Manasi's Binoculars

Since I have become a mother 5 years ago, not only do I have a bigger heart full of love but am also exposed to a cringe world of people who love to hate the working mothers. Yes, I am a mother and I am also pursuing a regular job, nothing unusual as I see most people around me doing the same. While I agree I have been shamed for doing this ‘anti-nirupa roy’ thing in the past by certain relatives, this is the first time fellow working women have indulged in shaming me over a 30 minute long ‘interview’ to get my son admitted to a supposed ‘high-profile’ school in Ahmedabad. It does sound unbelievable, given we have such big numbers of working mothers now than we had in the last generation. While we are talking about increasing the number of women in workplace, promoting gender equality in sports, etc. there is a big bad world out there who is probably still living under the rock or refuses to accept the times we are living in. Sadly, this working mother shaming was done to me b...

I will tell you a story – this has all the ingredients of a success. A man could do anything for the love of his life and instead of picking the moon and stars for her, he did something more realistic – Prepared a sanitary napkin for her. What? What could he be thinking? We can talk of anything but this. Shame on him, bet he lost his family over this. Yes, he did, well almost. But he was unrelenting. Shunned by his mother, his wife and his community, he continued. This man was Arunachalam Murugnatham, and he was not some iPhone flashing, suit wearing, top notch. He was the son of handloom workers who went on to do random paltry jobs to run his family. Yes that is true love and that is the thought leadership that we use as a jargon in our air conditioned conference rooms. The man also possess funny bones. In an interview with BBC he says "Luckily I'm not educated. If you act like an illiterate man, your learning will never stop... Being uneducated, you have no fear of the fu...