INDIRA LAISRAM

I walked into office today. And on my table was a colleague's wedding card invite and a box of sweets. The first sign of an opulent north Indian wedding, where the invites come with sweets of all sizes, shapes and colours. Sweets mean good luck and good wishes. The wedding season is on, but so is the silly Xmas season, says Lozza. Plenty of calories to count. But I am in a quandary. I don't know what to wear in this cold. On my way to a friend's place after work, I was hauled up in traffic. It wasn not the usual mad rush but wedding processions. First the men with the drums beating the loudest to the tune of Bollywood hits, followed by men in suits dancing completely out of tune, then the decked up women sparkling with jems and jewellry and colourful saris and walking as if their feets were chained, and finally the groom with his flowered headgear covering his face and sitting on the already lazy and reluctant pony. All moving at a snail's pace, trying the patience of

Kate Holden. Amazing woman. Amazing story. I just read her memoir In My Skin . I got goosebumps reading the life of this literate woman whose addiction to heroin turned her into a prostitute. A dream, a hell, a messy life, a living lie. But every account of her life makes you ponder and think. Kate's book, to me, sensitised the subject of an addiction and a profession not in normal society. When I think of a drug addict, I automatically think of a person whose despondent life, broken family or very unhappy circumstances make him/her so vulnerable to drugs. Not Kate. Born to succesful, loving parents, living in an affluent suburb, she studied in the university and had all the intelligence to eke out a successful career for herself. So what went wrong? Growing up, shy Kate was a bit of a prude. She wanted to belong to the world of drinking, smoking, the hip environment instead of "hovering on the roudy fringe of teenage conspiracy." She resented the confidence among her p

They were all over the papers. Young, handsome Israeli couple - Yonatan and Omer Gher - became proud parents of a baby boy through a surrogate mother at a fertilty clinic in Mumbai. Nice I thought. Children are the ultimate culmination of love too under normal circumstances. With that I flipped through the rest of the pages. But India is outraged, it seems. Because later that evening, as I was surfing TV channels, I came upon debates over debates over adoption of babies by same sex partners. The fact remains, homosexuality in India is illegal. So it is with many other things in India which is governed by rules that have remain unchanged for hundreds of years. Our lawmakers have not had the time nor the inclination to change these antiquated laws. But commercial surrogacy, which is banned in most parts of the world, does not come under the purview of law in India, which makes it easy for foreigners to come and adopt babies here. The ire of many an Indians. Medical tourism is boon for s

Hello blog. I have been hibernating for a while, letting time take away every moment. That's life. Sometimes you feel so content that complacency sets in. You are content with living the routine. And then one day you realise you want to break the routine because the routine begins to stifle. You begin to write. You think what to write... coherence or incoherence, "The moving finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it." Hmmm... Omar Khayyam. My life has changed. Lozza always said it will. He is right. I have just one problem, and that is coping with questions from all and sundry, especially my ex-colleagues. "Where are you? Are you in Delhi? Oh, We thought you left the country." Some think I fibbed about leaving the country because I wanted to leave the workplace. Some are still speculating why I am hanging around. Amusing. I don't care but I cant&#