Psychedelic Slippers

As a student with some of the best grades in class, I grew up with a lot of dreams. I remember dad always pushing me to dream bigger. I’m sure am not the only one who grew up this way. Since school we are always pushed to perform better (girls, boys alike). Through high-school, college, parents fuss over grades (as we gradually begin to let go of them). Not only academics, personality development is also emphasized upon, you are encouraged to be a part of myriad extra-curricular activities. The general idea is to make you not just academically brilliant, but smart, outspoken and in general an overall genial being. What do you want to be? We hear this question over and over. Then we are bombarded with the big word “career”, and we knock doors in search of career guidance.After all this, when we have graduated and settled with our job we are said to have begun our career, or laid the foundation stone for the rest of our life (in most cases, besides those who plunge back into academics...

"It's in my genes!!!" How often have we used this as an excuse, especially when we don’t want to change something, (be stubborn). It’s an easy way out. Genes are what you are made up of at a micro-micro level and since that’s what you are born with, there’s no way to change it. We use this as an excuse for overweight (underweight), for bad hair, even our moodswings and tempers. But do our genes determine our behavior? We learn, we evolve, when it comes to behaviour, it’s not cause it is somewhere in our genetic makeup but its cause of the way we have grown up to be. There is no gene for chauvinism, neither for ego-centrism, envy, and temper. How we react, respond or behave can be attributed first to our maturity at that point of time, and secondly our past experience. Just like we aren’t born with pre-defined destinies, we aren’t born with pre-defined behavior. A child that grows up seeing quibbles and fights is likely to be short tempered just as a child that grows up...

There comes a time in everyone’s life, when you begin to see the other side… and life as you know it is changed forever. “Marriage” After you’ve grown up to be a certain age, suddenly everyone’s obsessed about marriage. Then begins the “Big Search” from matrimonial sites, to random suggestions from family n friends, you undergo one of the most grueling phases of your life, sometimes even worse than job search. I used to laugh at the old movies where the girl comes with a tea tray in shivering hands to sit coyly in a corner infront of the “ladkewale”… sadly it still happens. I thought times had changed, yes they have, they don’t ask you to sing any more. That’s it …. Rest all, observations, speculation, analysis, goes on just as before. “Wedlock” is reduced to a well calculated choice… like buying a car. 1.        You wanna buy a car, you check up for various models. You check snapshots. 2.        You shortlist some...

**I tried to put it all in one post... but it didn fit in well, so here's the first installment. you might wonder what i am trying to get at by the end.. but please wait til the next one...** If we look back in time, to the days of Rajas and Maharajas, we’ll find many women that stand strong. Then may it be Rani Lakshmibai or Jijabai… not only were they well educated and adept to stand amongst strong men (strong here implying by valour and stature) but they were also very independent women, who took decisions that shaped not only the destinies of their families but history as we know it. Somewhere along time the trend reversed, women took a backstep, and their role in society was diminished to merely home-makers (I am not undermining the task of home-makers here, it is indeed a huge task). Men earned the bread, women served it. It is said education empowers you. In the pre-independence era many prejudices plagued the society, one of them was the social inequality faced...