Unsuni.com

Who are we to decide if a particular topic is good or bad? It’s a populist world after all. And let’s face it. Love him or hate him, a lot of us read Chetan Bhagat. His stories are simple to understand and more often than not, a story well told, without unnecessary fancy words or gobbledegook which most of us cannot comprehend in so called literary marvels. We all seek to hear simple stories. Why do we take everything to an intellectual level? Salman Khan, Chetan Bhagat, Sidney Sheldon...and more...all the peas of the same populist pod. They are mass entertainers and they have their appeal. We are clearly not a world filled with geniuses. Imagine if there was more than one Einstein. If it was, we’d be a world filled with pathetic, envious people trying to one-up each other. There are plenty of hard working people out there who want to discuss simple topics like Tell me a ghost story or Which was your first crush or etc etc (I'm sure u get the point) Why do...

It wasn’t like she was surprised.  She had known it all along. The messages, the discreet whispered phone calls, the unexplained late nights. It wasn't the same Shailesh that she had married.  Reema was not devastated. It was a slow, dumb, numbness coming over her. It had been like a large rock, hurtling towards her in slow motion. On her way out of the bathroom, where she had spent the last two hours in her haze, she stopped to look at herself in the mirror. Her skin, dry, pallid, devoid of any glow, she had ignored it for the longest time. For long it had been Shailesh, Shailesh and only Shailesh. His work, his food, his demands, his, his, his...it had all been about him. In doing so, she had neglected looking after herself. But now it was time to make changes. She hugged herself close. She should have done it a long time ago.   For the first time in many months, she ran her hands over her skin, her feet, dry with calluses. Her hair, whisps of grey...

Her stomach hurts like hell. Babli wants to go to the toilet really bad but she has to wait till sundown. After all, no decent girl from a decent family should be seen with her posterior uncovered...her mother had explained to her many many moons ago. The village in which she lives, it is on the outskirts of Mumbai. And her father is a farmer. From one of the many tribes that dot the country. Her mother works as a domestic help in the city close by and Babli goes to the local school in the nearby village which is a good twenty minutes walk through the forest. On occasion, when she can hold on no more, Babli and her friends form a circle and they answer nature's call. There are no sanitation facilities in the village where Babli lives. They draw water from the well to drink and wash. The forests are their toilets. Every morning, just before the sun rises, the women folk of the village make small groups and set out for the forest with tumblers and buckets of water in tow. To say...

When Kiara was a baby, she would get terrible bouts of cough. And her cough would be accompanied with bouts of throwing up. Her little chest would spasm and ache and she would retch and retch. That was until the day, my grandmother introduced me to flax seeds. It was a very simple treatment. Roast flax seeds for about 5 minutes and bundle the seeds in a soft, muslin or cotton cloth. Apply it very gently on to the chest of the baby. Within no time, the baby will go off to sleep and its cough will dissipate within the body and will dry up. This was just one of the many times when household items bundled as miracle ayurveda cures and made the difference between standing in long lines at the doctor's clinic and sleeping peacefully at home. Kids are the heart and soul of any family. Anything happening to them is like your little world falling apart. But us modern, young mothers, who lives miles, sometimes continents apart from our moms and nanis need to fortify our kids with the ...

In most Indian homes, Diwali begins at least a week in advance. It begins with the smell of besan being fried to make ladoos, mum and grandmothers patiently getting the dough together to make the perfectly crisp chaklis, sweet coconut karanjyas being fried painstakingly...and among all this the task of making sure that kids do not get their paws into the sweets before Diwali comes.  My home was no different. My mom was a working woman but Diwali was the one time when she would hitch up her sari and get down into the mounds of sugar, maida, besan, nuts and what not, with my grandmother, and toil for a few days to make delicious Diwali goodies. And who could forget rangoli? My mother would coerce me into helping her with making these powder designs? Actual Diwali was quite tough on me. Waking up at the crack of dawn...ahh. Painful. But my grandma would drag me out of bed, pelt me with bone chilling water and uptan...perhaps the reason whyi still don't use uptan on my face...an...

First of all, Achcha chutzpah banaya mr. Bhardwaj.  Warning: Spoilers ahead so read at your own risk 1. It's looooooooong and boooooooring I've seen movies that are long and movies that are boring. But a combination of both is quite lethal. Haider is NOT gripping. Don't let a few paid reviewers fool you.  2. It's portraying the police and army forces in a light that they do not deserve In Haider, the guy who harbours the militant (shahids father) is made out to be the hero. The entire movie is about how the army took this guy away because he harboured a militant and tortured him. He deserved the treatment. But in Haider, he is portrayed as the victim. Mistake no. 1.  3. The police man (Feroze Khan) and the army informers (K K Menon and the guys playing Salman and Salman) are the villains. Why? They are simply doing what every Indian citizen should in any case be doing. What's your hidden agenda mr. Bhardwaj? Mistake no. 2.  4. Shraddha Kapoor Mistake no. 3 She is fa...

A lot of her friends ask my daughter why she has two alphabets for her middle name.  She says to them "one is for my father." And the other? "Why of course, my mum. Who else?"  On one hot and sweaty afternoon, I found myself standing in Kiara's school office lining up to verify her details in her school register. The clerk asked me "what's your child's mother tongue?" "It's Marathi." I answered.  "But isn't Karir a North Indian surname?" She enquired. "Oh yes it is. Her father is a Punjabi." I replied. "But u said her mother tongue is Marathi." continued the inquisitive clerk. "You asked me for her mother tongue, didn't you? Or was it father tongue?" I was getting irritated partly because of her audacity and mostly because of the heat. The poor clerk was a bit perplexed. Moving on to the next column she asked me my daughter's complete name. "Kiara Anand Sun...