Indian Men - Branding Fairness product to be Confident??

What is with the Indian Tall, Dark and Handsome men drooling over fairness products and shady deodorants to get a hike today? In an age where the striking intelligence of an Indian man is taking the front seat, the “get fair to gain confidence” is completely killing the “Ehmm” thing and portraying him like a waste.

Indian men being meticulous about his grooming and appearance is a great object, it gives us women an awesome feel to gorge about men out of the silver screen. Who does not want a man walking beside her with a good pick from the wardrobe and a lean body minus the typical pot belly looming around?
When high street fashion is making a statement, why would Indian men fall back, after all, we Indians are one of the most desired people on the face of earth who come with a dash of brains and looks together, so, why not flaunt it while it is still there.

All said and done, chasing fairness product is something that Indian men are doing today. And is that the next best thing to do once your wardrobe is all decked up? While we see the Indian women going matt and bronze, why this sudden anxiety in men to be fair and handsome!
From Lord Krishna to Lord Rama and of course Shiva- Indian psyche for the male avatar has always been the dark is the handsome. So what is with the men today? Is the feel good factor of being the fair one really offering them a boost to their existence or is it just the west taking over their mind and crumpling the identity all over?
Men from the west have always had the craze to be the epitome of the tan that takes on them during their summer breaks. Asian men are blessed with the shades of brown that they can flaunt. Indian men in particular rule the dimensions with their added good features and an amount of grey matter. Then what is this race for the hydroquinone greed.

A lot has been said about the complexion and confidence. I personally find no line of business between the two. A man has never been weighed by his complexion or looks. Today even the media and the tinsel town does not grow with the complexion of a man. If that was so, we would not have had an Amitabh Bachchan or a Nasiruddin Shah. If looks really mattered in Indian livelihood, we would not have had a Pankaj Kapoor charting as Karamchand and a Manoj Bajpayee or Irfan Khan standing stern in their non commercial film dom devoid of dancing around the bushes. If complexion really worked wonders in this country then the Omar Abdullah and Rahul Gandhi could have escaped all the criticizing they have accumulated so far for their good and bad. If we now go west, we have more awe for a Denzel Washington and a Bruce Willis for the act they put. The die hard screen embracing Tom Cruise and the salt and pepper disambiguation of George Clooney has definitely got more to do than just their looks.

Action definitely speaks more than mere words. Men are here for actions. His work will speak and his confidence will boost with his first step of success that takes him step by step ahead. Complexion will not matter there. A confident man will never worry about complexion and a successful man will not have time to worry about his complexion.

Now let me talk about women and love. Media plays a significant role here. The advertisements of deodorants, after shave, perfumes and every other domestic product associates a good looking woman lurching over a fair and handsome man. The fair men are portrayed as well to do and eminent classifications of a daily soap that is aired. The shades of brown take the seats of the bad guy in the sequence. Is it colonialism, racism, castism or just a capitalization? The psyches of fair races that have rigorously conquered the country and the subcontinent for decades from the Persians to the Aryans to finally the British have reigned over Indian men and their mentality. The sense of control, wealth, power and leading the mass that has driven Indian history is just a dormant mindset that exists till today in every man. And not to forget how these invaders took over the Indian women as well for decades together. With the change of time and rolling of centuries, the concept of power in Indian men remained the same, only the medium to acquire the power progressed and altered, I must say.

Now a note to the eminent brand ambassadors of our fair and complexion conscious male fraternity. India as a country is going through a lot of metamorphosis right now. The country is in a make or break place. As responsible citizens, even if the business gains do not generate enough bucks into their accounts and their grey brains do not bloom with ideas to contribute to any national effort, they could, at least, contribute to the nation by not contributing anything. The concept of Satyameva Jayate or an Incredible India might not be their cup of tea however, keeping away from playing on the morale and psychology of the brown Indian men to alter into a fair man in order to be confident would compensate as the contribution to support as a role model of the mass.

Soulful....

The invisible strength that plays the role of a guiding light in our life is the only truth that exists inside us. Beyond the limits of wrong and right, beyond the limits of all possibilities, beyond all the purity and lies that one lives through, there is a place where truth establishes itself. 

No rich, no poor, not the busiest or the most lost one can be defined to have or not have a soul. Its radical, cannot be set to an amount or bargained for. It is what we actually are and it is so difficult to hold on to our soul. While we spend the bucks to feed our greed, the soul remains hungry. So we should start feeding the soul.

I can reach out to that part of the ones I love where the worst of them is hidden. It would make the bad fade away to ignite the soul that burns the light forever, never dies, never tires. It keeps burning and is reborn again and again with the sight of you. And every time that you and I are not reborn together, our soul fails to dance to make it up for the time and we live dividing ourselves into fragments of our soul.

Time - The Teacher

The greatest accomplishments of life are not about name, fame or returns. The greatest objects in life are not Things. It is a circle of love and strength that battles the entire crisis and makes earth an early heaven. It is a bondage that conveys back no lament in the itinerary of the time spent. 

One must not complain of not having adequate time to cope. An Albert Einstein, A Helen Keller, you and me have the unchanged amount of time, same numeral of hours everyday. We all have 24 hours for all the million fixations we plan to achieve and the most important things we predispose to forget. 

We have to craft time for those things; else we will seldom find time. The most significant errands of a day lie in the ordinary of the silence in our surroundings. To look for the silence and to uncover the happiness in it is a homecoming.

For all of us who are so full of activities that we fail to cherish the mere existence of our close ones must at least once go and talk to the ones who do not have someone to contribute to their story of the day. For all who try to stumble on happiness while looking beyond the fence, should visit the ones who wish they still were together to spend time with.

Our busy schedule clutches us from acting on and reacting to and eventually we are alone, all by ourselves. I simply adorn the ones who seize time for their loved ones. The single celebrating life that we are gifted with, I salute the ones who craft it into amusement and who just don’t converse in favor of family values but in turn offer significance to their families. Time teaches one never to neglect happiness for business revenue and that is indeed an enormous invention of time. Cherish the moments in hand and when its time to look back, rejoice to recall an epic.

#Breakthroughtv, an initiative of "Nation Against Early Marriage" Adopts My Blogs as a part of their movement

The Burden of Sexuality: marital rape, abuse and harassment:
http://www.breakthrough.tv/earlymarriage/2013/09/burden-sexuality-marital-rape-abuse-harassment/

Early Marriage: Giving The Youth A Face:

http://www.breakthrough.tv/earlymarriage/2013/09/early-marriage-giving-youth-face/

The Shopper's Journey ~ A long way Travelled

I remember my childhood days, though very faintly, when my father used to hold my hand and let me hand over money from his purse and count the changes and notes that the grocery storekeeper would return. That was the fun time of mathematics and learning to shop. As time went by and years rolled away, we were given money to go alone and buy our stationeries. Returning the exact amount with the correct calculation was the trick of the game. When I finished my school and walked into college, the so called pocket money that covered the expense of the transportation and the junk food started. The money was not required to be returned like it had to be done till now. This was a new era of shopping. We all, in our very best ways, saved small parts of it from cutting down junk foods and walking the bus stops for the movie tickets. By the time we left college, we learned the skills of shopping. We moved ahead from shopping with our parents during the festivals to shopping with our friends. Window shopping often taught us the art of getting the best deals in the lowest of the cost. It brought us immense pride when we won bargains better than our mothers or guided parents to shops with better price than they know. Secretly, our parents also took pride of their children’s ability. Another 2-3 years down and we have plastic money flowing in the market. It has often been an exhibited delight to flash the cards that the fathers often spoil their daughters with for the festive shopping. My fringe with plastic money started with my father’s card. I would often carry his only credit card then, to cover the long list of shopping that Dusshera and Diwali demanded.

Another few years and I started working. There came my 1^st plastic money and with time, I learnt the tricks of redeeming of points, making the best use of VISA/MASTER/MEASTRO cards and get gifts through online shopping. Finally, to conclude, we have indeed come a long way. Mall has more or less become a place to go, try and choose. Most of us come back home for the better discounts by buying through online shopping.

I remember the day I had booked the anniversary gift for my parents online through ebay.in. I got a very good deal, left a special message for them and had the gift delivered in the hotel room where they were holidaying that week. My parents were overwhelmed. When later on they had asked the how to and what to do in order to book online, I told them abruptly, how online shopping works.

What took me by surprise was my father’s idea of sending gifts online for the birthday of a special someone of our family who is located in the other part of the country. Yesterday, I took my time to walk them both through the bit.ly/eBayCheck_Extention and got them the best available deal for the gift they were looking for. We customized the item as per requirement, tagged it with our best wishes and bought it.

More so, to see how of learning they have been able to adapt and of course excited over the advance of the shopping strategies, they further went ahead and purchased a few more.

I am astonished. This is where we have reached in the last 20 years. From learning to count the coin to buy candies with my dad, here I am today, making him comfortable as an online shopper. This is a very long distance that the industry has travelled. We had never ever imagined in our wildest fantasies that shopping would be like this. In 2030, I cannot pull the string of my imaginations to relate to anything. This far, itself, is like crossing the rim of the ocean and reaching the neverland. Where do we go from here in the next 20 years, Only time can tell us.

Amreekandesi - A disastrous Read

 I got an insight of this book from the author’s twitter handle. Being a great follow on twitter, his sense of humor is obviously judgmental. Flawless is the word for his presence of mind and tricks to inculcate simple everyday matters and parts n parcels of life into a laughter factory. There is no comprehension about the comedy and drama that the author is able to exhibit even into minute issues.

A very next door comprehension of Indian household and their reactions to American Dreams has been portrayed with all puns intended.  The story tickles our funny bones with the incidents that we all witness somewhere in our daily life. The relative association between our lives and the plot that the author has aimed at, gives us a feel good about the story.

The story has no surprise, it is a predictable plot and everything is known. The influence of getting in college sex and tongue wagging at white skin woman anatomy is all over. The protagonists were so much in a hurry to get into the college life in the US that getting a VISA and managing fund for US education looked easier that getting girls in the college. Tons and tons of spelling mistakes, grammar has no control anywhere. In the initial pages author is confused with Arora-ji and Goyal-ji. Editorial mistakes are remarkably visible and for a publisher like Random House, this is surprising that they even printed this manuscript full of mistakes. The plot has no twist, no climax, no suspense just a day to day life of any Indian who runs away from the country and then waits to come back for good.

I had great expectations from this book, but on the whole, it is an utter waste of time. I hope, this book does not go out in Amazon and publicize more on the hopelessness portrayed by the author about Indians abroad. I must finally conclude by saying that this is a story about Indians running away from the country, may be 10-15 years back. It is no more the scenario and is a bad featuring of the Indian follows.