Kusum Choppra

Why is crying de rigeur at marriages? Hardly is the wedding over and the whole company dissolves in tears. Not just the bride, but her entire family and entourage, some even sobbing away, for the entire world as if some major tragedy has befallen then. Yes, there are many to whom marriage is nothing but an unmitigated disaster. Why then marry in the first place? And the usual run-of-the-mill marriage arranged or love match, is arranged well before hand, much anticipated with flurries of shopping and rituals and glamour and giggling. Why then these tears? Are the tears not an insult to the groom and his family? That the entire bridal party is taking for granted that they are going torture the bride, so the apprehension over her leaving home, never mind the glamorous trappings. If it is a stranger and the bride is walking away into an unknown entity, some apprehension is warranted. But What if the bride is getting married of her own free will, to a guy she loves? The cryin...

For those of us, footsoldiers of Women's Lib in varied arenas of family and friends, authorities in school, college, public life and work places, Women's Lib then was a quest for an equal space under the sun, the right to do what one desired, rather than submit to ancient stereotypes. Is it therefore not painful to see the next generation lapsing so easily? There are those who tamefully hand over hard won freedoms to dissolute husbands who have become tyrannical because they themselves are frightened by the challenge of the confident women in their workspaces. And then there are those who cheerfully step on the heads of their hubbies, mouthing vacuous Women's Lib lines and rudely defy all social norms and graces. Was the movement not about giving women choices, rather than having them take the same tinpot despot road that males have taken over the unchallenged centuries and run society into the ground? And between these two extremes, whatever happened to equal rights and r...

One hears such inanities on newschannels. There was this anchor who tried very hard to convince everyone that any strike at the terror training camps in POK would be disastrous all round. REASON ? If India attacks Pakistan from the east, it would withdraw its troops from the Northwest to cope with the invasion. Didn't they have a large enough army for both fronts, when they can afford to export units of their army to other countries? The net result, it was argued, would be that Taliban/AlQuaida would walk into Pakistan with impunity. Aren't they there already,in any case? So India must sit on its hands while Pakistani "non state players' strike at will anywhere in the country? Condoleeza Rice was brought in to bolster the no-strike theory: that she came to specifically advise against any IAF strike againt the terror training camps in POK. So what's new? Is that not what the US has been doing for decades since Paksitan became its client state? Holding back India to...

Terrorists are not just those that fight with guns; they could just sabotage your relationships and may be your bank balances too. Last week was my encounter with a cyber terrorist. He hacked into my yahoo account and sent out a serial mail hoping to fleece as many of the unawares as possible in my address book. In the midst of my Diwali spring cleaning I got a series of insistent SMSes from a dear friend Rashmi, asking me where I was. When I called, she immediately told me very clear-headedly to change my password immediately as the account had been hacked and told me about the begging mail. The amazing mail, supposedly written from London, stated that I had been robbed of all my cash, cards and luggage and needed 1200 pounds immediately to clear a hotel bill and come back home. Fortunately for me, although the mail sounded plaintive enough, those familiar with my writing style caught on immediately: the style was not mine! The password was immediately changed. In the process, the i...

Karva Chauth is supposed to be a joyous occasion. It is another matter of course that it can border on the ludicrous on its silver screen version – Glitzy sets and huge, laden tables for a Hindu, vegetarian version of an Iftar party, and that curious, perfectly round water body specially created for the event. Anyone who has actually kept the fast knows that real life is quite different. Dressing up is probably the best part of the tedious fast, but making it through the puja and waiting for the moon to rise takes up all the remaining energy. How many actually have the vigor for partying either before or after that? Part of the fun is to gather in a circle to complete the thalis ritual before sunset. Every family has its own hoary tradition (hamare wahan to aisa hi hota hai) of what to do with the diya which is lit on the thali. Most families have one diya, while others have two, one of which goes over the woman’s shoulder after the puja. How would that be possible on the glitzy party ...

These days viewers are flood with ads steering them to the many mythologicals on TV with the tag line “ teach the kids sanskar “, especially from the Ramayan. Now, let’s get a bird’s eye view of some of what the Ramayan and the Mahabharat have to teach our kids: Those dirty old men like Dashrath and Shantanu had so little control over themselves that they went to any extent, made any promises with disastrous political impact for their countries, merely to bed the next nubile young woman who caught their fancy. The net result was that Ram spent 14 years wandering the forest, making conquest after conquest there and returned home to dump his pregnant wife so he could get on with ruling his kingdom. (Wonderful family planning since she never got pregnant during the jungle sojourn). Divorce goes a long way back in our society, does it not? So does deceit in the manner in which Ram dealt with Sigrid; and the rewards of family disloyalty with the way Ram received the brother of Ravan. In...

Is a bureaucrat babu’s blood redder or more precious than than of a soldier? IFS Officer V Venkateshwara Rao and Brigadier Ravi Dutt Mehta were both killed in the suicide bomb attack on the Indian Embassy in Kabul earlier this week. While the Army Officer’s widow will get RS 5 lakh ex-gratia and normal pension benefits as per existing government rules, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has announced special benefits for the widow of the IFS Officer: Rs. 5 lakhs ex-gratia, plus full salary benefits, including due upward revisions when due, until his date of retirement and pension thereafter, with government accommodation until his date of retirement. But for the PM’s intervention, she would have got only the pension and other benefits. One has full sympathy for the young widow, ditto for the Brigadier’s and those of the two ITBP officials who were also killed in the bomb attack. But the question does arise: Why the special package only for the IFS widow? Is Fauji blood thinner than a Babu’...

Whither Technology? Any visit to a doctor, with the most innocuous of ailments, is inevitably followed by a series of tests, the path. Lab., X-ray House, ECG etc. etc. until the results come in, the doc will offer some palliative only, A Placebo? Why do modern day docs, after all those exhaustive training, 6 years for MBBS, 2 for MD and then another three for the M.CH, still require the crutch of various test results to tell the patient what the problem is? Where are those who used to tell the patient the problem by looking at their eyes or ears, fingers, nails or feeling the pulse? Nowadays “qualified” doctors rely on the verdict of a lab. technician to determine the problem of the patient!! It seems the advent of technology has rendered doctors quite clueless in their own arenas. In a related one, investigators rely more and more on forensic science’s advanced tools in brain mapping and lie detectors…only to have people still beat their systems. Are they actually so out of touch with...

This is the dry season. Summer’s heat keeps most indoors, glued to the TV screens which have turned dry too. All the soaps are at a virtual standstill. It is painfully obvious that their script writers are stumped and don’t know what to do with their characters. On the so-called reality shows scene, the less said the better about the imagination of people who turn music which is supposed to usher in peace and quiet and restoration of the soul, into Wars of Music. The language spoken by their propagandists makes one reach for the mute button, rather than listening to the war mongering of Music. Movies are a let down with all producers latching on to identical themes of 2-3-4 heroes performing ridiculous antics, with the heroines reduced to bit players of no substance. What happened to all those multiplex movies and the song writers and musicians? Has Indian talent dried up, along with the influx of the American league style cricket which monopolizes evening TV? Who will now contest ...

Almost twenty five years ago, I had once helped a teacher friend to correct exam papers. Those were the days before centralized examining of papers was done and the aim of the exercise was to finish off the work to head for a movie. At the end of the session, I was astounded to find that out of a class of 48, a handful passed the exam; three scored around 60% and all the rest failed, many scoring less than ten marks. The question that came to my mind then was: Who's to blame for this result, the students or the teacher? Today the same question rises with a Pune report that only 10% of some 1.25 lakh teachers of Std. 1 to 7 could answer all the questions in the English and Math books at a workshop conducted by the State Council for Educational Research. What does this speak of our educational standards and the teachers who impart that education? This is not to criticize our system per se. There has to be something going for our system of education which allows planeloads of our youn...

This morning, a TV headline read “US eyes Afghanistan again”. Why is the US again eyeing Afghanistan? Since the politics of the Taliban and al Qaeda has already been exposed fully, there is now a lesson in international economics there. The US got over its Great Depression, largely thanks to the influx of orders for its industry during the Second World War. The end of the War saw the US Aid Industry give its economy an unbelievable boost which lasted well into the Cold War and made it the richest country in the world, along with conferring its Super Powerdom. It was only when countries flooded with US aid which brought them American goods and took away their resources and their sovereignty, started rejecting that aid that the US economy started taking a sharp downturn. The largely man-made wastes in Africa, along with war torn Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Afghanistan and Iraq are living witness to American misadventures. The American economy has now touched its pits possibly. Hence th...

Last week, the editor of a TV channel took pains to explain that these channels are driven to focus on single scandal stories per day because of the tyranny of TRPs. Editors, these days are too busy taxing from seminar to seminar while their journalists are PR fed and feted and given handouts. TRPs he says rule the roost and decide the story and the TRPs reveal that people only want gossip about celebrities and little else. Obviously he was unable to explain why TRPs only reflected the tastes of selected households whose opinions were created to give legitimacy to the decisions taken by channel editors et all. Does this channel preoccupation with celebrity gossip and the issues of the well heeled to the total exclusion of the Other India or Bharat as they tend to call it, not sound very much like India taking a steep downturn? History is replete with examples of great cultures which are struck down soon as the ruling elites become too preoccupied with their pleasures, pastimes and lu...

Shreesanth may be a junior but is he really that ignorant about the realities of cricket, especially big time cricket, that he has taken pungas with the senior players? Every cricket novice knows that that even after “seniors” finally retire, they still carry enough clout to wreck any promising junior via their new avatars in the commentary boxes, the bak bak panels or the selection committees. Remember Shivaramakrishna, who has only recently started being seen again? Just because M S Dhoni got away with keeping the seniors out of his Twenty20 team, can every young player follow on against those holy cows? While the world and his wife is shouting from the roof top that corruption has to be eliminated from the bureaucracy, it is obvious that corruption is making new inroads. Witness the senior players carrying on despite injuries, bad health etc. Why? All because of the lolly obviously. The older they get, the heftier are their advertising contracts and the longer their obligations to...

The rape victim at Patan has been fully exposed - all except her name is public knowledge: the names of her parents, her siblings, the village they come from. What about the six rapists? The media has only revealed their names. Not a single fact beyond that. Are they married? Fathers? Brothers? Who are the parents who reared such evil rapists? Who are their neighbours, their school and college mates, their seniors at Gandhinagar who shielded them, right upto Anandiben Patel, the former education minister of Gujarat? Why is not media not camping on their respective doorsteps, asking questions of their neighbrs on what sort of boys were they? their teachers, the paan galla from where they bought their cigarettes and masala? their brothers, sisters, wives etc? Some shrug of media responsibility, saying that police has not revealed their details. Is it not the job of the media to track down the culprits? The female has been identified and crucified effectively already, hasn't she? N...

In the "good ole days" if a customer had a complaint, he went and talked it over with the businessmen or manufacturer. Nowadays, entrepreneurs and corporate types do not like to converse or meet with customers. Hence the emergence of a brand new management category "Customer Care Service". These employees are trained to stonewall the customers, rather bludgeon them into silent acceptance of whatever the corporate dishes out to them. Practical experience has shown that the customer care department is the first to be outsourced to the anonymity of call centers whose employees are almost totally ignorant of everything except a few standard unhelpful phrases and sentences the purpose of which is that the entire financial burden of the inefficiency of the company must be borne by the customer for having committed the fatal mistake of purchasing the company's wares. It would be interesting to read this translated into corporate managementese.

How many of you have seen the new HDFC Pension Plan ad; the one in which this gent comes home and hopes that his wife has not forgotten how to sweep and swab," get rid> of that house help"; and that he will happily eat what she makes, " just get rid of the cook ". And then comes the punch line: all this is in aid of a little trip to Singapore, which makes Wifey all dew-eyed. Now my guess is that only a Man could have written this advertisement. Tell me, how many plus 50 women (after all, if he is retiring, even she must be that much), staring arthritis, osteoporosis, diabetes and/or BP in the face, would go dewy eyed at the prospect of a return to back ache and elbow grease? In the cause of a week in Singapore? Did this guy even ask his wife if she was willing to the exchange? A week in Singapore against two odd decades of sweeping, swabbing and kitchen chores? And what does HDFC pensions have to do with this little dirty deal? After all it is the wife who...