Provoke some...

Ever wondered how taste evolves over lifetime? Or is it the other way round? As in, how life evolves with taste? An infant consumes BLAND...  milk Subsequently babies start with SWEET stuff... mashed apples Soon enough kids are fed SALT... regular home food Teenagers start liking SOUR food... tangy chicken, lime juice Adults move on to BITTER... whiskey, bitter-gourd Is that how Life in general also moves? BLAND... No relations, No friends, Basic needs paramount... SWEET... Develop parental connection, Unconditional Love... SALT... Friends add the spice (& salt) to life... SOUR... Disagreements; Professional (give & take) relations... BITTER... Broken relationships Just came to mind and I wrote it... Nothing much to add beyond this... Basically, as the title of my blog suggests its just to provoke a thought... Think about it...

So you are trying to lose weight? What did you say? You have been doing it for a very long time... Trying or losing weight? Well, if it had been the latter then you would still not be doing the former... Stupid of me to ask. But kudos to you and millions of others like you for your perseverance. Even after 'trying' for years (really, it could even be tens of years) people like you don't give up on trying even though you continue to lose the battle but never the weight. Billions of dollars worth of industry has sprung up all because of your die-hard determination to one day sport the six-pack abs. But it never happens. Right? Whatever you do, either the brazen bulge just refuses to budge or it keeps coming back like the dead in the zombie movies. You have tried all types of diets - GM diet, blood group diet, cabbage diet and so many others. Newspapers and Magazines are full of numerous weight loss options like liposuction, U-lipo, weight loss centres, bariatric surge...

Yaar- Papa... That's how my son addresses me. He has been doing so for sometime but somehow I only noticed it a few days back. " Yaar " in Hindi is generally used for someone who is a bosom friend ( langotiya yaar  sounds better) and "Papa" should wield respect and a guarded distance. That truly sounds like an oxymoron, surely Yaar & Papa seem contradictory. Forget calling my Father  Yaar- Papa, I wouldn't dare even uttering the " Yaar " word in front of him as he considered it  sadak chhap (language of the ruffians), all of which was forbidden to be used. I would barely see my Father once a week, sometimes even once a month when he would go off on extended business tours. He had a large family to feed and five younger siblings to get married off while I was being brought up by my Aunts. There was absolutely no way of getting any closer to my Father. So, when I heard my son calling me Yaar-Papa, it made me thinking. While everyone keeps ...

Sample these News clips just from the last couple of week: The Equal Opportunities Commission in Hong Kong hopes to undertake a study that will "systematically identify the discrimination, harassment and vilification that sexual minorities encounter in the course of their education, employment and social interactions on a daily basis". In Pennsylvania, Officer Melissa Gogel was paid $20,000 as settlement for her sex discrimination case against the city for "being denied a promotion", "changing her work schedule", "not being allowed to take a government vehicle home". Films are going through "Bechdel Test" to tackle female representation - how many female characters are there? how many are developed beyond being an attachment to the male hero? When someone asked why Dunham’s character in the HBO series, Girls, is seen walking around naked a lot, often when there was no particular reason the story requires it, the question was ter...

Well, I was a away for sometime to give the finishing touches to my book, THE MIRAGE, which is based on multitude of characters found in Dubai and takes a dig into the stark realities of relationships... The book is available on Apple iBook (US) Store or you can buy by clicking on the link... http://www.lulu.com/shop/vikas-kakwani/the-mirage/ebook/product-21095000.html The Sharaf Developers owned by Sheikh Abdul Sharaf rags-to-riches story... …he was born out of abject poverty - living in a two room shack with his father, mother, three step mothers and fourteen siblings including ten step-brothers and sisters. Tens of miles in either direction from whatever they called a house, was golden brown, hot and serene desert with absolutely no vegetation and no hope whatsoever. For the family of twenty living in complete wilderness was a matter of daily survival. Hand-to-mouth, as a figure of speech, just didn’t apply to the Sharaf family. More often than not, the hand would no...

In March 2011, Delhi businessman and Congress MP Kanwar Singh Tanwar created a record of sorts of 'The Most Expensive Indian Wedding' by spending a colossal  250 crore on his son's wedding. The big, fat Indian wedding was attended by more than 15,000 guests and  included performances by Bollywood actors. More than a thousand staff served over 100 delicacies including more than 30 different types of kulfis. Presents for wedding guests included an expensive shawl, safari suit,  2,100 in cash and a silver coin each. The groom arrived in a top range BMW, and was gifted a Bell 429 helicopter, valued at more than Rs 29 crore, as a wedding gift along with not one but two private jets. Similar weddings, to name a few, include the wedding of Indian billionaire Lakshmi Mittal's daughter Vanisha, at the Palace of Versailles costing  220 crore; Socialite Kajal Fabiani's marriage with Gaurav Assomull, the CEO of luxury purveyor Marigold G...

After 65 years, we still look forward or sincerely wish to gain independence from at least these 65 things, not in any specific order and some might seem repeated, but what the hell: Ageing politicians (thank God they didn't understand IT industry) Servile mindset (Still Ghulam) "Gora" is superior (Colonial hangover) Cows & dogs on the road / dirty congested dilapidated Roads Untrained drivers Encroachment "Chalta Hai" attitude Female foeticide Strikes Cricket as the only sport Corruption (that was easy) Fear of entering a police station (dichotomy) Crime against women & children Child labor Babu creating education system (Where are the enterpreneurs?) Khans in Bollywood (All touching 50s) Public urination / defecation (Never a good sight) Government run companies (esp Railways, Airlines) Total lack of mobile phone manners Inadequate places for orphans, invalids, elderly Insufficient po...