Reflections through my lens

“100% success – download kundali matching app now” says an sms that I received this morning. It’s the marriage season again and even though we are in the twenty first century, the kundali matching business continues to flourish in this season. It has definitely become more technical with computerized kundalis made in seconds and reports being available online. There are mobile apps for this as well.   As per a UNICEF study 2 years back, 90% of marriages in India are arranged. Most of the hindu arranged marriages begin with the kundali matching as the first step as this system is considered the perfect way to predict a successful marriage. We can accordingly imagine the magnitude of the kundali matching industry. The kundali matching often leads to discovery a lot of doshas (ill effects of star placement) and pandits make a lot of money helping people going through ceremonies to get rid of these doshas.    For the uninitiated, please refer to the description of gun m...

The cleaning lady wanted me to fill some forms for her so that she could get an identity card for working in the apartment. She gave me her voter’s card and asked me to copy details from it. Slightly bewildered, I looked at the card twice. Her name on it said R….a Bewa. “Bewa” means widow in Urdu and I found it odd  for someone to have a family name like that. When I asked her she told me that her husband passed away a few years back and since then in all the official documents her surname is written as Bewa. When he was alive she used to write her name as R…a Bibi. I was stunned. It was a tragic reflection of marital status overshadowing a woman’s identity. After the initial shock, I brushed it off as something that perhaps still resides in a certain economic strata. After all, the women around me have moved on from the evident stamps of wearing a chooda, sindoor and bichuwa to declare their marital status to the world. They don’t even change their surnames after marriage...

Last week I went to watch a movie with my mum and while coming out she needed some help to walk down the slope. A young man standing next to her noticed her extending her hand to seek support and kindly held her hand and helped her get down the slope amongst the jostling crowd.   A friend recently posted on FB that she was proud of her husband helping someone who had a heart attack in a restaurant where they were dining. Few years back, we were in a multi - storey building when an earthquake struck and as we rushed down, we were surprised to be one of the only two families who had brought our pet dog down along with us. The rest had left their pets behind. What’s so special about these incidents that make them worth mentioning?   These are simple acts of compassion that are waning away from our lives. Stand in front of the elevator of a mall on a busy weekend and you will see people pushing each other without even considering if there is an elderly person, a wom...

Yesterday, a friend’s facebook status talked about her turning into a paranoid parent who is afraid to trust anyone. This was a reaction to the news of a 4 year old being raped by her school bus conductor. I could not agree with her more. Every morning, the plethora of murders, rapes and robberies reported only adds to the fear. There is a lot of discussion in the last month on why do people not stop on the road to help victims. Is it just because of the fear of going to the police? Or is it a much deeper rooted fear of our own safety when we see someone trying to stop the car on the road as a result of the repeated stories we have heard of people being stopped on the road on the pretext of an accident or a person in need of help and then being robbed or killed. “Keep the car door locked, do not open the window even if someone knocks”, most of us would have received and given this advice to our near and dear ones.   Around 3 years ago, while driving my cousin to her exam c...

Film buffs are ditching long queues at the cinema to watch movies online. This continues to be debated in India due to internet bandwidth issues and online piracy. But is it just that which still makes 28% of Indian adults go to the cinema halls*? Beyond the Dolby digital effects, there is more to the experience of going to watch movies in theatres. “Which is the latest movie that you have seen?” From status updates on social networking sites to the opening  conversation when boy meets girl for the first time, movies continue to bridge the gap of lack of information to build a connection. Other than posting pictures of holidays, the next active thing that most dormant FB users do is post their views on the latest movies they have seen. And of course this comes with the assumption that they watched this movie in the theatre. Who cares about what people have been watching on Tata Sky showcase or have been downloading from the net? Be it...

News headlines and ad campaigns like “Prolonged use of social networking sites makes people unhealthy”, “Hamaare zamaane mein log facebook pe nahin, face to face baatein karte they”, or closer to home, my aunt complaining “nowadays I get to know about you only from my daughter through your facebook updates” are just examples of the widespread notion that social networking sites are making people unhealthy and unsocial. I belong to the so called “facebook” generation (disclaimer – I may use the term facebook here as a general reference to social networking) and I just don’t seem to be getting tired of it. While there is a lot of research published on the advantages/disadvantages of social networking, as a user, what is it that I love so much about it to make me login every day? I recently read in the newspaper that people get a sense of depression and lesser happiness in their own life as they see smiling faces of their friends on social networking sites. Isn’t jealousy inh...

“How long have you been here?” This is a common introductory question that people ask. My response has typically been “a few years” which leads to a surprised “you seem to be pretty settled” comment often followed by an advice or a question like “X is a wonderful place to stay, my cousin loves it” or “My friend had a big problem in Y city, didn’t you face this issue?” The conversation typically ends with “do you plan to settle here forever?” Is there a place to settle forever? Is there one place that addresses our changing priorities over time? Why do people from the same background experience the same place differently? As a small kid when my parents decided to move from a big city in eastern India to a smaller one in the northern part of the country, I was excited. What made a difference to me then was that there would be a lot of cousins and we would all go the same school. For those teenage years there couldn’t have been a better place to settle in. We had relatives around, ...