Women at Work

I am relaxing on my couch watching ‘The Intern’ on DVD. Robert De Niro, plays the eternally affable Ben Whitaker who joins About the Fit, an internet start-up as The Intern. He is 70, his boss Jules Ostin, played by a stylish but stressed Anne Hathaway is a 30 something woman.   Ben is escorting his employer’s daughter to a birthday party and comes across the stay...

Indrani Mukherjee is doomed. Even before any tangible evidence comes to light, even before a court hearing before she makes any kind of statement, she has already been judged. The case has been a bonanza for the TRP hungry news channels. The story has captured the attention and imagination of a nation. How can a woman kill her own daughter, we wonder. How depraved, how...

A talk with Anuranjita Kumar, author and Head of Human Resources in Citibank   Can I have it all? This is a question that every woman contemplating a career invariably asks herself. Is it really possible to rise to the top of my field, bring up intelligent, well-behaved children, maintain a loving relationship with my spouse and stay sane and stress-free?   While there is no single formula for...

Ban or no ban- I don’t think I am going to watch India’s Daughter. I don’t really need to see a film to know that rape is brutal, a rapist is a perverted narrow-minded misogynist, India is a patriarchy, lawmakers, lawyers and many people in our society have notions about women’s conduct that should have died centuries ago. From what I have read about the...

This article was first published on IBN Live’s blog...

Once again, some Political Personality has said something Politically Incorrect about women. Last week, the Turkish President declared “Our religion (Islam) has defined a position for women (in society): motherhood,” “Some people can understand this, while others can’t. You cannot explain this to feminists because they don’t accept the concept of motherhood.”   A part of me dismissed him as another male chauvinist who makes random motherhood...

Sometimes completely unrelated things that happen around the same time get you to think about one single thing. There might be some greater cosmic significance or it could be random coincidence but these things happen.   I saw the movie Mary Kom.   In a stairway leading to a shop, I saw a poster that said My wife does not Work with a picture of a multi-armed multi-tasking woman.   Someone...

Indra Nooyi’s interview has once again brought the ‘having it all’ issue into focus. Some women are aggrieved that her comments have set the feminist movement back a decade or two. Others applaud her for finally being honest enough to admit that a woman cannot be a perfect mother, wife, and CEO. The ‘having it all’ monster keeps rearing its Hydra head from time to...

Unless you have been living under a rock, you could not have missed the brouhaha about our HRD minister’s educational qualification. Is Smriti Irani a BA pass or BCom graduate? Is she a graduate at all? Did she lie about her educational qualification? Is this a political conspiracy?   It could easily be one of those pointless charades that are enacted from time to time-full of sound...

I am at a restaurant for a ladies lunch. We are talking about hair, our general unhappiness with its texture, sheen, volume. And color.   “I found a white hair,” says one of my friends.   I confess to having found many. I pull them out with a tweezer, hoping another does not rush to take its place.   We talk about food and exercise, the shameful truth that cutting back...