Parlour

A beauty parlour is the best place to ponder about feminism. All kinds of aroma assaults my nose, the TV blares in the background, I sit there watching women of various ages, sizes and skin conditions walk in, get stressed out about looking good. The peacock has the feathers not the peahen, the lion has the mane, not the lioness, I wonder why in our species women work so hard to look good. Culprit must be some gene in the X chromosome. My thoughts face must have been transparent on my much scrubbed face. The woman there hastens to assure me it is not about looking beautiful, it is about being well groomed, it is about self image. I agree fervently.

Moon

Have been following all the news with Galileo. Arent the moon names very interesting? Understandably, some are the children of the greek god the planet is named after. Some like those of the Uranus moons are offbeat. Shakespearean characters. Must be the British astronomers. But the Jovian moons are the best of the lot. After all there were enough characters the colourful Zeus pursued. There he is still holding them in orbit.

Car guilt

As my big, foreign made, four door sedan car along with other redirected traffic glides through the small street - lined with single room houses, open drainage, littered with garbage - men and women there go about their usual work without paying the least attention to the incongruity and I am embarrassed about not feeling guilty.

Doc

We were talking about the amazing works of Anand Patwardhan , about how he is single handedly making his stunning documentaries amidst controversies. When the speaker stumbled for an appropriate word to describe his sheer drive, someone next to me said dedication while I said passion.

I liked my description better, yes it involves dedication, still, what else but an intense, emotional, overwhelming conviction can drive him to be at it, against all odds. Hats off to him.

Snuff

After ages I saw someone using snuff. Sniffing tobacco was a fashionable thing long ago with the likes of kings and queens being regular sniffers, it seems. Though as habits go, it looks quite disgusting, at the least with snuff I dont have to worry about passive inhaling. My grandfather used to sniff. He would buy only this special brand of snuff that used to come rolled up in a small piece of bark. The bark would be folded with a label on top of it and I remember watching him come back, sit on the platform in the front of the house, unfold and adroitly pour it into the little cylindrical box. A very cute little silver box, made just for this. All hell would break loose if he misplaced it somewhere. I would often find him sit back, tap his box gently a couple of times, take a pinch and sniff it delicately. It is so vivid in my mind that I can almost smell it now. Who knows, as they start banning smoking in more and more places, the tobacco fixated populace might resort to snuff again. God help us.