devscarapace

I am an anxious mother awaiting the results of plus two marks of my son. I was not so  two years back when he took his tenth board exams. I was pretty cool with only slight  jitters on the day before his social exams when he slashed a glued page which was  waiting to be opened right from the day he bought. On the day of result announcement, I  experienced anxiety, tension, churning of stomach and heart palpitations for the first  time, when many of my friends surrounded me to know the result while opening  cbse.nic.in website. Goodness Gracious… And soon after that I had plethora of calls not  just from my well-wishers, but from people whom I lost touch years back. My former  not so friendly neighbour, quarrelsome next street aunty, distant relatives, faraway  friends and many numbers not in my contact list started calling me. Some were little  disappointed with his decent marks (probably they expected much less considering his  c...

Rs. 4500 is too big an amount for a self-effacing college professor in early forty to spend for a border attachment in a sari. (Thank God, the amount includes matching blouse and stitching charges). The ridiculous part was the trivial cost of the sari compared to the astronomical number of 4500.  My mom stitches fantastic and never I have endeavoured outside for stitching. Many a times, she has attempted to teach me stitch, hem, sew, darn and embroider but I use to politely snub her. I decided to stitch outside for the first time since my mom was still recuperating from a major surgery. I entered a tailor shop (I later learnt it was a boutique) with a saree worth Rs 550 and a matching fabric for the blouse. According to the designer (Until then, I thought everyone inside were seamstresses), black does not go well with pink, why not choose a golden border and gold brocade blouse which will suit any saree. Oh yes, I silently kept my black fabric inside the bag and chose a perfect ...

Every time I see a fussy eater tossing with food in his/her plate or a dieter gently ignoring the food in the platter, I become serious not just because of the direct implication that we waste food in a country where many die of starvation, it is more because of the environmental ramifications associated with wastage of food. Wastage of food is by default a grave matter if either intentionally or apathetically you allow food to go waste.  It means you are wasting the resources needed to grow your food, it means you are increasing the landfill methane emissions; it means you are contributing to global warming and it definitely means you are an environmental traitor. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), every year 1.3 billion tonnes of food is wasted. At the same time, 1 in every 7 people in the world go to bed hungry and more than 20,000 children under the age of 5 die daily from hunger.  In fact the food waste in any country makes up the larg...