My Diary Pages

Even though my mother and mother-in law are both successful homemakers and I have immense respect for homemakers who are unsung superwomen, I still find the tag of a 'housewife' as my identity pretty insulting. Blame it to the spirit of feminism that arises from time to time to attack my poor husband or the fact that I had worked for five years at a stretch before marriage and had led a very independent life, I never thought that I could be labelled as a housewife. Alas! God had some different plans.  Early this year, moving to the U.S. on a dependent spouse visa made me the quintessential housewife. I bawled, shouted, and argued with my dear husband whom I held responsible for my plight. As if my feminist rants were not enough to torture him, I decided to exhibit my limited culinary skills to feed him, making good use of all the free time I had.  The Birthday Cake August came and I started planning for my husband's birthday. When we were in a long dist...

So, the markets crashed last Friday. " Carnage in Indian markets... "- the headline screamed to make me aware about the situation. Our very own Rupee is stripping in front of the mighty Dollar. It is a guessing game that up to what extent Rupee will fall. And to add to this chaos, our government has revealed too many scams to undermine the traces of faith in the system. How does this make an impact on a common Indian woman like me? I do not have an impressive portfolio of shares. So what if markets crashed? Sorry Rupee!!! But your great fall is not affecting me directly so far. Scams make me realize that how less I earn compared to the amount involved in the scams.But other than self-pity, scams do not affect me either. But somewhere deep inside, I'm scared. Will my job be safe in the gloomy slowdown conditions? When will the falling and angry Rupee start pinching my household budget? How soon eating my favorite pizza each weekend w...

It was a cold December morning. I had to catch a flight to reach Mumbai by afternoon. As fate plays foul, due to foggy weather and delay by the flight to take off, I landed up in Mumbai by six in the evening. My destination was Pune, so the journey continued further with a cab ride. Finally, by ten at night, I reached. The next part was catching an auto-rickshaw to go home. I happily hired one and suddenly to my horror, I realized that MY WALLET WAS MISSING!!! It was late, I was alone, the road was quite deserted, the auto-rickshaw driver looked scary and my wallet was missing. All sort of random thoughts were flooding my mind. Three words to sum up my condition, I was the "Damsel in Distress". After taking a few deep breaths, I called up my "Knight in Shining Armour" (read my best friend , staying in another city) to rescue my money by blocking the debit cards left in my wallet. Somehow I reached home, borrowed money from my local grocery guy to...

It is that time of the year when my employer asks me to show the proof of investments I have made for tax saving; a gentle reminder that being a defaulter would lead to deduction of tax at source from my next month's salary. So, basically I need to part away with my hard-earned money- either park it in some financial plans (ashamed to admit, I'm yet to start with one) or let my next month's salary get shrunk post tax deduction at source. Even though I would be more interested to save the money and splurge it on myself, I'm bound to think about the terms like savings and investments (which is good somehow for a wayward investor like me!) So, how an investor like me behaves in a year? In the first month of every new financial year, I'm high on hopes about managing my money well, taking wise decisions about investments and savings. Trust me, I take this resolution every year. On the first day of the first month of a financial year, I spread out my fina...

Not a bad option or is it??? I'm not settled in my career, struggling to put the best foot forward in my present job, wondering if I can make it big in my life. I'm a 25 year old Indian girl, which makes me eligible to be pinned down on the dart board, facing darts from my folks and family. "When are you getting married?" As I have a very special friend in my life, the poor soul's mere existence invites more darts. "Are you sure about the guy?" And the final dart, "Shall we search a guy for you, in case you are not sure?" Phew!!! Image: quotesmart.net Right now, I'm not sure about most of the things in my life. Or for that matter, I can't say whether I would ever be a hundred percent sure about my tomorrow. A beautiful line from one of my favorite movies, Kung Fu Panda- "You are too concerned with what was and what will be. There's a saying. Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today i...