Confessions of a vegetable pan roll addict

Why is that bakery so close to my bus stop, making me literally salivate over those luscious pan rolls?

This is the question I have been my asking myself ever since I saw the bakery and started having their lip-smacking, ‘seductive’ vegetable pan roll. Once or twice in a week was my so called self-allotted ration in the beginning, but it slowly started increasing alarmingly because of my uncontrollable craving for pan rolls and rose so high to a level where I started having one pan roll every evening! Can you imagine? Almost 25- 30 pan rolls per month! Oh! I should not miss the amount of profit that they made out of my craving for pan rolls; almost 350 rupees per month. The pan rolls were so yum making me want them more and more that I hardly started bothering about money, the amount of unnecessary calories, the additives and preservatives getting in to my body. All that I could see from the bus stop was the spicy and scrumptious pan rolls dragging me towards them in minutes. Relishing those pan rolls thus started becoming a part of my day today life; draining my health and my pocket simultaneously. Sort of compulsive eating I should say! Or I should rephrase it as the result of sorrows of a foodie living in a hostel. Well, you all know how hostel food is! So pan rolls brought a lot of happiness for the foodie in me.

But within a short time the pan roll eating disorder slowly started showing its hidden monstrous face. I started getting stomach problems on a regular basis due to the higher amount of spicy content in them, which started upsetting my dad who never knew about my ‘pan roll addiction’. Thank god!

I somehow wanted to stop my pan roll addiction and obviously the only remedy was to stop buying it, but this wasn’t very practical in the beginning. Although I had made up my mind, there had been many moments in the initial stage when a particular trigger used to bring back my pan roll addiction and I used to unknowingly walk towards the bakery , buy pan rolls and have it. A distraction from this was really necessary and it was then I had to finally start taking a different route to my hostel, much way from the premises of the bakery so that I don’t even get a glance of the delectable pan rolls. I also started having fruits in the evening to lessen and slowly overcome my urge for pan rolls, to put an end to the kind of gluttony I had. It took time for things to settle down. Now it has been almost 4-5 months, and I won’t say that I completely stopped having pan rolls. Yea, I have it once in two weeks or so, but the glutton is no more alive.

Enroute to days without pan rolls!

Women's Day Or Women’s Inequality Day?

Here comes another Women’s Day! I was just trying to rewind my memories to the college days, when we used to conduct seminars and discussions on Women’s Day. My thoughts about this day never used to go beyond those seminars and discussions; or rather I never took pains to know more. Like any other college student, that was just another day to escape from sleep inducing lectures. As any other student I too loved when a public holiday sneaked up.

To be frank even now I don’t like the way we take-in this day; the way we go gaga over Women’s Right and do absolutely nothing for it. It sucks at times. You know why? No one really bother to make any changes in the society.I was reading news paper in the morning and found tons of write-ups about Women’s Day. When women can’t even walk safely why bother to write all these for formality or eye wash?

Let me take a step back and tell you something more. Less than a month before, an innocent girl was brutally raped and killed by a fellow passenger in a local train. As usual no one was bothered until the girl surrendered to death. The hullabaloo of political parties or their pre-election gimmicks too lasted only till her cremation and I bet no one will bother to go-over the issue again, until another one gets raped and killed. When women are not safe even in broad day light, what message are we trying to convey by these seminars and discussions?

Physical, mental and sexual harassments against women; I really feel men have taken them as their privilege now. Harassments happen everywhere; homes, offices, markets, malls, streets; literally everywhere! Many women even leave their jobs because of such intolerable harassments; be it from her colleague, boss or subordinate, the only resort for her is to leave the job.

I wonder why they can’t spare us while we travel. I have heard many of my colleagues saying about men who find fun in displaying their genitals in public places. People always look at the cops, expecting them to take action against such people and sadly most of them don’t do it. I travel every weekend to my hometown and meet a lot people during my journey. I have seen many women silently bearing anger and frustration when men purposefully press their pelvises against women’s body in crammed public bus and enjoy it. Even the fellow passengers will keep their mouths shut and won’t speak out that a woman is getting sexually harassed. The same happens when bus conductors find pleasure standing close to the seats of women passengers with their wicked eyes peeping in to women’s blouses. How brutal! And the ‘footboard romeos’, especially in private buses, I can’t forget them, another set of bloody f*****s.

How sarcastic it is to see the pompous Women's Day celebrations; when women cannot walk around the city without carrying pepper sprays in their bags!

Let me conclude with a news paper report.

In a country where fathers rape daughters brutally to death, why the hell should we celebrate Women’s Day?