Man, Woman and the Shape of things.

In a recent article by Alex Blimes, and an editorial by Priya Tanna, both tom tom(ed) about women' obsession with their body's thin or thickness. K personally likes her voluptuous self - there are only passages in her silhouette that she'd like to nip and tuck. The clothes otherwise look stupid and the images look swollen.

Returning to Blimes and Tanna - 'fit' is better than 'fat', which is better than 'thin'. At the gym, men take to Narcissus, they stare, check-out, adore, pull-in their paunches and reflect on how they can beat that bulge. Women, on the other hand, are removed from the flashing mirrors, in the oblivion of the nooks, sweating silently, not wanting their lard to jiggle in public view, as they push themselves to run for that another minute.

K is unsure if men are less conscious of their shape than women. She knows for a fact that they appreciate themselves a little more than women - but that again is a sweeping generalization.

On a similar note, the pendulum is now swinging to celebrating 'full-bodied' women. Twiggy, Moss, Jolie, Kapoor are suddenly not in vogue. Varushka, Bellucci and their likes are! It's the after effect of food consumerism. The linear movement of time demands that we now direct our vision to the clothes rack, skin firming lotions, Herbal life, Masters in Yoga and a cross-trainer.

Women blame men for their shape, men blame the mind of a woman. Emotional binges, pill poppers, hunger curbing chimneys or carrot chewing goats - all look for an affirmation that they are not sure they'd be happy with in the long run (if there is one).

Men' competition is not with other Alpha males, it's with Hercules. It's with the power to make a woman feel petite and another man a limp.

The obsession with shape was always there and it shall remain. Voluptuous/ curvaceous , hour glass, slim, athletic. We, humans, have a tendency to move in circles, in our heads and our evolution. Reading into things - Shape bespeaks a mental fantasy of a perfection, it is not necessarily the bearers', though, it would like to be. Its the new power over every thing that is yours.

K believes that the body, like the mind is a temple of sensuous enjoyment. It is there to be used, abused, loved, hated and lived-in, not with. Then whether it's the corset that's sculpting you or the surgeon's knife, the burnt webbed feet or the implanted steel scales. It's the shape that your mind wants to define its mood in.

Conclusions will be averted this time. Epicureans do not complain against Bacchus.

Writing by hand!?

What I have missed the most over the years is a letter in my post and buying stamps to send one. I saw the old post man in his Khaki government uniform today after almost a year or more. It's odd how the digital has taken over, I love technology, I indeed do. I am waiting for the dragon speak (or so I've heard people call it) software to launch! Then the talking speed will kill the typing speed and cure people of carpel tunnel syndrome and other disorders related to being restricted to the keyboard.

However, when you've been to a school where they made you write your defaulted homework 25 times or made you write the same futile / fallible sentence 'I will not misbehave in class' 100 times - you will miss writing! Especially the fancy pencils (with rubbers on the back or back- scratching plastic holders; yes, I had cartoon ones as well!) and the fantastic (leaking) china pens!

Then there were those hated summers with the cursive writing books - and gladly they were discontinued during the 'secondary school'. That was the phase I enjoyed observing people the most! Our hand-writings' were developing just as our hormones were charging, our minds were shaping, our idiosyncrasy speaking out loud. The straight arrows in the sky, stuck to each other words or the one finger gutter space between them or the circular pearls that always won the best hand-writing competition. There were also the grasshopper's legs or the large elephant like writing that took-up three words on a line. The long 'g, j,y' loops that ended on the heads of other letters or clashed with the 'l, t, p'. None of them now can be seen, my handwriting analysis course also lays waste.

I don't care for what has gone but what is left of it remains hidden in a questioning poignant space in the mind. When personal quirks of handwriting, the emotional upswings and downswings marked on a page becomes an alien thing; When Times New Roman, Verdana, Trebuchet, Arial feels like an extension of the self, while our own fingers, their handwriting feels like an aberration, an embarrassment, an oddity. Then, don't we lose something- some ability?

I feel it today, know that many do too. A decade from now, I won't feel a thing. I won't miss any of my well preserved stationary.

However, I have to thank my mother for all the cursive writing I've had do. Just feels right to thank her.