Being Candid

For a mail-maniac like me, who preferred to check work mails every 2 minutes and personal mails every 2 hours - following trends in various topics and newsletters and job alerts.. it suddenly surprised me that in midst of this summer, being purely devoted towards watermelons and mangoes and of course my baby boy, its been over a week I haven't checked my mails ! Exactly one year since I quit my formal office work. For 10 years, I led a mail-maniac life, it took one whole year as hangover with way too many withdrawal symptoms. But I would like you all to believe that life has much more, much much more than the busyness of office, the fragrance of money and all things money can buy. And every bit of it is worth it ! Live it, love it !! Make most of it while you can !!! :)

In this sleepy town, our colony where most of the housewives sleep inside comforts of a cooler or AC after a heavy lunch.. evening comes pretty quickly. And then starts the discussion on 'aam'. Which aam tree in colony is bearing maximum aam. Which tree aam were destroyed by untimely hailstorm few weeks back. Then from trees the discussion shifts to the summer delights, the quick sweet sour aam chutney, the aam achaar, the aam panna and so on. Every house and every housewife has a different way to use the aam, and the receipies are shared almost everyday. During early morning or evening kids roam in the interior streets of the colony hunting and gathering aam fallen due to crazy afternoon hot winds. (And my kid is one of them.) Before blossoming of aam trees - I read narrated and cooked up many bed time stories for my son.. stories of monkey, cat, lion, jungle, doggy, crocodile everything.. but now.. even when I am ready to hit the sack myself tired of daily chores.....

Women's day messages,journals, magazine were filled with news on extended benefits organisations are providing or proposing to provide to female employees to curb diversity and inclusion issues These schemes (though good) make me think really hard, we are doing our bit for females but missing the fact on gender equality here ? What if dad wants to spend this 1 year to work from home and manage responsibility while mom wants to go work at office and they prefer these roles. Why not give chance to males to bring kids to office meetings at off-locations kids up to 3 to 5 years with them on business trips.. why you have to make it so obvious with your schemes that this is a female's job. Why no sabbaticals for males to raise their kids, they may be single fathers, or they may simply want to choose to do this. Give chance to dad's. . They will grab it, they will participate, they will respect females at work even more. And they won't have excuse that they don't ...