The not-so-secret diary

And that too 'India's Number One Fairness Cream'. Mind you the advert outside the suburban rail station had such a big picture of you and those very words in Font Size 150 that I could not even spot what brand it was representing ! Now understandably, in a country obsessed with the colour of skin, the one cosmetic that probably out-sells all is the ubiquitous fairness cream. Till very recently these creams were mainly targeted at young women. Guaranteed to make you super-fair in 3 weeks and help you grab a husband instantly. It has never ceased to amaze me how deep-rooted the desire for 'fair women' who would generate 'fair offspring' is. I think recently someone realised that ... err.... maybe you need both the woman and the man to be light-skinned to be (somewhat) guaranteed that they will generate light-skinned offspring ! Heading back a couple of centuries, it appears we were a civilisation of brown to dark-brown folk. And then came the invasions ...

Window seats have always held a great fascination for me whether in a car, a bus, a train or a plane. As a child I would watch the city whiz past me in the car. As a teenager the grilled window of the train was not just for viewing the passing scenery but also for buying the ‘kuladh-waali chai’, tasty pakoras and fruits from stations on the way. On the bus to college, the window seat was a key prize. If you kept your bag smartly just by your side on your right, then you could be safe from those ‘falling’ men- Ugh. On the plane, it’s the shapes of the clouds from the little airplane window that first caught my imagination. When older I was mesmerised by the birds’ eye view of cities during landing and take-off. But that was my phase of near-innocent bliss. Windows now bring to me a mix of joy and anxiety. No longer do I want to be looking out of the car window straight into the eyes of the young 8-year old trying valiantly to sell fashion magazines or books, or dusting clo...

Security Code You know those the squiggly security codes, that pop up when you try to register in all sorts of places on the web, designed to verify that you are ‘human’ and not a ‘machine’? Aren't they incredibly hard to decipher? Some of them are so tough that you begin to doubt yourself and think….."Umm am I really human? And do I need to go back to Primary School as the shape of these letters and numbers is looking very strange indeed, even if I read it sideways?" Some of them have the ‘audio’ option. It makes you wonder, if the alphabets are blue and wave-like, will the audio sound like someone gurgling under water? Email Vs Indian Bureaucracy Its funny how most of the time you need an email to get a new email. Reminds me of the Indian bureaucracy in many ways. You need a photo-id to get a photo-id, you need a bank account to get a bank account, you need a credit card to another credit card. Of course if you are smart, then you would have figured out tha...

This is not the average winter temperature in Ol’ Blighty that I refer to. It is the much studied ‘six degrees of separation’ theory. And the kick I got at chopping 3 degrees off it this morning. It all started with the daily chit-chat with my ‘kaamwaali bai’ or cleaning lady. Her friend is the ‘koodewaali bai’ or house-garbage collector. And this 2 nd bai picks up rubbish daily at Shahrukh’s house. Oh yeah I totally call him by first name now that I’m technically a neighbour on Mount Mary Road in Bandra ;-) That's Shahrukh Khan- King of Bollywood for those who still haven’t heard of him. So essentially that’s 3 degrees of separation with Mr Khan. Jai Ho to the world of bai s! Now getting to 2 degrees will be dead easy, all I have to do is befriend the koodewaali bai directly. But one degree… hmmm….. no I’m not planning to disguise myself as her and pick up his rubbish. Really there have to be some limits to celebrity-voyeurism. I've never been a groupie of any sor...