Our attitude towards old world customs – Isn’t it high time to change?
Writer - Bhavia Velayudhan
I get to spend little time to with my family. So when I visited them this time for a change, it was a celebration. But even through such happiness, something bothered me. I was at an uncle’s house, and I noticed that somebody is missing – my aunt. When I asked for her, I was told that I couldn’t meet her . Assuming, she was sick, I rushed into the bedroom and saw that the door was locked from the outside.
‘She has her period now. Don’t go inside or touch her,’ her mother-in-law warned me.
‘So who cooked lunch?’ I asked.
‘It was bought outside as she is not allowed to enter the kitchen.’ she replied.
I was fuming. In the 21st century, why do people still allow this kind of untouchability? When my aunt opened the door, we felt as if we were talking at a conflict border. While snacks were served to me, her mother-in-law brought in some snacks and threw the bowl on her bed. I asked my aunt why she wouldn’t talk about this to my uncle, and was surprised at what she said. Read more…
Need to get rid of E-waste? Turn it to E-jewellery!
Photo Courtesy – Yuma Fujimaki
Writer- Meera Vijayann
Do you remember the first time that someone gifted you a digital watch? Well of course, you do. For most of us, that marked the beginning of the future. Today, twenty years later, we can barely keep up. Mobile phones, record players, fancy air-conditioners, laptops, remote controls, television – technology has become an integral part of our lives. It has helped us progress in leaps and bounds into a digital future, made our lives easier. There is no need to depend on age-old desktops when there are newer compact laptops and tablets, heavy portable phones have been replaced with cell-phones, and e-books are slowly taking away old print editions from our libraries. But where do we throw away our old electronic products? The answer is, probably not too far away.
The hidden blessing – lessons from headache pills
Writer – Revathi Sreekumar
Ever wondered why those pills you take don’t make the headache go away? Here’s a little secret – they were probably not meant to ease the pain at all. I work for a diagnostic company, so after three years of helping pharmaceutical and food companies set up quality procedures in their manufacturing line to make their products ‘safe’, I bet I can give you something to think about the next time you visit your local pharmacy.
With a ‘boom’ in the biotech industry in the last decade, a lot of Indian pharmaceutical companies are both exporting and selling their products within India. And needless to say, all the developed countries who import products made here enforce high quality standards in their manufacturing facilities; they conduct tests, send the FDA officials for a run through, and sometimes even make them visit manufacturing units by surprise. The math isn’t hard to work out – Labour is inexpensive here in India and since profit margins are high in the European and US markets, companies take the trouble and invest a little extra time and money. But this is not the same when Indian pharmaceuticals market their products in India.
Photo courtesy - D. Sharon Pruitt
Writer – Meera Vijayann
In a world where people are trying to fix broken-hearts, make their marriages last and hopefully find eternal love, there comes a website that shows you a side of human nature you never quite expected.
Ashleymadison.com , an American dating site for people who are ‘Married but looking’, was founded in 2001 hoping to let those who are married or committed have ‘casual encounters’ without hassle. Today, ten years on, it continues to court controversy. But its controversial tagline – ‘Life is short, have an affair‘ isn’t just what people are talking about now, but the fact that the website claims to get more than 700,000 unique visitors a month and have a registered membership of 2.45 million users is making people ask the most serious question about their love lives – What if? Read more…
Strut the ‘Slut walk’, and then talk
Writer – Vinay Dora
Not so long ago, the Indian online news space was abuzz with talk of the proposed Indian chapter of the ‘Slut walk’, now rechristened ‘Besharami Morcha’ or ‘Shameless Protest’ for a larger reach. For the uninitiated, the ‘Slut walk‘ Phenomenon began in Toronto, Canada in response to a Toronto police-officer’s remark that ‘women should avoid dressing like sluts’ while addressing a security audience.
Since then, Slut-walks have been held in 60 cities in the United States and Canada alone, along with many others in the United Kingdom, Germany, Netherlands, Mexico, Brazil, Australia, Finland, Ireland, South Africa and even Kyrgyzstan. The various walks have seen people from all walks of life, including men and children walk in solidarity with the message. But do innovative campaigns like this really make a difference?
Want to fight corruption? Pay a bribe with ‘Zero’ rupees
Writer – Meera Vijayann
Common citizens often believe that they are helpless when it comes to fighting corruption. Be it paying a ‘fine’ to the traffic police for no reason or an under-the-table donation to the college they wish to send their children to, bribes , unfortunately have become an inseparable part of everyday life. Even worse, most people have begun to accept it. Surprisingly, few people understand that the national attitude towards corruption can be changed with just a little effort. The best example is, perhaps, 5th Pillar, a Chennai-based NGO, which introduced an simple, effortless idea to tackle bribes - Zero rupee notes.
Ten Years of Dil Chahta Hai
Writer: Aditya Shrikrishna
Ten years ago, when the first trailer of Dil Chahta Hai appeared, it didn’t exactly pique anyone’s interest in a significant manner. Yes, there was a new director called Farhan Akhtar, who happened to be Javed saab’s son. It was a pretty straight forward looking trailer with snatches of the lives of three guys who were the best of friends, holidaying to the score of Shankar Ehsaan Loy. The trailer only showed a film, which looked from the outset, a product of those times from the Hindi film industry – multi-starrer, good music, great locales and a Khan added to the list. Make that two. Oh, of course, they all sported cool, closely cropped hairstyles. But it also featured the most cliched – Shaadi karne ke liye kisise pyaar karna bahut zaroori hai – line uttered by Sonali Kulkarni, little conspicuous among that cast. The next frame was our hint – the three men having a laugh at it. This was no joke.
