Chai and chitchat

Over some moist carrot-walnut cake with a toffee topping and green tea with honey on a lazy Sunday afternoon, here's something to aimlessly ponder about :

















A strategically located traffic light around the corner from our office campus, is a good spot for the likes of me to look around and entertain myself while waiting for the light to go green. Usually I find girls/women busy with their make-up. A dab of concealer here, a brush of mascara there, a touch-up of lipstick and time for the lights to change.

About a couple of times, recently, I have noticed some guys in their cars whip out.....I am not kidding....one of those modern shavers and merrily get rid of their 1/2/3/4 day old stubble. With sweeping movements while peering into the rearview while they went about this whole shaving process casually, I continued to peer shamelessly...I am told this isnt so rare, this isnt a new thing. Apparently a lot of men shave, much like women have achieved a name for themselves for fixing their makeup while waiting at traffic lights or behind the wheel.

Especially on the turnpike. I would say 60 percent of the women drivers are still applying makeup, doing theirhair, adjusting their rearview mirrors so they can look at themselves.I think it should be listed as a contributing factor in crashes:'cosmetics.' ~ Dave Barry

A weekend trip to the local Korean market for weekly stockup of vegetables and fruits is a to-do ritual. Now if one knows these markets well enough, its a store where we desis get to indulge in all the vegetables unheard of in regular grocery stores but those that we generally crave for. Cannot be avoided, despite the mixed aromas that emanate from within. Amma almost always came to this store with a shawl that she'd cover over her face and nose even in the peak of summer. Now a weekend morning is usually a busy time at this store. Hordes of families with a common cause. There's carts being wheeled around, spouses hand-picking bhindi, loading up bags of karela and tomatoes, potatoes and onions, apples and pears, young and old, fast and slow- one and all rushing about their chores. Amidst such pandemonium I usually find two desi men(not the same two every time), babysitting their kids and/or carts, while their wives are scurrying around loading the cart, these men almost always find it the right time to catch up on office gossip. Be it their annual reviews, some latest updates on their projects, some deadline or an ex-coworker that didnt exactly move on to better things, right next to the squashes or the korean pears is where they'll be parked. Once in a while, they kindly oblige the customer that needs to pick pears or needs some more plastic bags by randomly thrusting one in their hand and dismissing them. Sometimes they even move their carts and themselves to some other strategic location like next to the vat of coconuts(another high demand item of desi customers!). You know, much as we women are maligned for gossiping, I cant see any two women standing in a crowded sabji mandi catching up on the latest gup-shup.

While gossip among women is universally ridiculed as low and
trivial, gossip among men, especially if it is about women, is called
theory, or idea, or fact. ~Andrea Dworkin 1946-

Points to ponder : How come invariably every joke, every dig about dangerous driving is about women applying makeup behind the wheel? And how come women and gossip are used synonymously every time and across many centuries?