In my book, privacy is a longing of youth. There is vulnerability when you are young that demands some kind of a protective filter around. Privacy might also be critical to the professions of stealing, spying, politics or the building of a financial empire. Celebrities certainly need to guard their personal spaces with ferocity, considering its commercial potential.

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But it has stopped bothering me  much, this paranoia for privacy. I used to be a fierce closet person, too proud to share my private world with anyone but those closest to me. In the Advertising Agency I worked at, they called me the “locked jaw.” I could talk about books, ideas, events but try and get me to admit to one original, emotional thought from the deep recesses and I would withdraw.

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Some of this stemmed from a sense of loyalty to people in my immediate radius. Some came from diffidence at what people might think or say. A bit of it was born of my own basic sense of fair play and belief in positive thinking. Why vent or bitch or criticise, was my internal logic! It did not seem there was much to gain by reinforcing any conflicts or self-doubts. At some level in my mind, it was also an admission of personal failure to air difficulties or speed-breakers, thus.

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Over the years though, all through the milestones of becoming a wife, a parent, a professional, a citizen, I have seen and experienced enough to begin to realize the authentic oneness of being. There really is, barely a soul out there, who has had it easy in her lifetime. A mixed blessing has been and will be the universal signature tune of all human melodies. Ups and downs, highs and lows, heartbreak and ecstasy, ebb and flow are the paths life pretty much follows. Was there a weak phase in your life for instance, when you felt you needed someone the most and they abandoned you emotionally?  You are not alone.

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Were you ever dropped off in a strange city to find your way back home by your new family? You are not alone.
Did you pour your life into a child who fixes you with an angry glare today so your blood runs cold?  You are not alone.
Did your educated and outwardly progressive husband yank your hair before chasing you around the dining table? You are not alone. Have you ever felt claustrophobic and friendless in your seemingly ordered, outwardly peaceful existence? You are not alone.
Do you yearn sometimes for someone to hold you by the hand, look into your eyes and say, “I see you? You make a difference. You matter!” You are not alone.

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Are there moments in your life, when you sit down and imagine what it would be like to run away and hide someplace far off? You are not alone. There is this common human legacy of pain and aloneness that is truly egalitarian in nature, sparing none, infecting equally. And once you have absorbed this immutable, the self-created, psychic, emotional and mental walls of privacy begin to peel off, one layer at a time. And it is just as well because there is help out there. A recent college reunion comes to mind. There we were, the six of us, meeting for the first time as a group, after 1983. We travelled in cars, sat around dining tables, hung out in homes; there was no need for any pretence. Each of us had been through our private hells and heavens but in recalling those years, there was oneness, a sense of acceptance and belonging which was ultimately very empowering.

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We live today in a world obsessed with privacy but the truth is it is not even practically feasible anymore. Picture for one moment, the airport body scans, the online personal data storage, the chat rooms, the social network sites….what privacy are we talking about?

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So reach out and hold a hand, reach out and touch a shoulder, reach out and wipe a tear, reach out and belong!
There is great liberty in the loss of privacy.

The author is a Resource Center-in-charge at the Junior Wing of Air Force Bal Bharati School. A teacher with a background and training in media, she has worked in advertising, public relations, documentary film making and feature journalism. Her interest lies in the role of motivation, an all-round exposure and multiculturalism in education. A regular contributor to the ‘Teacher Plus” magazine and a blogger with a keen interest in the evolving social dynamics and their influence on young people, she maintains a blog at http://confessionsofanambitiousmother.blogspot.in/

Reema Prasanna is a Search Engine Marketing expert, Xoogler, baking expert and blogger. More about her here http://about.me/reema.prasanna

My most resonant memory of 70s music is when during the preparations of  our school annual functions, we would hear Lipps Incorporated’s Funky Town again and again. And again. We had no access to Western music except on radio and how this record landed up in a small town and in a school library beats me.

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Reema Moudgil is the author of Perfect Eight (http://www.flipkart.com/perfect-eight-9380032870/p/itmdf87fpkhszfkb?pid=9789380032870&_l=A0vO9n9FWsBsMJKAKw47rw–&_r=dyRavyz2qKxOF7Yuc

Something about the Aarushi Talwar case tugs at my heart. I feel transfixed every time the TV splashes Aarushi’s childhood pictures and videos. The normalness of the images is chilling in that they bear no hint, not a shimmer of the terrible fate that awaits this family round the corner. The clips reveal a regular, attractive young girl celebrating, dressing up, posing; laughing and generally being her own self.  She is quite obviously a child, well cared and well provided for. The vignettes are of regular domestic bliss; a birthday party in one, a ceremonial function in another, a shopping session with her mother in the third. There is a lovely, vulnerable, slightly self-conscious smile on Aarushi’s face in most of the shots. She bears an air of being at ease in secure surroundings. There is also a certain sense of style and self-awareness in her bearing.

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I remember the one frame though, that struck a jarring note in this otherwise idyllic visual stream. It was a clip of Hemraj braiding Aarushi’s hair. I could never make up my mind whether it was a slightly off key degree of familiarity there or just the usual comfort level between a family loyal and the teen whose childhood he has been a part of. It is not unusual in Indian families to have a steady and consistent domestic help over several years. Even so, there was a dissonance in that space, perhaps it had to do with their respective years. I am unsure but there was that care in the gentle manner he was folding her hair with that belied what should have been to me, a strictly no-nonsense and business like chore. But it might just have been the affection of an old retainer.

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There were other punctuation marks in this story that winked at me. Aarushi’s school; my kids attended its namesake at R K Puram. The Talwar family lived in a Jal Vayu Vihar flat, that could have been us, and we did own a home in a similar society once. I thought of the couple, coming from this milieu, working to give their daughter the best possible life in their power. They would have laboured over her inoculations, her nutritious diet, the milk and non-veg protein routine, her school paraphernalia, research on personal gadgets such as phone and camera and the iPod. They would have had plans for her, on what she would be when she grew up. I would certainly have identified with their agony over her fevers, allergies, the invariable indispositions. They would have harboured fears over her security, worries about her being eve teased or threatened in any other unsavoury way.

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This frequent and on-going empathetic reverie of mine is what is intermittently and  rudely interrupted by the media accusations of public voyeurism even as they bang out the “in your face” coverage and go to town with their distasteful allegations and theories.
Am I being intrusive, morbid, and salacious too? Oh no, my conscience is clear. There is no guilt because I know the tragedy’s hold on me arises out of its incongruity, the bizarre and tangential turn of events as they happened, so out of character with a seemingly ordered configuration. I admit too that there is a deeper sense of identification owing to the demographic commonality. There is almost a need for personal validation; to have it proved beyond doubt that there is more to it than a mere twisted and sensational spectacle created by the TV channels and newspapers, lending itself to an impatient dismissal at the most.

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It cannot be! There are flesh and blood humans involved. Surely it is more than a fluke tragedy in one of its kind accidental mode? Is there, in all of this mess the germ of a lesson for us, a mirror and a wakeup call; the reflection in fact, of our lifestyle choices?
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If a healthy, educated child of a professional couple living the comfortable regular, ideal life meets this end, do we not owe it to ourselves to examine the incident in broader, universally applicable terms? The middle classes’ antenna is forever quivering in anticipation of any threat to their heavy investments; the children in short. What must the couple be going through since her passing away, I shudder at that thought.

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There are other related reflections that come to mind. It is clear that one really doesn’t know what is going on behind closed doors in civilized neighbourhoods. The family had to have been in extreme and extraordinary pain to have manifested this dreadful event. One wonders too at the strange connections and dynamics that can arise between people in a group, occupying that space called modern living, and irrespective of their status or position in the group hierarchy. Can one turn a blind eye as well to the natural tendency of teens to dive into whirlpools of attachments that no one can see them in, let alone extricate them from? And most tragic of all, that as a society we do not have the emotional r to survive sources to errors of judgement by our children?

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Where was the extended family while some dreadful mishap was taking shape in this small band of members? What happened to the buffers when the fear got out of hand? How did the Talwars get so alone and lonely in their hour of need?
The tragedy that is the Aarushi Double Murder case is a mirror to us, the Indian society. It is the very same conservative anonymity that we take pride in, that proved fatal for this family just like ours. And yours.

The author is a Resource Center-in-charge at the Junior Wing of Air Force Bal Bharati School. A teacher with a background and training in media, she has worked in advertising, public relations, documentary film making and feature journalism. Her interest lies in the role of motivation, an all-round exposure and multiculturalism in education. A regular contributor to the ‘Teacher Plus” magazine and a blogger with a keen interest in the evolving social dynamics and their influence on young people, she maintains a blog at http://confessionsofanambitiousmother.blogspot.in/

I am just back from the movie Ishaqzaade. On the face of it, a usual and regular outing for us empty nesters. But this particular viewing turned out to be a very different experience. For one, we chose to go to Delite Diamond on Aruna Asif Ali Road to watch this flick. It is a very different world from the DT Star Promenade. The crowds wait outside on the pavement until the hall has been emptied of the previous show. The popcorn is cheaper and less buttery, the coffee frothier and sprinkled with chocolate powder. People are aggressively unapologetic, answering cell phones in loud, completely at home voices. No one bats an eyelid when annoyed voices are raised to make audible conversations.

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There were several side shows in progress inside the hall, running parallel to the drama on screen. When the movie broke at intermission for instance, there came in a harassed looking man, shuffling up to the last row where we were seated.  He did not look like he owned a movie ticket. There was in his hand a tiny digital camera instead.  After a momentary hesitation, he took quick and furtive pictures of the couple sitting two seats down the row, to my right. There was a muted flurry, a subdued, almost calm suspense, broken eventually by the lady who squeezed past my feet, grazing them slightly, to go and stand near the photographer. A couple of urgent voiced exchanges later, it was established that the picture shooter was indeed her husband who had come to confront her with her office boyfriend!  I gaped as she walked out of the hall and her husband lowered himself next to the much younger Lochinvar to ask him outright and distinctly so, “Are you having an affair with my wife? I want to know. I have a five year old son.” The paramour says, “No, no…there is no such thing.” Just like that!!

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A young couple entered late, again to my right! She wore a hijab over her face, covering it all but for the eyes. The cover came off completely just as soon as they were settled into the far corner. The two proceeded to bond over intermittent lunges and a heart to heart dialogue, treating the movie hall more as a safe getaway.  One of their phones would suddenly begin flashing as they pored over some mutually gratifying photographs This is India, I told myself bemusedly.

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Far more than anything else, there was a dissonant pathos in these alternative lives unfolding around us. In their needs clearly on display, there shone a reflection of what lay at home. The movie hall was many things to many people. A comfortable, air conditioned break for the policeman on duty, an escape from drudgery and despair for the adventurous lady and a cosy cove for the young couple.

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Interestingly, the images on screen spun a similar story of the small town life in India. Against a realistic location of small landfills, grubby rail tracks, grimy toilets, sweaty and unkempt humanity, Zoya and Parma lived their curiously escapist existence. I saw a certain menace in Parma’s filial obedience and loyalty. His childish and short range reactions were as though, cries of defiance against the terrifying violence around him. Zoya’s inner world was unravelling in the realm of even more ardent sense of make believe. From being a pampered daughter, she was cast out of the family in a cruel turn of events. Her unrealistic flights of fancy with Parma were chilling in their disconnect with what lay around her. There was sexism, there were clichés, there was a predictable end but most of all, there was a deep seated desolation in the jagged frames of Ishaqzaade. They spoke of people dying to live, of hating to love, of defying to die.

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For me, the predominant flavour of the film was one of no place to go, no cause for hope, and no silver lining to the cloud. In the movie’s dim lit fabric lay a tale of chronic clan wars, deliberately cultivated male chauvinism and the validation of might being right. The only bugle belongs to the male heads of the Chauhan and Quereshi families, the rest provide the shell for their mounting.
Ishaqzaade is the dead end of the small town India. It is not about living but about the futile struggle to stay alive.

The author is a Resource Center-in-charge at the Junior Wing of Air Force Bal Bharati School. A teacher with a background and training in media, she has worked in advertising, public relations, documentary film making and feature journalism. Her interest lies in the role of motivation, an all-round exposure and multiculturalism in education. A regular contributor to the ‘Teacher Plus” magazine and a blogger with a keen interest in the evolving social dynamics and their influence on young people, she maintains a blog at http://confessionsofanambitiousmother.blogspot.in/

Many, many years ago, when there was no such thing as ready-made ginger-garlic paste, saas-bahu flicks on TV, when Mumbai had one standard climate for all seasons (hot, sucky, humid), when I could not tell Malayalam from Tamil from Kannada from Telugu…my mom got a recipe from her office colleague, Rose Aunty. Rose Aunty, like her name, was sweet, had a smile to-die-for, and shared the most awesome recipes of course. Her recipe became a major hit in the house and we had no specific name for it. If we wanted it, we asked for Rose Aunty’s Paneer.

Then one day, I left home and went off to another city to study and mom gradually stopped making Rose Aunty’s Paneer. As was destined, she forgot the recipe too. And Rose Aunty got transferred and we lost touch with her. And with that, we also lost the recipe.

For several years, I tried to recall the taste and the ingredients but did not succeed in getting the full list down. I tried to make mom remember the recipe…but she would not, she did not, she could not. I was right depressed about it when one day, after what seemed like decades, Rose Aunty called. And I shouted with joy and asked mom to take the recipe from her.

Rose Aunty was in a hurry to hang up by then…and she just said one thing. “Oh, it isn’t my recipe, its a Tarla Dalal.” And the phone dramatically disconnected. Tarla Dalal? Gulp? That plump and cute little Gujju woman who has seriously complex recipes in her books? But she cannot have churned up the recipe, it is too simple to be a Tarla Dalal recipe, I exclaimed.

Five years hence, married and culinarily-confident, I set about hunting for that paneer recipe. I hunted, hunted, spending hours together in the cookbooks section of Crossword’s and Odyssey’s and every other possible bookstore but in vain. Until one day, on www.flipkart.com, I stumbled upon a paneer recipe compilation that had Tarla Dalal recipes.

Predict my behaviour. Yeah, I ordered the book. Right off. it came in 2-3 days, the longest 2-3 days of my life. And when it came, finally, finally, finally, I found a recipe that looked similar to the one Mom used to make…that Rose Aunty used to make, that Tarla Dalal’s husband is fortunate enough to demand at any given point in time.

Men. Are. So. Lucky.

Guys, this is the most delicious, mind-numbingly beautiful, gut-wrenchingly easy to make, quick-to-fix paneer recipe ever. It’s precious, it’s priceless, it’s so good, it will make a halo appear around your head. make it, please…and yes, I know I have gone on too long with this story but well, the NEXT thing after this post that I will unleash on you is the recipe itself.

Until then, thank god, the stars, the planets that are so perfectly aligned that Rose Aunty gave me the recipe, that Tarla Dalal invented it, that mom made it and that I decided to pen it. You. Guys. Are. So. Lucky.

Reema Prasanna is a personal and corporate baking coach from Mumbai, blogs about her experiments in the kitchen, records recipes from India, and in another parallel dimension, she is also a Search Engine Marketing Professional, fiction writer and maniacal utensil & kitchen tool collector.

We have been talking to each other for a few years now. All we do is talk, talk and talk. It amuses and baffles me. These lines of a very popular song come to me, It’s only words and words are all I have to take your heart away. So apt for us!

I wonder! How I can talk to him from the middle of the night to the wee hours of morning.  ”You know I love talking to you,” he says.  Various interesting subjects we speak on. Relationships, regional films, Salman Khan, what a man observes first in a woman. Scripts, music. Hear Katy Perry’s song Hot n Cold! “Hear it,” he says, “don’t watch the video.” And our talks go on and on…

Suddenly he pops this question,  “What is it that you want from life?” I am quiet for some time. There is a lot of depth in this one and I do not want to reply. Upheaval in my heart! What should I say? Anyways I took a safe road; rattled off all the things that I ever wanted to do. “Travel, own a home in Bangalore, make films, learn a foreign language – maybe French, learn a musical instrument etc, etc!”

“Don’t you want a soul mate?” He asked.

Soul mate…soul mate.. his voice keeps reverberating in my mind. What is a soul mate? Who is a soul mate?

I am confused. Relationships are so fragile. There is a want but I don’t know what I seek! There is void, an emptiness which needs to be filled. I am complicated, but then, who isn’t?   I guess people who are simple would enjoy joys of love because their expectations out of relationships are not very high. They go with the flow, adapt to situations. They would definitely find their partners.

What happens to a complicated creature like me? God has created androgynous souls – equally male and female. Theories postulate that the souls split into separate genders. Over a number of reincarnations, each half seeks the other. When all karmic debt is purged, the two will fuse together and return to ‘The Ultimate.’

Shiva and Sati; The Ardhanareshwara! Half man, half woman. Shiva worships his Shakti, and Shakti in turn, worships Shiva. Are they different? They are a unified whole!  Shiva and Sati are inseparable! That is why lifetime after lifetime they are each other’s consort.

I like this theory. I believe in it. The universe will guide me towards the person who is to be my soul mate.

This dream, this thought, his touch is what I feel every day. Not even for a moment have I given up on him. But for now his voice is all that I have.

Illustration by Reema Moudgil

Munira Diwan has been an advertising professional for the past 15 years. She has done a film direction course from Digital Academy and has made a 10 minute short film called Thing called Love. She  loves dabbling in arts and believes that creativity is her forte. She loves reading, writing, painting and listening to music and of course making short films.