jayantiblogshere

My office was located at 18 Grosvenor Place, London SW1X 7HN. The fourth floor of our office overlooked the queens backyard in Buckingham palace. On winter days when the trees shed their leaves and were bare some of my collaeagues would claim they saw the Queen’s dogs being taken for an afternoon walk inside the Palace gardens .   It is not just the Queen's dogs inside the Palace but the men and women outside the Palace who worked in offices around central london take a walk in the afternoons because that is pretty much the only time where there is some decent amount of shine and warmth to venture outdoors. Weather permitting, I would walk the length of hyde park until the serpentine or the Speaker's corner during my lunch breaks. That was probably the only physical exercise and a breath of fresh crisp air  I would get during the course of a work day.     When my walk had to be short it would not be to hyde park or th...

My previous post of the famous F word could not have been complete without its female counterpart the 5 letter B***** word. But for all that claim to fame that this four letter word seems to boast of … There is much to be said about its female counterpart in English vocabulary … Research done by some fucked up university scholars in UK, US , New Zealand and Australia suggests that a certain male of the species use the F*** word 83.4 % more frequently than the female of the species. On Analysing the reasons they found that the females of the species is so fundamentally fucked up with intense soul threatening experiences that they find it easier to mutter the silent five letter B**** word than utter the loud four letter F*** word as an intense form of expression.      Some time back I was in the tube ( underground metro for the uninitiated and the perverts whose imaginations could run wild) . There was this woman whose cleavage was bursting fr...

F*** is arguably the most versatile english word ever coined. It is   an English word with recent origin.    It can used to mean different things at different times depending upon the context. It can easily fill in the roles of an adverb, adjective, verb, noun, pronoun and whatever else.  It can be used in present tense, past tense , future tense ... anytime you are tensed.  Here are just some of the examples...  Fuck … I have won the million dollar lottery ( Fuck as in ‘ wow … ’) Fuck … boss caught me minimizing the window of bookmyshow.com ( Fuck as in   ‘ Oh shit’ ) You are so fucking funny ( as in ‘ so .... funny’ ) Fuck off – angry expression ( as in sod off / bugger off ) Fuck off – with a coquettish look and a blush in the cheeks ( as in I am enjoying the attention but too coy to accept)   Fuck off – friendly expression   ( as in ‘just forget it’ ) Fuck … you have put on so much we...

Naduvula konjam Pakkattha kanom I am normally not an active watcher of Tamil movies. I honestly cannot tell the difference between an Ajith from a Suriya or a Vijay and I do not really know who the latest among the heroines is the hot babe these days.         This is not to say I avoid Tamil movies. To the contrary I am passively exposed to an overdose of Sun TV, Jaya TV, K Tv, Vijay TV and the rest everyday from the drawing room where my folks watch them like their life depended on it. Much as I   try to shut myself up in my bedroom and get cocooned to the internet or curl up with a book, the not so soft subtle Humour of Vadivelu, Vivek,   kavunda mani and Senthil pierce  the walls of my bedroom crystal clear and attack me from time to time.    My blood pressure occasionally shoots up when I try to decipher the exact point the participant tries to make in Visu’s 'Arattai ranagam' when I am try...

The richness of the colour of peacock feathers have always fascinated me.         I know they were a common bird in many parts of india until urbanization decimated them and drove them to the rural and forested areas. Bred in urban jungles, I always associated Peacock as a gentle creature.   Until that day at Kew gardens.  In the lush 368 acres of Royal botanical gardens at Kew in London, I was walking along the thames admiring and photographing the various species of koniferous trees planted from the world over and the occasional peacocks.  A cold february winter day does not qualify as the mating season and so none of the male were in their flirtatious best with their feathers spread out.    Picked up a few peanuts from my bag to feed them so I can have an up and close view of the feathers to photograph them.     As I got clicking them away I found one taking me head on and walking towards me… d...

  Singular plural - Does anybody care     Notice at the entrance of STAPLES - Marathalli     Thodi si PIZZA puja - Dominos inaugurates an outlet at Pa rk square mall  Munna, Munni, Mama, Papa and their Sunday lunch !!! Click on the photograph for a better view :)

UNBRIDLED PASSION - seldom comes without a price tag.   This is an imposing 8 foot tall carved wood work at Cauvery emporium that stands at the display near the entrance. I have been there atleast a dozen times taking visitors for shopping in the last three years. At a price tag of 16 lakhs it is not surpirsing that this wonderful piece of art has not yet found a buyer. Radha and Krishna's passionate embrace is so wonderfully captured by the artist. Photography is prohibited at Cauvery. However this time I simply could not resist breaking the rules because the profound tagline for this photograph was already conceived in my mind.   (Captured on my i-phone when the security was looking the other way round.)

It was an exhilarating moment for me to be part of the NASSCOM Diversity and Inclusivity summit.   I was there to receive the award for ‘Best Emerging Company’ on behalf of my company at the Summit.     We soaked in all the attention from other companies and the press. That we had worked hard for the last three years with a humble ,slow & sluggish start to reach where we are today made it truly special.   To me, encouraging  women to get into corporate worklife was a personal mission. I could relate to it being a girl raised in the 80’s and 90’s from a conservative Tambram, Indian   middle class family. Thanks to a lot of my clan and gender flocking to corporate careers, it is easy today for a city bred 20 something to start earning her own money and be economically independent.   But there are so many women out there who are just as capable but were born at the wrong time at the wrong places. And i am not even talking Afgh...

Life of Pi  (The book as well as the movie) probably rates in my view as one of the classic pieces of creation. Like most classics it is very profound, inspriring and is like a kaldeiscope. Everytime you read and re- read the book or watch the movie it leaves you with a different and a deeper perspective and a connect to our own souls and the lives we lead. Even when  you dismiss it as a bizarre piece of fiction, it leaves a profound impact if you choose to ponder over the subtle messages that it conveys. This time around when I watched the movie, it is the relationship with Richard Parker that left me awestruck. There is a Richard Parker in probably all our lives. A character that we fear, loathe, want to avenge and may be even kill if we had that one licence to kill. In the dense urban jungles that we live  the danger of Richard Parker is more to our soul ...

English Vinglish is India’s answer to Shirley Valentine.    It is a must watch movie for every woman. Young and old, single and married. Every woman who goes to watch this movie may do well if she takes her man along. You never know, with some luck he may be able to relate to it. A touching and sensitive movie of a homemaker running a small home business of   making sweets( laddoos) and a seemingly happy family of Husband , two children and a mother in law. Sashi, the protagonist of the movie comes across as this selfless, naïve and innocent and ignorant woman that we all so easily associate mothers with. Beneath this stereotype of being the selfless homemaker lies this human being, whose emotional   needs are repressed and taken for granted   in the daily grind of serving her husband, a teenage daughter , a son and a mother in law. A solo travel to New York to arrange her niece’s wedding before her family comes over, her complete mess up   at a ...

  Chottu runs Bhavana general stores ,which is situated   round the corner from where we live. It is a decent sized grocery and general shop that sells everything that one would need to run a day to day   household   from milk to mosquito repellants all under one roof. Chottu’s uncles and relatives run many   grocery shops all around the city. When Chottu’s uncle invested in Bhavana general stores, the only customers around the place were construction workers who had pitched their tents and lived on the daily wages building out the apartments and houses in the vacant plots around the area. This could have been around 10 years back. Ours is a locality that has seen abundance of construction and new development in the last 3-4 years thanks to being close to the IT hub. The business model was simple. Staples like rice, wheat flour, oil and pulses were available in as little quantities as was required for two square meals a day till the next daily w...