Womans voices

Most good things are enjoyed in retrospect,why else would one feel nostalgic about college some 25 odd years after leaving it,(when we were dying to get our while we were there),or for instance why does one hanker after moms cooking long after she has stoped cooking (as children we grumbled endlessly about her cooking).Unfortunately lots of times we are too busy being in the here and now that we appreciate it well after the experience is over.

Going back to college and seeing the campus and the lamps lit and the old classrooms kind of brings back memories that have been lost in the course of just living.To see women from different batches all with their silver hair but with the determination and joie de vivre reminds us what true empowerment means.Its about being your own person.No one has to empower woman,its in our hands to do what we want to do.The education in one of the best woman's colleges meant that we had no distractions in our pursuit of education and a broadening of our horizons.It made us socially aware,committed to causes and gave us the ability to be the best in whatever we choose to do and it gave us above everything else a mind of our own.Which is why one goes back to give back and as the college motto goes,lighted to lighten.It links us to other woman with shared experiences and shared agendas who in their old age are not dependent on others for support but rather on their own minds to be just themselves without the fear and insecurity that normally comes with growing old and helpless and the community of woman is probably the best group to reinforce that belief in self.

life in the time of elections

When it rains it pours,otherwise why should everything conspire to blink together.It started with the elections being announced,then the government went into top gear,so all of a sudden some water pipes that are as old as i can remember,were suddenly in need of replacements.Who decides that ...obviously the metro water people so there they were all of them with things to dig up the road and they got on with it.For days they dug indiscriminately and the one surviving tree on our road had its roots mutilated and I wonder if it will withstand the next rain(but we thank our stars it didnt fall down)The digging went on for a few days after which it was not just the tree in danger but the water supply and the electricity.You see in their blinkered way,they went ahead and did the work with no thought of what else will be affected so never mind if the electricity cables run underground,they just hacked away.When the water supply ran out we bought a tanker of water so that was ok(atlest we could have baths in clean water instead of our own sweat).Ofcourse afte the new pipes were provided,the electricity ran out and if we wanted to have  a party we need to have one just now as the lights blinked at regular intervals almost like a happening nightclub.In the process of this dance of lights,most electricial appliances shut down with the sheer stress of having to deal with the fluctuations.When all pleas to the electricity board fell on deaf ears,i called the chairmans office and told then what i thot of them,then the rest of the street (after having suffered in the heat for almost a week now) got hold of the ministers office and all of a sudden all the engineers were on our street trying to set things right(in our country its still all bout knowing the right people).They managed to make some patchwork of the wires while we prayed and sweated in equal measure.Then the air conditioning came on and we breathed a sigh of relief.Our happiness was short lived.The next day,a new department of the government decided that our already narrow street,needed to get more narrow so they are providing us with pavements.Now pavement mean digging again so we are back to square one except that this time around its not jsut the electricity wires that are being hacked,its also the internet cables....which is why after all this,this post maynot get published becasause the connection is on the blink and that is life in the time of elections