Aishwarya Rai

Even when I hadn’t heard about her, I wanted to be Aishwarya Rai. Last Saturday, when I saw the beauty queen at an Indian restaurant, where we had gone to lunch, my repressed aspirations sprung up once again. And I tried to pacify my wanton heart, as I always do when overcome with unreasonable longings, by reciting this couplet by Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Mughal emperor:

Do tell these desires to find a home elsewhere,
My miserable heart cannot host all of them!

(Kah do in hasraton se kahin aur ja basen,
Itni jagah kahan hai dil-e-daagdaar mein!)

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Bee my Valentine!

One of my secret desires is to become a renowned poet, and I keep on looking for subject matters to compose poems. Thus, inspired by the oncoming Valentine’s Day, I brainstormed and recollected some high moments from my love life with the Black Sheep or Humpty Dumpty or Johny Johny—these are the terms of endearment that I use to address my husband with. And what follows is my sincere effort to express some of those memorable moments in verse.

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Balasaheb Keshav Thackeray

Folks, stop this mob mentality. Why is everyone after my great-uncle, Balasaheb Keshav Thackeray? If anyone calls him a “goonda” again, I will conjure up my powers and turn that person into a frog, and then the spell will only be broken if he, my great-uncle, gets a kiss on the Valentine’s Day! A fat chance, so think before you speak.

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Parents! You Just Can't Escape Them

I found my sister after almost 15 years. It so happened that I was getting nasty comments on Facebook like, “awful pic,” “act yr age…..yr not 4 anymor,” “u luk trash,” etc. etc. I knew it was someone from India because only Indians used sms lingo to this extent, but when this Facebook user, named ITGirl, wrote “yr hair is dizasta…if I wer u I wud av shaved my hed,” I was certain it could be none else but my sister, Binodini.

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