Share the Load - Enter Ariel Matic!

Washing clothes has never been a man’s domain. At least not in this country! It is something which is supposedly only a woman’s job. Never mind the fact that women can do everything which men can and possibly some more.

Anyway, coming to the topic of washing clothes in my home – it has been always been the maid’s job. Sometimes I and my mother wash our own clothes. But my dad has never washed clothes! He can cook and he does so on weekends, but he never washes clothes.

So imagine the look on his face when I told him that I had entered a contest which required him to wash clothes! His face looked like I had asked him to go and jump from the terrace! After digesting the initial shock, my dad agreed to try his hand at the washing machine for the very first time in his life.

Enter Ariel Matic, recommended by LG, the company who sells the maximum number of washing machines in the country.

Was the experience good? Yes!

Ariel Matic didn’t just wash clothes, but also made them look like they have never been washed before! Whites looked whiter and the coloured ones looked more colourful than ever. It is definitely going to be the choice of washing powder for our home now.

So what is so good about Ariel Matic?

1)      It easily removed ink stains left on my dad’s t-shirt pocket

2)      It also managed to remove blood stains from a bed-sheet. My dog had cut her paw and had left a few drops of blood on the sheet. 18 hours had passed since the accident had occurred when the bed-sheet was loaded into the washing machine.

3)      Ariel Matic also managed to remove an old tea stain which I had left on one of my orange coloured kurtis!

So why would we even think of trying any other washing powder now? Ariel Matic it is!

This review is a part of the biggest Sponsored Review Program for Indian Bloggers. Participate now to get free Products!

Review - Ramayana - The Game of Life : Shattered Dreams By Shubha Vilas

I have never been a big fan of mythology. Who wants to read about kings and queens who didnt exist? Anyway...I am not one to say no to a free book either! So in spite of the fact that I havent read the first part of the series, I signed up for reviewing Shubha Vilas's "Ramayana: The Game of life : Shattered Dreams".

This book actually took me to my childhood. Why my childhood? Because I remember gobbling up a big fat Ramayana in my childhood. I was just about 10 years old. I read and read it and then finished it and then picked it up again. The book belonged to my grandmother. She had read it and had given it to me. At the age when children read poems and fairy tales, I started reading the Ramayana! The Mahabharata came much later, but thats another story.

So, the Game of Life, without giving out any spoilers, delves deep into the Ramayana and answers some questions we didnt even know we had. For example, why was Rama exiled for 14 years? Why not 10? Or 15? Why specifically 14 years? Readers have to read the book to find out. The prose is smooth, the storytelling is vivid and the descriptions are spot-on. You can actually go back to that time and see the characters right through the eyes of your mind.

The cover shows a very distressed Rama, presumably over his exile. Its a side we have never seen before. We all know that he accepted his punishment with grace and decided to leave. But hey,even Gods can get upset!

I am glad I read this book. Now I will go ahead and buy the first book of the series. Hopefully there will be a third as well. A big thank you to BlogAdda for re-introducing me to the Ramayana.

This review is a part of the biggest Book Review Program for Indian Bloggers. Participate now to get free books!

Flying high - A simple girl's story from OR to AND

How many times do we women have to hear statements like the following?

“You have to choose between family and work, are your kids more important to you or your job”?

“You must be really selfish because you chose your career over having a child”

“You know, you could have gone for a traditional career like teaching and not that of a DJ which is certainly not safe for women”!

Aren’t we all sick of hearing statements like this? And the worst part is that these often come from our family members, friends, spouses, siblings and so on.

Women today are choosing to go for everything from becoming a tattoo artist to an animal rights activist – none of which are considered “safe” or “traditional” for them. However, why do we have to choose between what we want to become and what we are “supposed” to become”? Why is there always an “or” and not an “AND”? Why can’t we be successful banker AND a doting mother instead of a banker OR a mom”?

This is the story of my friend, Muskan, who had to struggle for everything right from her childhood. Coming from a conservative family, with a long line of 5 sisters behind her, she was asked to give up on her education after class X. She refused to do so and started working part-time at a tailoring shop to fund her own education. It is needless to say here that even when she started bringing money to her home, her family still didn’t approve of her doing a job and studying at the same time. She was either supposed to be a “good girl” and get married or stay at home till she was married off.

She did neither of those things. Not only did she fund her own education till college, she joined an airhostess training academy after successfully procuring a loan from a nationalized bank. Today, she works with one of the leading airlines and is happily married to a man who loves her for what she is and not for what she was “meant” to be.

I salute you my friend. I am glad to have made your acquaintance in this lifetime.

“This post is a part of #UseYourAnd activity at BlogAdda in association with Gillette Venus“.

Think laundry is boring? Think again

Who could have thought that doing laundry - a mundane job at its best, had the ability to stir up a debate on gender inequality?

What we do think of while we are doing laundry? Most women possibly dont even think think anything while doing it because its something they have to do. Its something they go on doing their whole lives. They dont stop for a second to think about it...and why would they? Who will do the laundry if they started to think about it and worse...about NOT doing it?

 Imagine a scenario if women stopped doing laundry altogether. Men will show up at their workplaces wearing dirty clothes, kids will go to schools with dirty crumpled uniforms and everybody would start smelling really really bad because of their unwashed attire. People may keep on taking out new washed clothes for wearing everyday, but eventually their wardrobes WILL fall short. If you are a celebrity, then off course you dont have to think about unlimited supply of cleaned and ironed clothes! For us, the common people, even this mundane daily job will become the biggest thing to worry about. In short, the whole world will be in chaos!

 So its not really a thing which we should be taking for granted, should we?

 In my home, we have a maid for doing laundry. If she doesnt come one day, my mom takes over. Sometimes I wash my own clothes and sometimes I get too lazy. My father, on the other hand, never washes his own clothes. Now that I think about it, I realize that most men dont even know how to wash clothes! According to a survey done be Ariel, as much as 76% of Indian men think that only women should be doing laundry. Women, off course beg to differ. 73% of them think that Indian men just love to relax or watch TV after coming back from their work and dont help them with household chores at all. This needs to change. If a woman can come back from work and do laundry, why cant her husband/boyfriend help her with it? 85% of working women in India feel that they have two jobs - one at their workplace and another at their home? Why should they be made to feel this way?

 This debate can go and on. Who are we to decide who does what? Aren't husbands and wives supposed to share their whole lives? So why not share doing laundry? And why limit this to just couples? Shouldn't we - the lazy and pampered Indian children try to help our poor, overworked mothers?

“I am writing for #IsLaundryOnlyAWomansJob activity at BlogAdda.com in association with Ariel.”

Why some men should never grow a beard

I like a good beard. Sometimes a stubble works too. However there are some men who should never ever grow a beard or even a stubble! Now if its somebody like Hugh Jackman or Tom Hiddleston, a beard looks yummy!

There was this incident which prevented an otherwise attractive man from making an impression on me. I was walking through my locality when a guy with a beard walked up to me and introduced himself. I am known as the local dog lover and he seemed to be aware of that. He had a dog himself so he thought he could talk to me using a common topic. I had no problem in talking to him except for the fact that he looked rather scary with his beard. Very very scary,in fact.

It was not a well kept beard. It was just a mess of facial hair. He looked like somebody who had his life taken away from him! As if he has lost his riches, his family, everything! I could very well make out that he probably looked good without the beard. Too bad he didnt understand that himself!

I somehow managed to talk to him about his pet dog and then politely declined when he asked me for my number. He just looked too scary. Dangerous, even!

Six months later, I was again walking through my locality when a guy came up to me and asked me how I was. Even though he looked quite good, I didnt answer his question because I didnt know him. As I was walking past him, he called out "I was the one with the beard"! I turned around and took a good look at him for sometime. Yes, it was the same guy!! Six months has passed and I had never even thought of him till then. And there he was again, this time without a beard. However, I just politely answered his question and walked away. Who wants to take back a no? Not me!

'This post is a part of #WillYouShave activity at BlogAdda in association with Gillette'.

God is a Gamer - An exciting thriller by Ravi Subramanian

A free book is the best gift ever. More so if the book turns out to be a nail biting thriller which you cannot just put down! Unfortunately, there are not too many books like that and that too by Indian authors!

However, “God is a gamer” by Ravi Subramanian (writer of best-selling books like “The Bankster” and “Bankerupt”) is one of those rare books which force you to forget about eating or sleeping. You don’t care about anything as long as you get to finish the book!!

The book’s chapters are so short and the twists are so frequent that you lose track of everything around you. It is like one of those thrilling TV shows which play for only 20 minutes and leave you wanting more. Off course the best thing about reading a book is that there are no ad breaks!

The book is all about the “dark internet”. For people who are unaware of the same, the dark internet is the part of internet which is “hidden” or accessible only through a certain type of “hidden” network. For somebody like me, who was totally clueless about dark net or anything associated with it, this book came as a huge surprise.

Not knowing about the dark net from beforehand proved to be very advantageous for me. It is the reason why the book kept me glued. The more I read, the more I was surprised, shocked, flabbergasted even!

Along with the dark net, the book also explores banks and financial conspiracies, the advent of ”Bitcoin” – the  digital currency, Indian and US politics, international ATM heists and more.

 The book forces you to look up everything which is mentioned in it and that’s the sign of a good book. You don’t just shut it and forget it. You are forced to think about it for hours. You keep scouring Google for more information about certain things mentioned in the book. The fact that all of these things exist in real life makes the book even more exciting!

What more could ask for you in a book?  A racy love story? A murder? It is all there! The love story is not very integral to the plot and you can guess how it is going to end. But it is still fun to read!

The characters are not black or white. All of them are different shades of grey. The book explores the dark side of human nature and to what extent we all can go for extracting revenge. Even though I didn’t quite agree with the way of extracting the revenge, it is what made the book it is. You don’t care for any of the characters and yet you remain glued to the book!

The last chapter of the book tries to answer a lot of questions at once so you need to read it more than once for understanding what exactly went on. I had to read it thrice before writing this review. Even now I am reeling under the effect of the book and I am very sure that I am going to read it again in the future!

This review is a part of the biggest Book Review Program for Indian Bloggers. Participate now to get free books!

A race against time - The quikr-blogadda free shopping fiesta!

Blogadda.com is always coming up with something new or the other. After participating in almost all their contests and activities for about 2 years now, I am game for anything now!

October being the festive month, I was in no mood to write about anything, whether for work or for contests. When blogadda came up with their quikr.com contest, I signed up for it anyway. I received a mail from them a few days later telling me that I have been selected! I was overjoyed and I decided to get to it after all the Diwali festivities were over. I put some money aside as well because this activity required me to buy something from quikr.com at Rs 5000. And yes, blogadda was going to reimburse me for the item bought making it free, free, free!

Exciting, isn’t it? Yes, it was….until the time came when I completely forgot about the activity. I got very busy with my work after Diwali got over and completely forgot about blogadda and quikr. Thanks to their reminder mails which I received a few days ago, I suddenly remembered that I was yet to participate in their quikr activity! And there was no time! There were probably only a few days left!

However, I still couldn’t get to writing the blog or even to quikr.com because I had a huge backlog of work left because of the holiday I had taken during the Durga pujas. I managed to get to quikr.com only on the 29^th of December, with just two days to go for the activity to end!

I was worried and excited at the same time. I was worried whether I would find anything to buy at all! Quikr.com holds a special place in my heart because I had adopted one of my dogs, Brownie, from there. She is a precious sweetheart who came to my life only because this website had made it possible. 

However, I still wasn’t confident about buying anything because I had never really bought any “item” on quikr.com before.

Anyway, I had to quickly decide what I wanted to buy. Looking at my own weight which was increasing day by day, I decided to buy a treadmill. Quick and easy!

I logged on to quikr.com and checked through the listings for the right kind of treadmill at the right price. I found only two listings offering treadmills at Rs 5000. One of them had a phone number and the other one had an email address.

http://kolkata.quikr.com/Home-Lifestyle/w923

I decided to email the concerned person right then because it was already midnight. The location was okay with me as I intended to go check the treadmill before I buy. I sent the email, went off to sleep and hoped for the best.

Next morning, I woke up and quickly checked for a reply to email. There was none. It was already the 30^th! I went to quikr.com again and called the one other person who was selling a treadmill for Rs 5000. He told me that he had already sold it.

With a heavy heart, I decided that I wasn’t going to get a piece of this activity after all.

I went back to work.

At midnight, I suddenly received a reply to email. The person who had posted the ad turned out to be Sneha Kejriwal, a 13 year old girl! She had sent a long mail introducing herself, her location, condition of the treadmill and why she wanted to sell it. I quickly sent her a reply that I had to go check the treadmill the next morning itself and asked her whether she was okay with it. The simple task of asking for her phone number didn’t even occur to me because I was so worried about the deadline!

This morning I woke up and checked my mails even before I brushed my teeth. There was a reply from Sneha, asking me to come to her house within 1 pm. I cancelled all other work I had and went to her house located at Chakraberia, Bhawanipur.

Sneha was really nice to meet with and she turned out to be a very internet savvy person. On meeting her, I had a quick recollection of my own 13 year old self and how clueless I used to about everything. This girl, on the other hand, was selling her treadmill all on her own!

I checked the treadmill and even walked on it. It was quite good to buy. The display showed the time and amount of calories I have burned in about 3 minutes. I was impressed. I paid her Rs 5000 and she happily told me that she was going to buy a tablet with it.

Now the real worry was to get the thing to my house! I had already informed the mini truck driver at my locality that I might need his services. I called him and he told me that he would manage to come only at around 5 pm! I decided to wait and hang around at the nearby “Homeland” mall which I had never been to before.

Now finally, as I am writing this, the treadmill is sitting pretty in my living room. My dogs are very curious about this monstrous looking thing and are busy sniffing it from top to bottom. All thanks to quikr and blogadda.com.

This post is a part of Quikr.com activity at BlogAdda.com