The art of calling my name in full.

For as long as I can remember, the only person I call by a pet name is my brother. Everyone else, however close they may be to my heart -- and I've been blessed with several good people in my life -- I call them by their given name. My best friend from school is still to get used to it, I think. And I've known her 22 years.

I like to think that a name is more than just a tag to identify a certain body. A name, as far as I am concerned, is deeply linked with who we are and how we identify ourselves. A lot like an email id actually. I notice invariably that teenagers and those who think they're still teenagers stick to pet names and email ids that have personality projections in them. I can take the pet name but the email addresses make me want to never write to them, even though I love them.

For example, my 15 year-old cousin calls herself Joanna Janet in places such as Facebook and email. Or some really odd thing like that. It fits her personality perfectly because she's growing up on High School Musical and Hannah Montana, so her exposure is very obviously Western. I'd have given her an award if she had nicknamed herself Subbulakshmi or Kartiyayani. I totally get her because she is 15.

But I recently ran into a few email addresses that made me realise that I spend far too much time thinking about things that I have no business thinking about. Mosquitoes, world peace and whether global warming is just someone's idea of a joke, for example. I should be thinking about not spending my money so fast that my kids will grow up believing education is for duds and Pink Floyd rocks. I should be thinking about more alternatives for five minutes of peace  than the empty interiors of a parked car. (I swear I did that today. My family trooped out and went home, I just lay in the back seat savouring the closed space, the quiet and the time to actually hear myself think.) I should basically be thinking about more useful things than why a grown person has an email id that says babyfacekid@ihaventgrownup.com.

Yes, yes, call me judgemental but I think after you've crossed 23, you should just have an email id that states your name and get on with life. I realise you might want to or have to throw in an underscore or a dot somewhere and I am mildly tolerant on that front. But I just cannot forgive a 34 year old whose email id is prettybabydoll@seekingattention.com.

But wow, how I've digressed.

Recently, a friend brought it up when I was referring to someone, that I could use that someone's pet name. I know I could but an anglicised little name doesn't have half the charm of a beautiful full name, in this case a Sanskrit one. And all the meaning that is held in the womb of that name is lost when I shorten it. I'd much rather be uncool than called a Pratyusha a Prat or a Ragini a Rags.

And as for me, for as long as I can remember, friends and family have called me pet names. One in particular. Anglicised, shorter and somewhat bimboesque but that's what I am for most my college and school mates, and definitely all of my family. Except my husband. Who has a totally different endearment for me. Something that I hold dear to my heart but something that also makes me laugh because it points to a couple things.
1) The age gap between him and me.
2) The very Malayalee in us.

Of course, when I am in the dog house I get called my full name (ouch) or when I am being introduced to someone. It's the strangest feeling ever. Sometimes when we are out together and he's opening doors for, showing me off and generally being the charmer he is, he tends to call me my name and I don't know then, whether to kiss him or laugh at the awkwardness of it.  Mostly because I insist I get called my beautiful, thoughtout, meaningful Sanskrit name but then feel suddenly very unloved when I get called it in full.
It leads me to think that maybe it is habit that we respond to and not our name. Inflections, tone, length of name is what we respond to. For example, a simple enough name is so different when spoken during roll call in school, at an introduction or in bed. The word is the same but the emotions they arouse in us -- from an indifferent "Present" to a thrill running up your spine.

So when Shakespeare said, "What's in a name", I honestly think he was smoking some rotten stuff and had totally lost the plot. My other theory is that he called his wife by his girlfriend's name and she gave him pure hell.

I am a feminist

A school mate of mine, who I think I'd like to be friends with now, told me on phone recently that she has been a stay-at-home mum for about four years now, since her daughter was born. This girl, as I remember her from school, was bright, sociable, dedicated, focused, had an excellent work-ethic and hovered somewhere at the top of our class. I think she had ambitions to do something in the sciences, or perhaps it was engineering, I can't be sure now.

I recently spoke to her again and was very pleasantly surprised that she chose a more evolved stream and did her BA in English Literature. Moreover, after having worked in a bank here in Oman for a bit, she married, settled down and is now a very happy mother to a four-year old. The thing that struck me in the conversation was her saying, "You know,  I am not a very career-minded person at all."

For me, that was surprising, because I know very few women of my generation who are not career minded. We were all raised on the ethic that we needed to conquer the world, we needed to stand on our own feet so that we could be who we wanted, so that we could make our parents proud, so that we could go live the life our mothers dreamed of. We were also raised on stories of women facing every kind of degradation in history.

Very often, without our realising, our self-esteem, sense of self-worth and indeed, the very idea of our Self was deeply tied together with having a career. And in second-generation working women, like me, it wasn't enough if you were in one of the "easier" fields: beauty, teaching, clothes, if you hadn't the smarts to become a doctor or an engineer. Somewhere along, we got the message that we had to go do the "tougher" things. I put easier and tougher in quotes because the jobs listed next to them, aren't my definitions of those words. I don't see what is tough about sitting in an air-conditioned office and doing a 350-word story on summer trends for glasses. You're still a journalist but not doing a tough job. Similarly, I don't see what is easy about being on your feet all day making other women beautiful; bending over to thread women's eyebrows or waxing their armpits or massaging their pedicured feet. Beauty, you will agree, is not easy.

But coming back to my point, for most my generation of women it is very clear that the option of staying home was almost not there, unless you absolutely couldn't help it. But this girl, who grew up in a single-income household, is very happy with her status. And while there's only a hint of apology when she talks to someone like me who has a career (somewhat), she's quite comfortable with the fact that her daughter, her family come first.

For a few days, I have been thinking about feminism. For some years now, I have been hearing women say, quickly and defensively, when they tend to speak up for women and their rights, that they are not feminists. And I've wondered why.

I've seen men say it derisively of a woman, that she is a feminist. I, on the other hand, proudly say I am a feminist. I speak up for myself, I speak up for my sisters, I speak up. I love being a woman, I really like men and I love my career as well as my kids. I strive hard to make my parents proud (whether they see it or think otherwise), I love finding out new things about me and just because I play other roles like daughter, wife, sister, mum, friend, and everything else, I am NO less myself. In fact, all these roles just add to my personality. So what exactly am I missing when people run away from the F word?

Thanks to the feminist movements, Men, your mothers, wives, sisters and daughters can vote, can inherit property and are considered citizens of a country. Thanks to feminism, there are laws where rape, molestation, sexual harassment at work are all punishable. Thanks to feminism, girls have a right to education just as much as boys do.

And women, exactly what makes you say, "Hey, I am no feminist but I really think women should..."? Even if you aren't a feminist in the strict sense of the word, why do you have a problem with being labelled as one? Is it because you, like me, love pretty lingerie and are not willing to give it up? Is it because you think 'feminist' automatically means you need to call men words that a sailor would blush at? Maybe these questions are simplistic, but I am just trying to understand why you don't like being called a feminist.

Because you know, us feminists, don't burn bras anymore. We even get married (to men) and have children. Why, we go as far as telling people that we love being a woman and for us many times feminism means that I get to stay at home and there's no pressure on me to earn for the family, most of the time.

Honestly, that is what feminism means to me today. One of my favourite writers (as she is with many women I know) Alice Walker has a beautiful word for it Womanism. For me, being a woman, being a feminist means now that I have most my rights in place -- voting, education, property, the right to choose my last name, the right to be safe (?) apart from others -- I have the right to choose. I have the right to choose whether I want to go to work and make a career, or I want to stay at home and revel in domesticity. Feminism, for me, means the freedom to choose the latter and not feel like I've betrayed my education and my talent by choosing  to stay at home and considering a family more important.

Feminism to me means having the choice to go to work even though I have children and coming back feeling good that I spent a productive day work while looking forward to time with the kids. It means not feeling guilty that I spent time away from them. Feminism means to be able to my buy my own car or designer handbag. It also means to have the grace to say 'thank you' if a man offered to buy either, once in a while.

Feminism means feeling comfortable to say that I asked my husband out; that I like to cook (I don't; just an example) or crochet (which I like) or sew or bake without feeling like if I say it, people will think of me as domesticated, as a "typical" girl. It means feeling comfortable to say I love cars, gadgets and women without being thought of as a tomboy, or worse, a wannabe tomboy. Feminism means not thinking it's a great thing if you own best bud is a man -- it doesn't make you any different from a woman who's best friend is a girl. In my opinion you should have one of both.

What does feminism mean to you?

Really?

Who said the Omanis are a shy lot? You think I should get these contact lenses to up my sex life?
Seen at Muscat City Centre, an optician's store.

Edit: Am I the only person who found the tagline completely inappropriate?

More money than sense

Being a journalist is not easy on my pocket. Bad enough they pay my tribe badly, even though for most of relevant history, people couldn't dream of beginning their day without a newspaper. We should have just gone on strike long ago and said the IT guys are coming, so start paying us well or go find your own news. But because most of us have a social conscience and an ego the height of Burj Khalifa, we still continue to wear the badge of news hunters, gatherers and providers (even though increasingly, journalism is hardly that anymore) first and a tax payer later.

These days, I go out to many events that I shouldn't be going to because of the simple reason that I am vain and believe I should dress nicely when I go out to meet people and perhaps network with them. In my carefree,  worse-paid days in India, I used to not care a bit about being badly dressed. But 30 did something to me and if I step out, I gotta have nice things on me. I don't know why.

As I've left behind the inverted snobbery I used to indulge in where I'll deliberately dress bad and look down upon the well-heeled, I feel the need to own a few good pieces that will hold me in good stead these days when I go out on events.

And this post is not about those pieces.

This post is about a little advice I'd like to dish out for whoever is listening or cares. You see, most of these events I've been to astound me with their clutches of similarity.  Almost always I can look at a woman and say what bag she'll be carrying, what perfume she's doused in or whose watch she's wearing.

Older women will invariably wear Dior, more so if they're Indian. Omani women are a little difficult to figure out fragrancewise because a lot of them carry a hint of the frankincense that some of them use at home. But my guess is a preference of Givenchy, Boucheron and some Dior. The younger women, across race, I've discovered, are usually bathed in Davidoff's Cool Water Woman. I am SO tired of that scent, it's not funny. The Lebanese/Egyptian/Moroccan women tend to lean towards Gucci some, especially Envy. Or something just as aqua smelling.

The shoes, strangely, are something a lot of women this part of the world give little importance to. Sure, they've gotta be nice. But it doesn't have to be designer. Maybe it's because it all disappears under the abaya or if they're Indian, the sari, I can't tell for sure, but the shoes almost always are unbrandable.

Which brings me to watches. Omega, Omega, Omega. The grossly underrated Raymond Weil has some really nice pieces but Omega it is on most the wrists of most women I see at these dos. But if they aren't the corporate type big, flashy Guccis, very imaginative DKNYs and Tag Heuer are de rigueur.

Honestly. It may sound like generalising to you but you'd be very  hardpressed to find something that doesn't fit this profile. The rest that goes with this image are: A French manicure and pedicure, rebonded-straight hair (which for the life of me I cannot understand or appreciate because I love curly hair), a BB or iPhone.

And all of it is so boringly predictable it makes me want to yank my nails out from their beds without anaesthesia and get salt sprinkled on the bare wounds. Really, isn't there a strong case for originality already out there?

For example, I've never seen a woman wear a Hublot. I love those things. Even though some of it has gold in it. Agreed they're mostly made for men and agreed I'd have to spend 7 years working 48 hours a day and not spending a baiza of my salary to afford one of those. But hey, almost all things meant for men look really nice on us. And not all women are paid like journalists, correct? There are some women there who can afford them.

Speaking of affording, I keep wondering why people seem to have more money than sense. If I see one more really ugly Louis Vuitton bag, I am going to make it my life's mission to meet the head of LVMH (the handbag section) and dance naked in front of them to My amma say you love me, your Papa say you love me, Love me Love me, till they admit that every time someone buys one of their bags, they fall over laughing because their joke of selling seriously ugly bags at prices for which you can buy an African village is really working.

Seriously. Who they hell comes up with those terrible designs? And if the colours and structures weren't bad enough, they go and splash the entire thing with their logo. Why is it cool to flaunt LV in sequins and why is it not cool to show off Naidu Hall? If you really like designer handbags and insist that the only way you'll get value out if it is by spending what is one month's pay for me, then what's stopping you from going for a Marc by Marc Jacobs, or a Marni. They do it SO much better than LV and in such subtle style.

While we are on the subject, can the dissenters point out the good in LV, please? Just so that I am better informed when I  meet the handbag section guy.

Japanese Tea Ceremony

The Way of Tea, or more commonly, the Japanese tea ceremony is an art. I got lucky enough to get a live demonstration by a very unassuming Japanese ambassador's (to Oman) wife, Mrs Yoshiko Morimoto, last morning at the ambassador's residence.

She's a lovely woman with excellently styled salt-and-pepper hair. Her smile is lovely, her eyes delicate, warm and she wore a kimono that I would easily give up a month of chocolate for.

"The tea ceremony is something young girls learn before marriage along with ikebana. It is a traditional ceremony that involves many rules.Everything about it has to be elegant without being ostentatious and always has to reflect humility and grace," she told me.

In a lovely alfresco setting where everything was laid out for her, she demonstrated the highly ritualised routine. Here are pictures.

 

 

 

  

  

 

 Agree about the kimono?