Rhetorical Woman

Good morning.
It felt good to wear a saree again, without feeling bits of me freezing over.
To step lightly over pavements and potholes, with a smile, because I knew the sari loves me, and I love the saree.
To hum a song in my heart while I am walking, about the effect a flowing pallu has, on people, a song in the movie 'Maasoom', by Bhupinder Singh.
To know that there were women ang girls who felt they should wear one, too, but didn't feel they could.
To realise that even though it was six yards of unstitched cloth, it made me feel more secure than any other outfit stitched to perfection.
To wonder again at people who ask me, when they see me in a saree, why I was dressed formally. I am not. Indeed, I am not. A saree is my most informal of clothes. It flows around me. It loves me. I love it.
To remember the severity of another woman who told me disapprovingly that I am 'doubly seducing' when I wear a saree. She thought it was not conducive to the dignity of a teacher. She thought that since we were in a 'noble' profession, we needed to conform. She preferred the pleated pallu. I hate it. She thought it lent more value to a teacher's role. I did not.
She tried.
I resisted.
Did I follow?
Do I ever?
I preferred flowing into spaces. She preferred flitting in.
Fitting in.
So I am back in a costume I love.
What is not to love, in clothes that completely cover one...yet, not?
Have a blessed day.

Amazing, married 82 years 💕 Advise: talk things over and get a good understanding of what you're doing and where you're going. #positivityquotes #positivityiskey #positivevibes #personalgrowth #motivation #motivationalquotes #morningmotivation #dailymotivation #motivationtips #motivationthoughts #keytosuccess #mindsetgrowth

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Good morning.

Movie review: Ahalya

In myth and legend, depending on which version you relate to, Ahalya, the most beautiful woman ever created, is either the sinner, or the one sinned against. Created by one God, seduced by another, cursed by her husband, and delivered by the third God, she is both symbol and story.
Ahalya is a 2015 Bengali short film directed by Sujoy Ghosh with Soumitra Chatterjee, Radhika Apte and Tota Roy Chowdhury playing the lead roles.
Police Inspector, Indra, comes knocking at the house of Gautam Sadu, a reputed artist, inquiring about the whereabouts of another artist, Arjun. The person who answers the door is a very sensuous, seductive woman, who the Inspector has to consciously look away from, because he finds his indisciplined eyes straying too often to her very considerable charms. As she learns the purpose of his visit, she leads him into the house and the living room. When they enter, one of the row of dolls, standing on the table, falls to the floor. "They always fall," she remarks, in exasperated indulgence, "when someone comes here." She picks up and keeps the doll back, asking it to behave itself, as thogh it was a misbehaving child. Requesting him to make himself at home, she goes in, leaving him there, presumably to make tea for him.
Left alone, the Inspector goes up to the line of dolls, picks up the one which fell, and notices its uncanny resemblance to the missing man. To make doubly sure, he compares it with the photo he has with him, and realises that it is so. He also notices a very strange stone in one of the cabinets.
Gautam Sadu enters: and the Inspector is mortified to know that the young woman he referred to as his daughter, is actually his wife.
So begins one of the most exciting capsules of fiction I have ever seen. Brilliant acting by all the characters, superlative acting by Radhika Apte as the femme fatale. She says more with a single movement of her eye, than another actor would, with whole lines of dialogue.
The screenplay, story, and direction are by Sujoy Ghosh. Minimal doesn't get any better than this.The punch that the climax gives you leaves you gasping for breath. The director has skillfully woven myth and legend, used all the props, and created a masterpiece of a narrative that speaks of an iconoclastic desire to destroy patriarchal stereotypes.
The film is a study for any storyteller desirous of packing a punch with the bare minimum: of time, dialogues,narration. Watch it for the story, and all the nuances beneath it, And for the excellent histrionic skills of the main actors.
Have a blessed day.

Good evening.
The very first poem in the SYJC English textbook is titled 'The Person I am Looking For' and the writer is Hazara Singh. The poem lists the kind of qualities one would look for, in an ideal human being. I was conducting a lecture in an Arts class, and after telling the students how lucky they were to be studying the Humanities, I set them a task to do.
The last stanza of the poem contains a line which says that if you have all the ideal qualities the poet was looking for, you will be a 'beacon-light for people far and wide' I asked the kids to write an essay on whoever they thought was the beacon-light in their lives. Time-30 minutes.
And I brought the essays home and read them and I went down on my knees in gratitude that I was an English teacher, and I had the privilege to read the kind of things these teenagers, supposedly blasé, and cynical felt and expressed in such lucid prose and with such felicity, that I was amazed.
They write about fathers who had to shoulder responsibility at the age of 15, because of a change in family fortunes, "my father used to wear a borrowed suit and go to work, to appear older than he was, when his father died, leaving him to take care of all responsibilities, when he was 15" He is the beacon light of my life, she says. My grandfather died last month, another wrote, He was 78. For the last couple of months before he died, he was in extreme physical pain, but I never saw him frown. He used to tell me, she concludes, that the only one who can keep you down, is yourself. When you fall, get up and walk again. I love him, the child concludes. He made me what I am. My father was so poor, said another one, he delivered newspapers to pay for his school fees. He taught me to dream big and go after the dream, with confidence.
My friend was my beacon light, said another, but she had an accident owing to a short circuit in her house. She died in hospital, eight months ago, but she taught me that life is precious. My beacon-light is my friend, says another and we are so close that I am terrified of what will happen if she is no longer part of my life.
There are also a couple of kids grateful to doctors, teachers, psychotherapists, family members dealing with autistic kids, and single mothers,and what they wrote about these people brought me to tears, realising again, how many problems the smiling face of a teenager hides, and what a wealth of understanding they possess. It is a privilege, and an honour to help a teenager learn.
Have a blessed day.

Good morning.
Movie Review: The Book Club
The Book Club, released by Paramount Picture, in May 2018, is an unapologetically female centric film, directed by Bill Holderman, from a screenplay by Erin Simms and Holderman. The four women who star in it are all Academy award winners: Diane Keaton, Jane Fonda, Candice Bergen and Mary Steenburgen. The stellar cast is enough to make this a lodestone for moviegoers.
Four friends have formed a book club and meet once a month or so, to discuss a book that they have decided to review. The book club is 30 years old, and over the course of the years, the four friends have forged a bond that has been strengthened by in depth knowledge of each other’s lives and loves, taboos and fetishes. After a run of apparently boring books, one of them declares that ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ would be the next book to be read and discussed. There is opposition from the Federal Judge (Candice Bergen, Sharon) and the mother (Diane Keaton, Diane), but Jane Fonda (Vivian, self-made hotel magnate) pushes the book through.
Then begins a period of revelation and introspection, in which these four fiercely independent women are forced to look at their own lives and the lies they tell themselves to survive in the way the world and society wants them to. From a natural fear of commitment, to the frequently voiced ‘I am too old for this’ line, the plot gently but inexorably leads the women to take another shot at living life on their own terms.
The underlying theme is that you don’t need anyone’s permission to be happy.
But here’s the thing: people, especially the current movie-watching public, have a problem with the idea that a woman who is old enough to be a mother or grandmother, can be both s*xually attractive as well as attracted to the opposite s*x. It makes them uncomfortable. In the small preview theatre that I was in, there was only one man who had ventured in. I looked at his face during the interval, and it looked slightly green. After the movie, he fairly bolted out of the theatre, leaving his women friends to follow at a more leisurely pace. I have a feeling that if a movie with the same plotline were made, substituting male characters/actors, instead of female ones, it would gross more than this one seems to have.
The movie destroys a lot of conventional, convenient traditional patterns of behaviour laid down for women. It is both raunchy and racy sometimes, and yes, there are expletives peppering the dialogue. But it is also, frequently, laugh-aloud hilarious. There are a lot of gentle but provocative questions asked of the audience: and a very, very poignant look at the necessary loneliness that old age entails, when you feel that life has passed you by and you only become an encumbrance to younger family members, who feel they have a right to dictate the terms of your life in the interest of your ‘safety and security’
What resonates with me when I see this is the Mahesh Manjrekar movie ‘Astitva’, (2000) with Tabu in one of her most stellar performances to date. There is a scene in it where the husband, filled with righteous indignation at his wife’s infidelity, slaps his wife when she declares that women have a right to desire and be desired like men have. By conventional male standards, this amounts to blasphemy. Women have been burnt at the stake for less.
I would recommend The Book Club to any and every thinking woman. I would also recommend it to any man who is capable of thinking for himself.
Have a blessed day.

Good morning.
This is going to be a lesson in etymology. This is also a lesson in spelling words rightly. I have copied the dictionary meaning of the word, 'charade'

('Charades', ( used with a singular verb )
1 a game in which the players are typically divided into two teams, members of which take turns at acting out in pantomime a word, phrase, title, etc., which the members of their own team must guess.
2. a word or phrase acted out in this game.
3. a blatant pretense or deception, especially something so full of pretense as to be a travesty.
Origin:
1770–80; < French < Provençal charrad ( o ) entertainment, equivalent to charr ( á ) to chat, chatter (from imitative root) + -ado -ade1 )

The above, are the meanings of the word 'charade'
When you play the game which you call 'dumb charades' you try to act out, with gestures and expressions, the words you want your team to guess. It is 'dumb', because you don't speak, and 'charade(s)' because you are acting out a part. Hence, 'dumb charades'
If, even a fraction of you stop calling the game as 'dumpsharaz' 'Damsharz', 'dumbsharaz' or other mysterious and sinister sounding names, I think this particular English teacher will die happy.
Have a blessed day.

Good afternoon.
Cluster beans are on today's menu again and I dislike them from the bottom of my heart, and told them so when I was cooking them. But the other two people in the house love them, and can't wait for it.
So the sambar is almost done, and I am sauteeing two handsful of baby shallots, cut just so, in the hot coconut oil that I had sputtered mustard seeds in, and later added hand-crushed,aromatic curry leaves to. The gavaar is getting cooked, too, and waiting for its two admirers to come in, so that they, the beans, can complain about my maltreatment, when in walks the man I live with.
He is looking triumphant, because he has had his bath and I have not and I smell of cluster beans and curry leaves. "What are you doing?", he asks. I hoped it was a purely rhetorical question, though I was SO tempted to say that I was flying around on a broomstick, with Wuhan bats for company: but I didn't, because of all the good manners that had been drummed into my system by parents and the Kendriya Vidyalaya.
I was listening to music, with my phone connected to the boombox on blue tooth.My playlist is eclectic, so I have Bengali and Bihu, Eminem and Ed Sheeran, Yesudas and Mohammad Rafi, Enya and Adele, Sudhir Phadke and Suman Kalyanpur singing to me. When the man asked me the question, I am sure I heard Selena Gomez gasp...and it almost sounded like the vocals of Taki Taki sounded louder than it had a minute ago. Giving up, he left the field of battle. Suma alone, could probably be vanquished, but Suma and Selena together?
Well...
Have a blessed day.