake up to! I started with a soothing one, and one of my go-to songs whenever I'm in a happy mood - Pehla Nasha from the classic Jo Jita Wohi Sikander. It starts off with some piano strains and builds up from there with dreamy voices and imagery of Aamir Khan (a young chocolate boy Aamir, no less) jumping over hedges in slow motion... errrrr... wrong choice, wrong choice, wrong choice. Next morning, I heard the song, smiled to myself, got more cosy and snuggly in my blanket and promptly went back to sleep for an extra hour.

I then thought I'd try something peppier to get myself going with some early morning positive energy - U2's Beautiful Day. What better way to wake up than Bono crooning it's a beautiful day, don't let it get away! But alas, this one failed too. I heard the whole song, then put the alarm on snooze to hear it again after 9 minutes. And did this a few times to finally realize I'm late again.

My last effort was to put something jarring that I don't enjoy at all so that I'm forced to get out of bed. Unfortunately, none of the songs on my playlist seemed to have the desired 'ewww turn that off' reaction. Obviously, why would they? It's my play list after all. So I went and downloaded title track from the movie Love Sex aur Dhoka since it starts with a lunatic screaming 'Dishkyaun! Tujhe goli marunga...' The next morning, I almost threw my phone out the window. And then spent the whole day snapping at people and having vivid mental images of shooting them with my fore-finger pistol - Dishkyaun! Dishkyaun!

I'm back now to my horrible clanging alarm which is the default on the iPhone. That seems to be the only way my brain registers that I need to get out of bed and get back to the normal waking world. The peppy and happy mood songs are back to being played on the iPod dock once I'm wide awake (and the jarring ones are too, not so jarring when you're not in dream-land it seems). May be that's why Apple didn't give this option to us in the first place.

Is there a wake up song that works for you? Do tell.

enough of the disappointed Shopping Bags

The age of online shopping seems to be finally arriving in India. Yay! I'm completely in love with the trend and wholeheartedly shout out to everyone to try it. So many advantages.. It's cheaper than store shopping, saves time when you're looking for the not-everyone-has-that things, the joy when the courier guy rings the bell at 3 in the afternoon and it's not just another bank newsletter!

But, despite the advantages, there's always a darker side to every online story. Here's why I stopped shopping from some specific sites - the so called "exclusive" online sales. The sites in question are FashionAndYou, 99labels and BrandMile. I know there are others out there which offer a similar proposition, but to the best of my knowledge these were among the pioneers for the Indian shop-oholic.

The concept of these stores is amazing. They get exclusive merchandise from luxury brands and retail them at throwaway prices. How exciting is it to log on to a website that is retailing your favorite brands (some that aren't even available in India) at 60% off, 70% off? The reason they are able to sell them (apparently) is because (a) they don't have warehousing costs as they only take items from the manufacturer once they have confirmed orders from their sales, (b) well… there is no other reason that I could find officially. While the initial few orders I made from these sites were quite satisfactory, my faith in these sites is now in negative territory. Here's why..

1. I dont trust the genuineness of the product. A logical mind would say that 70% off will mean either there is a defect in the product or it isn't an original. All of the bags and shoes I bought are definitely no-where close to the quality of the brands they are supposedly from. Take a trip to Bangkok, and be told by a sales-girl in a proper shop how her artisans work so hard to "imitate the original, see the zipper with the brand embossed, see the stitching" etc and you'll know what I mean.

2. They take f.o.r.e.v.e.r. to deliver the goods. I understand that it is because of the way they function (sale first, and take product from manufacturer later). But it is tedious to wait for a month and a half when there are other sites these days that deliver the next day.

3. The worst after-sale service (after Sony, but that's a different rant all together). Because of point number 2 above, sometimes you forget what you had ordered! Happened with me once - I ordered a few beauty products and took delivery of the package five weeks hence. After a few months, I was just browsing through old mail and realized that I had ordered 4 products, and they delivered only 3. In a way, it is my fault for being so forgetful and non-meticulous, but I was disappointed. And in case (as it happens so often) the size of your clothes is off, you can kiss your money good-bye. Refunds (if at all) take 2-3 months. The onus for returning the product is on you. The sale is long gone, so you can't exchange the product either. Everything is just so painful.

4. Where is the luxury?? The products and brands started off as luxury, but have now become run-of-the-mill. Sometimes not even high-street brands. The unique proposition is long lost.

So now, when I'm looking for a sale on regular brands, I'll just go on the brand website directly. Some other fun online shops are run by the folks at Fabulloso! or BuyNBrag. I even like UrbanLadder, DoneByNone and FabFurnish. Of course, the Flipkarts and Junglees of the world do a great job too! 

These sites give me the important things - an assurance of the quality and genuineness of the product, commitment on delivery timelines, ability to exchange things I don't like and (most of the times) cash-on-delivery as an option.

And no more trudging through traffic on the streets and in the shops during the sale season? Yes please, I'll take one of that in every color of happiness!!

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Catch my earlier writings at My other blog