Barkha Dutt

There is a great deal of aura associated with Barkha Dutt. Right from her days with Star News where she rose to fame along with Rajdeep Sardesai to her present status as the top news anchor on NDTV, people across this country have been fascinated by her. We even have roles sketched out in Bollywood based on her. We had Preity Zinta playing the gutsy reporter in Lakshya and more recently some new bollywood lass called Shriya Saran claiming that her character in Mission Istanbul is loosely based on Barkha.

While she has risen to the top as perhaps India's most recognisable face in the electronic media, through the way there have been many people who claim that all was not clean in her rise to the top. I remember, earlier this year, the day we won the test match in Perth, I was over at someone's place for Brunch and there I was talking to the business editor of Indian Express. He told me how early in her career, Barkha Dutt used to come for a press conference, accuse one of the fellow journalists of misbehaving with her, create a bit of a ruckus and pretty much intimidate everyone around her. The others then tried to keep distance from her and in the process she found it pretty easy to grab attention, ask her questions, make an impact and leave the venue.

There are many who claim some of her reporting from Kashmir was staged but I am not sure how much credence one can give to those comments. Whether she is arrogant or not, well that is a simple one, YES she is. Have noticed it a couple of times myself during the recording of "We the People" in the G.K. studio where she used to shout at whoever was listening to her at the other end in the production room during the ad breaks in a very derogatory manner. Even eavesdropped on a couple of journalists in the NDTV office expressing their disapproval about her style of work. She might be all nice and charming on T.V. with politicians but I guess that is how you have to act to be able to get that valuable line out of them. But I won't blame her for her arrogance, after all any poor soul who has the misfortune of calling Modern School Barakhamba Road as their alma mater is automatically 'elevated' to the arrogant category.

But whatever maybe her flaws or however crooked might have been her rise to the top she managed to bring to our living rooms the reality of war when she camped herself in the forward areas, a trait she obviously imbibed from her mother who did war reporting herself. Her reports that came out of Nagapattinam after the tsunami did give me goosebumps, that was the strength of those reports that she sent after tragedy struck on that fateful day in December a few years back.

The most poignant memory of Barkha Dutt's reporting will be that of Captain Vikram Batra answering Barkha's question on his motivation to fight for the country by saying "Yeh Dil Maange More". Unfortunately the brave soldier became a martyr soon after that interview.

Only on Second Saturdays....

This is perhaps the best piece that has managed to find it's way into my mailbox. Each time I read it, I can't stop laughing. Hilarious, yet tragically true!. Who wrote this piece is a mystery but the initial chain mails suggested it was some guy from IIM-A. Read on to understand the travails of Single South Indian Men....



The Travails of Single South Indian men-1

Yet another action packed weekend in Mumbai, full of fun, frolic and introspection. I have learnt many things. I have gathered many insights into the endless monotony that is the love life of South Indian men. What I have unearthed is most disheartening.

Disheartening because comprehension of these truths will not change our status anytime soon. However there is also cause for joy. We never stood a chance anyway.


What loads the dice against virile, gallant, well educated, good looking, sincere (Kanna)diggas, mallus and tams?

Our futures are shot to hell as soon as our parents bestow upon us names that are anything but alluring. I cannot imagine a more foolproof way of making sure the child remains single till classified advertisements or that maternal uncle in San Francisco thinks otherwise.

Name him "Parthasarathy Venkatachalapthy" and his inherent capability to combat celibacy is obliterated before he could even talk. He will grow to be known as Partha. Before he knows, his smart, seductively named northy classmates start calling him Paratha. No woman in their right minds will go anywhere near poor Parthasarathy. His investment banking job doesn't help either. His employer loves him though. He has no personal life you see.

By this time the Sanjay Singhs and Bobby Khans from his class have small businesses of their own and spend 60% of their lives in discos and pubs. The remaining 40% is spent coochicooing with leather and denim clad muses in their penthouse flats on Nepean Sea Road. Business is safely in the hands of the Mallu manager. After all with a name like Blossom Babykutty he cant use his 30000 salary anywhere. Blossom gave up on society when in school they automatically enrolled him for Cookery Classes. Along with all the girls.


Yes my dear reader, nomenclature is the first nail in a coffin of neglect and hormonal pandemonium. In a kinder world they would just name the poor southern male child and throw him off the balcony. "Yes Appa, we have named him Goundamani.. ." THUD. Life would have been less kinder to him anyway.


If all the women Upadhyays, Kumars, Pintos and, god forbid, the Sens and Roys in the world were distributed amongst the Arunkumars, Vadukuts and Chandramogans, we would all be merry Casanovas with 3 to 4 pretty things at each arm. But alas it is not to be.

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Click here to read the rest of the story

Only on Second Saturdays..(contd)

Only read this after you have read part 1 of the story. No Point in reading this without having read the first part. This is the second half to the brilliant piece written by god knows who, chronicling the reasons for why life is a struggle for South Indian men of conservative upbringing..


Travails of Single South Indian Men(contd.)



Of course South Indian women have no such issues. They have names which are like sweet poetry to the ravenous northie hormone tanks. Picture this: "Welcome, and this is my family. This is my daughter Poorni (what a sweet name!!) and my son Ponnalagusamy (er.. hello..).." Cyanide would not be fast enough for poor Samy. Nothing Samy does will help him. He can pump iron, drive fast cars and wear snazzy clothes, but against a brain dead dude called Arjun Singhania he has as much chance of getting any ...., as a Benedictine Monk in a Saharan Seminary. Couple this with the other failures that have plagued our existence.


Any attempt at spiking hair with gel fails miserably. In an hour I have a crown of greasy, smelly fibrous mush. My night ends there. However the northy just has to scream "Wakaw!!!" and you have to peel the women off him to let him breathe. In a disco while we can manage the medium hip shake with neck curls, once the Bhangra starts pumping we are as fluid as cement and gravel in a mixer. Karan Kapoor or Jatin Thapar in the low cut jeans with chaddi strap showing and see through shirt throws his elbows perfectly, the cynosure of all attention.


The women love a man who digs pasta and fondue. But why do they not see the simple pleasures of curd rice and coconut chutney? When poor Senthilnathan opens his tiffin box in the office lunch room his female coworkers just disappear when they see the tamarind rice and poppadums. They have all rematerialised around Bobby Singh who has ordered in Pizza and Garlic bread. How can a man like me, brought up in roomy lungis and oversized polyester shirts ever walk the walk, in painted-on jeans (that makes a big impression) and neon yellow-rib hugging t- shirts? All I can do is don my worn "comfort fit" jeans and floral shirt. Which is pretty low on the "Look at me daddy" scale, ... just above fig leaf skirt and feather headgear a la caveman, and a mite below Khakhi Shirt over a red t-shirt and baggy khakhi pants and white trainers a la Rajni in "Badsha".


Sociologically too the tam or mallu man is severely sidelined. An average tam stud stays in a house with, on average, three grandparents, three sets of uncles and aunts, and over 10 children. Not the ideal atmosphere for some intimacy and some full throated "WHOSE YOUR DADDY!!!" at 3 in the morning. The mallu guy of course is almost always in the gulf working alone on some onshore oil rig in the desert. Rheumatic elbows me thinks. Alas dear friends we are not just meant to set the nights on fire. We are just not built to be "The Ladies Man". The black man has hip hop, the white man has rock, the southie guy only has idlis and tomato rasam or an NRI account in South Indian Bank, Ernakulam Branch.

Alas as our destiny was determined in one fell swoop by our nomenclature, so will our future be. A nice arranged little love story. But the agony of course does not end there. On the first night, as the stud sits on his bed finally within touching distance and whispers his sweet desires into her delectable ear, she blushes, turns around and whispers back "But Amma has said only on second Saturdays... "

Mount Usu- Smokin' Aces

Of all the exotic locations, I cannot think of something that has fascinated me more than Mount Usu, a live volcano in Japan.

While the world knows and recognises Mt Fuji as perhaps the most famous tourist destination in Japan, there is one major difference between the two. Mt Fuji as beautiful as it is, is a dormant volcano, one that has not spewed lava for a few centuries now. Mt Usu on the other hand is an active volcano. The last eruption was in 2000.

What made it so fascinating was the fact that smoke was rising from the volcano as we made our way to the top. We were taken right to the top by a ropeway . A nice pathway had been made for the tourists and right next to it was the very hot surface of the volcano. I still can't believe that we got the chance to go to the top of a volcano which was releasing smoke. This image taken by Amanda Kendle shows you the kind of view a tourist gets on top of Mt Usu

It was my Grandmom who first noticed the smoke from the base of the mountain but all of us laughed it off. After all, whoever heard of a cableway to the top of a volcano releasing smoke, threatening to erupt(well at least the possibility existed). But that was actually the case!



There is Lake Toya near Usuzan and it has a mountain within it made entirely by the volcanic eruptions from Mt Usu years back. Lake Toya was the venue of the recent G-8 summit and that is exactly the place where our Prime Minister was when the Left chose to withdraw support to the government which led to the trust vote in parliament.

This image from cache.daylife.com shows the smoke rising from Mt Usu before the eruption in 2000.


Getting to Usu is an adventure in itself.

From Tokyo you've got to take the Shinkansen(Bullet Train) till Morioka.and then switch trains to go to Aomori which is the northernmost tip of Honshu. From there you need to take a train to Sapporo the capital of HokkaidoThe real fun starts from Aomori. There is a 54 Km long tunnel that connects the two islands Honshu and Hokkaido. An underwater tunnel. Amazing architectural feat. What would have been even more awesome as my grandfather put it, is if we had been able to see the sea underwater like in SeaWorld. Now THAT would have been an experience.

I can think of a lot of natural wonders: Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, Victoria Falls, The Great Barier Reef, Everest and many other places. Undoubtedly all these places are completely out of this world, but there is just something about getting to the top of an active Volcano that takes your breath away.

Prime Minister Mayawati

Let me try and list out a few important reasons as to why we need Mayawati to become the Prime Minister of India-:

• We need Dr Manmohan Singh the Economist not the Politician

• We will stop worrying about a weak President once we are faced with the prospect of Mayawati as our Leader.
  


• After the combination of Dr Abdul Kalam and Dr Singh we will have worthy replacements in the form of Pratibha Patil and Behen Mayawati as the two most important figures in our Democratic Structure


• India for the last decade has seen consistent growth and we need to head in the other direction to satisfy the laws of Game Theory

• If Carla Bruni can be the first lady of France, we too deserve a good dose of glamour in the higher echelons of power and Mayawati ji will be the one who will come to our rescue
  

I think I have pointed out in a fairly clear manner as to why for the benefit of our country we need Mayawati to lead us into the future.



Aarrrgghh. I can't do this anymore.

We are considering a future where the same lady who took money to build a mall in front of the Taj Mahal, will be the one who will lead us in the 21st century?

Bad enough our country has parliamentarians who go by the name Dharmendra and Govinda, I cannot bear to envisage a future where we might have someone like Mayawati imposed upon as the Prime Minister. That would be the day Democracy is defeated, for she will never be the voice of the people. Just the leader of an alliance cobbled together by opportunistic people with the sole aim of ensuring that India's future is doomed. May they never have the power to do that.

May other nations never get an opportunity to laugh at us because of those who lead us.

The only way to avoid such a situation is to strengthen our democracy in such a manner that Electoral Democracy just becomes a bit player and people strengthen themselves enough to ensure that the country runs on Auto Pilot irrespective of what the goons in parliament do.


-This is a disgruntled citizen making an Ardent Plea.

Image Courtesy: www.tribuneindia.com

Beach Volleyball in India

When I found out that Chennai was to play host to a Beach Volleyball Championship, I felt slightly uneasy. Don't get me wrong, the city is one of the fastest growing cities in India and has all the amenities available to host an international event of repute, it even has the beach!

But for years I have built up a strong conservative image of the city, a city which loves to live within the walls of rigid practices developed and strengthened over years. This image of mine was partly aided by all the recent activities in the city. The 'uniform'ed colleges, the shackled night life, the brouhaha over public display of affection and everything else that could possibly be construed as an uninviting place for the youngsters.

In such a city the idea of a beach volleyball championship seemed improbable. The slim chiseled bodies, jumping around in the sand, with no more than a bikini to protect them from the voyeuristic gaze of the men who would turn up at Elliots beach, was it really possible?

As I write this piece, on the final day of the championship, one thing is for sure, that the people of the city have taken to the sport and it is not just because of the sex appeal the sport carries with it. The young, the old, the women and children and 'shockingly' even men have loved every bit of the action and want to see more such events.

The players themselves seem to have taken to the city and have had no qualms about playing in India. The report in today's Hindustan Times says, no lewd remarks, no catcalls, no ugly scenes yet. The tournament has been a great success and everyone has loved it.

Of course the rules had to be bent slightly to accommodate the Indian women who refused to play in bikinis. They were allowed to play wearing T-Shirts and shorts but barring that no other controversial issue has raised it's head.The neo-cultural hawks who operate under the garb of political activism have been kept at bay.

According to the FIVB officials, there is no difference in crowd behaviour between this and any other venue of the world. To be fair to the city, Chennai has always been known for sporting crowds and there is no greater testament to that fact than the wonderful ovation the Pakistani cricket team received at the end of a gripping test match back in 1999. But a mature and sporting audience at a Beach Volleyball championship in India is music to the ears.

Salaam Chennai!

The Beautiful Game

Snake

The mobile game was perhaps the only reason I would look back at the first two years of college with any sort of fondness. The many hours spent in class maneuvering the snake through the tiny screen, the high score of 6,500 odd, that amazing conversation with Varuni's brother(Saurabh was witness to that), a play scripted around the phone because of my addiction to snake and the countless hours spent borrowing other phones after I had switched allegiance to Motorola.

Imagine the joy, when I stumbled across "the beautiful game" online.

Almost as good as the traditional Snake with a few changes-:

• You cannot barge through the wall
• No Bonus opportunities
• The quicker the snake eats the food, the more points you get

Other than the few minor differences, it feels almost as good as the real thing. Three levels to suit your style. May I suggest the python as the level where you should be wasting time.

Arrow your way around the screen and spacebar to pause. Most importantly, 'M' to mute. You don't want your boss to discover how you spend time at work. Happy snaking!(no no, not the gujju version)

Let's play 24

For some reason number plates have always fascinated me. If you are like me and drive around the city, you know that more often than not, rather than zipping around at 80kmph, you are more likely to be bunched up with a number of cars moving at a snails pace.

Here is a simple game that would keep you engrossed through all your long drives as long as there are other cars on the road.

Rules for 24

• Note down the last four digits of some other car's number plate

• One of the four digits should not be zero
  

• Apply BoDMAS (Division,Multiplication,Addition or Subtraction on the digits) and try and convert the number to 24

Almost all of the four digit combinations on the number plate can be made to 24. Of course there are a few exceptions, i.e. 1122 or 1132. Come on guys, at least pick numbers that stand a chance!

Other than a few combinations almost all other numbers can be mathematically converted to 24

If you can't make 24, trust me the fault is at your end. These numbers have a special affinity towards 24!

Examples

Some car numbers-:

DL 3c E 5881

(8-5)*8*1= 24

DL 3c AZ 1824

8*(4-2+1)=24

HP 35 5673

(5+7)*(6/3)=24

DL 5C E 7832

(7-3)*(8-2)=24


These are just the numbers of a few cars that I know of and they pretty much fit into this bracket.

Trust me, this is one of the best ways to make a long car drive entertaining and it really helps if you are not that smart. That way it takes you more time to solve the puzzle for one car.

If you can't manage a number then don't assume the game is flawed, get back to me, give me the number and I will give you the solution. There are very few numbers that cannot be solved. Almost 80 precent of the cars on the roads without a zero in the last four digits come under the 'can be solved' category.


Drive safe, Think Smart

p.s. only cars you see on the road can be included, not stolen cars!

image courtesy: www.kangguru.org/

What's in a name?

From:
Sridinats,
Random Blaber'er',
New Delhi, India

To:
Mr William Shakespeare,
Stratford upon Avon,
United Kingdom

13th July,2008

Subject: What's in a name?

Dear Sir,

In the year 1595 when you wrote the now famous novel Romeo and Juliet, a protaganist in the novel made an important statement-:

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet."

Please forgive me but I think it is important for me to tell you that in the Year 2008 there's a lot in a name. If I were to make the mistake of calling Rose by some other name, she might never ever come back to me. Worse still, what I did today shall continue to embarrass me for a long long time. The people who coined the wonderful term Faux Pas(faw pah) would have had my situation in mind while giving the word it's meaning.

As I went to a friends place to attend a merry get together, I could not for the life of me remember the name of a wonderful lady who had come to the party with Aastha. What made the matter worse was the fact that she remembered me(eeks). The issue finally ended with me having to cajole her into revealing her name. Don't think I would be hearing from her anytime in the near future.

Terrible eh? The trouble was not over. A little while later I gave another friend a whole new identity because I could not recall his actual name. Of course, this time around someone else pretty much "threw me to the wolves" by not correcting my mistake, before I actually publicly humiliated myself.

-------

A few years ago on a drive to Niagra Falls from D.C. we had stopped over at Burger King for a quick bite. My uncle tipped the lady there and also thanked her by name for her wonderful service. I was impressed. After all it is always cool to thank someone like that and all that he did was give the badge on her shirt a quick glance before thanking her.That is what revealed her name. Pretty Cool,I thought.

As we resumed our journey towards the border we stopped at a toll plaza. A very pretty woman at the toll booth returned the change and I employed the same trick as above, did the needful and said "Thank You Nysta". Instead of getting a warm/flirty/lovely smile in return all I got was a weird look. Almost as if she was trying to say "Who the hell is this jerk?"

For the rest of the journey my cousins could not stop laughing and I just could not understand where I went wrong. When enlightened, I could not stop laughing myself, I was a jerk.The lady at the toll booth had a badge on her shirt but it did not have her name on it. NYSTA, was not an exotic name, but an abbreviation for New York State Thruway Authority. Don't think I am gonna here from her either.

I apologise to Anupriya, Anchit and to whoever was representing the N.Y.S.T.A. that day and to you WIilliam I say, trust me, there's a LOT in a name.

Warm Regards

Sridinats

Summer of '03 in South Africa

Nostalgia is a funny thing. You always yearn for more and you hope it never ends. Was just lazing around when the mind wandered to April 2003 and the trip to South Africa. It struck me that somewhere at my place there was a small cd container that contained all the cd's of that trip.

After nearly an hour of searching I found what I was looking for and spent another hour just going through the various cd's. Here is something that I thought I would share with you guys. Had to first convert the .dat file to a .avi file and then upload it on to youtube. Krits was the one who guided me through the process( that girl is smarter than one might think!).

This was outside Jan Van Riebeeck High School in Cape Town and the beautiful Table Mountain stood in front of us.

Have lost touch with most of them. Have no clue about Opu(the guy behind the camera), Kriti and Aparajita. Saumya is pretty much in town completing his degree in IIT Delhi. Aashini is also around and as for Arnab, megs tells me that he is off to Germany later this year for his post-grad. All the best Dada!

The Wallet Unravelled

A wallet usually a tool for keeping money more often than not becomes a storage area of sorts for various kinds of documents. You never realise it but before you know, it becomes heavy and it's not because you have been blessed by the goddess of money. I thought I would just rummage through all that is there in my wallet and it was a nice trip down memory lane if you may!

First I thought I would empty all the money in my wallet. I was pleasantly surprised to find a One Yuan note that a shopkeeper in Beijing had returned as change. That along with the 500 Tanzanian Shillings and the good old Fifty Rupee note adds up to a nice princely amount of Rs 77. Thank God for the debit card.



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Then came out all sorts of Identification material. A number of B&W photographs and colour photographs that I have religiously kept in my wallet.

There is of course the college I-D Card which was bruised and battered through the four years of college and despite the two pieces the Bar Code scanning worked just fine. As for the Driving License, well that is the most cherished possession of the lot.


This is a new form of identification which of course is a professional hazard. The title says "Corporate Manager". Sounded pretty fancy initially but now I just like to distance myself from it. It just has too much of a "corporate" feel about it and that is one thing that I would like to distance myself from in life!



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I swear to god I have no clue how these things landed up here-:

->First Citizen Card from Shoppers Stop
-> ClubWest card for shopping in Westside

Hell, I am surprised how Kritika has not yet flicked it from me!!


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The illustration says " It has been named after her recent world rankings"

The Slide is called the 'Sania Mirza Slide'

A piece of paper I never really loved but one that a good friend of mine Salil from Ahmedabad had given to me mocking my eternal support of the inconsistent tennis star. He specially got this cut out and handed it over to me calling it a "gift"


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The Varuni Language

Wow! I can't believe that I found this. I still remember it was back in our first or second year during the middle of a terribly boring class(the usual) ,Varuni shared with me her 'secret' language. There was a different symbol for each alphabet.

I am not even sure if Varuni remembers this but it was definitely a pleasant surprise to find this in my wallet!

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Last but not the least my Favourite item. The old grainy image was taken 8 years back. Anna on the left and Su on the right in that pic. Just look at them(!) Of course now they have grown up into gorgeous young women(images above the old pic) but boy they looked different back then. As for the image that has been lost to the past, that was Navtanay and apparently he looked adorable back then, that's what the girls say anyway!

Year 2008 -> Year 2000



*to take a closer look at each one of the 9 pics you can click on them to see the enlarged image*

Limewire addict?

Name: Anupam Sanyal

Age: 20

Location: A dorm room in VirginiaTech

'Past' Hobby: Downloading his favourite songs from Limewire

Villain: MPAA

Case: Filed a notice against Anupam for "Illegally" downloading songs from a P2P network

Result: Anupam fined $4000 by the MPAA. Yes, he was asked to pay Four Thousand Dollars in an out of court settlement.

I guess this is what they meant when they coined the term 'Apocalypse'.


It's not only happening in the U.S. Check out this story about the U.K. music industry winning a case against online file sharing. Here are the highlights of the story-:

High Court judges ordered two men to pay the British Phonographic Industry between £1,500 and £5,000 for making thousands of songs available online.
.....

The two men, who the BPI decided not to name in publicising the cases, were accused along with three others of using peer-to-peer software to share 8,906 songs over the internet.
.....

A postman from Brighton, said he was unaware that what he was doing was illegal and did not seek to gain financially.His case was also thrown out, with Judge Justice Lawrence Collins declaring: "Ignorance is not a defence".


Reminds me of the line in Sweet Child o Mine... Where do we go now, where do we go?

Funny, I downloaded that song using You Know Who !

*The Above image courtesy photo number 467 in Anupam's facebook photo album*

The Helicopter Game

The Copter Game

This is perhaps the best game ever and trust me, I don't use that term lightly. I cannot recall how many countless hours I have spent sitting in front of my PC playing this game, trying to improve my score.

Back in my "heydays", I had flown that copter past the trecherous terrain filled with so many obstacles to a distance of nearly 7650 meters. Now I struggle to get it past the 1000 meter mark. How times change. I guess the body has aged and the cockpit is not the place for me anymore.

The simplicity of the game is its greatest attraction.

Instructions

• Click and hold the left button on the mouse to take the copter up.
• Release the left button to make the copter go down
• Avoid all the obstacles in the path and avoid the ceiling
• Try and fly it to the maximum distance possible
• Don't curse if you get an obstacle in your path which is impossible to cross. It happens!
  

Lets bless the amazing guys at www.seethru.co.uk for this great game

Finger Length Ratio

While I sit and finish off my fourth "regular" Pizza for the day I notice that there are many people around the world who have wasted more man-hours doing stuff they consider far more useful than sitting at home and eating Pizza.. Hmph!

I strongly advice you to rubbish the following conclusions and keep in mind that half of these researchers have been widely discredited and their views dismissed (or maybe not)

So before you go reading further, I suggest you compare the length of your Index finger and the Ring finger and then read on-:

• It has been found that people with longer Ring fingers than Index fingers tend to be good in Math as they possess superior numerical ability. On the other hand, people with a longer Index finger than the ring finger tend to be good in Verbal Ability.
  

• Researchers over the years have agreed over the fact that men with much longer Ring fingers than Index fingers tend to be far more physically aggressive.
  

• A critical observation in this field has been that boys with shorter ring fingers than index fingers have an increased chance of acquiring a heart disease and steps must be taken to ward off that threat.

• It is believed that Women who drive their car on the other side of the road ( no, i am not talking about British women) tend to have shorter Index fingers as compared to their ring fingers. The usual feminine pattern suggests that the two fingers are usually equal in length or the Index finger is slightly longer.

• Professor John Manning claims that he can predict the winner in a race based on the relative finger lengths of the runners. John Manning is in fact working with a Sports Academy in Qatar to help them identify future athletes based on his research.

I would love to hear from you and see if there is any truth to the conclusions that have been made by many scientists around the world.

For those of you who think that all of the above is a good amount of hogwash, well, you can always finger the research !

Gend'erred' Shirt

We were in Reliance Trends (yes, and rumour has it that those boys are also getting into the notebook manufacturing Industry, phew) and my Uncle asked us, while pointing towards a fairly unisexual(?) shirt whether it was womens wear or menswear?

I had no clue and in my defence it was not outlandishly pink neither was it right out of the Peter England line. So, how do you know whether a formal shirt put up in the middle of nowhere is supposed to adorn the body of a beautiful woman or some clumsy man?

They say God lies in the details and a simple answer to that question is left over right and right over left... HuHh(yup, that was my pristine reaction.. aint i just great with words?)

Buttons on women's shirts are on the left and they are on the right on men's shirts. Notice the buttons on the left in the image-:

image courtesy:www.thomaspink.com



Enlarge the image and you will understand what I am talking about.

The next obvious question is, WHY?

Apparently we have history to blame for it. We can go back a few hundred years when men used to button themselves whereas the wealthy women had chambermaids to button the shirts for them. After all for the wealthy women during that time it would have been akin to hard labour to put on their clothes without any help. Soon they asked their tailors to sew the buttons on the other side so that most of their right handed maids did not waste too much time in dressing them up.

The question that begs to be asked is why is the practice still followed? I cannot think of many women out there other than perhaps Queen Elizabeth who would ask maids to dress them up and the last time I checked she did not think very highly of formal shirts!

Would it not be more convenient for most of the right handed women to have the buttons on the right side to make it easier for them?

While I was digging through the internet in search of an answer I found this-:

"They put buttons on the Left because if they didn't it probably wouldn't look Right"